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The Final Hours of Titanfall Out Now - Titanfall Almost Never Happened

antitrop

Member
Just picked this up on Steam and holy shit is it ever well done.

Dorito Pope putting in that solid games journalism.
 
Technically Microsoft did pay money for exclusivity so that would be a correct statement. The fact that it was needed for continued development was the same as with Dead Rising 3. It is really strange that they were so quiet with Respawn when they consulted with other studios so much.

You don't think it's a tiny bit disingenuous to claim a moneyhat without providing details on the financial situation of the game's development? The picture that was painted by some of the more overzealous console warriors is clear.

It also makes a certain banned 'insiders' recent claims in the last NPD thread that Sony showed EA execs how much money they lost our by not bringing the game to PS4. And then had the EA begging forgiveness even more hilarious.

Holy shit, I forgot all about that. The last few months, with the proliferation of 'insider' status has made this place look like gamefaqs. Glad the mods are taking control again.
 

Into

Member
I'm just going based on the info we were given. Respawn went to Sony, got turned away, went again right before they had to lock down development and specify systems and Sony declined again. That's true.

It also reads like EA didn't put up cash and MS came and said they would, as they needed the game to be finished. It sounds like without MS' money it would have not gotten done.


Sure, and there is nothing wrong with paying/buying/funding a game really, despite what some people here would like you to believe, especially if it turns out to be pretty good, which TF did.

I think MS did help save the game and fund it, because EA really wanted to bet on Xbox "720", as that goes hand in hand what Pachter said.
 

Anion

Member
Dang...so much for the moneyhat? Seems that Microsoft played their cards well.

Edit:
It also makes a certain banned 'insiders' recent claims in the last NPD thread that Sony showed EA execs how much money they lost our by not bringing the game to PS4. And then had the EA begging forgiveness even more hilarious.

This is incredibly damning
 
I think the troubled development shows in the final game. It came out undercooked. A real disappointment.

Certainly not a patch on COD2/COD4/MW2.

Hopefully they pull it together for the next game.

Crazy that Sony shot themselves in the foot like that...
 

Wereroku

Member
You don't think it's a tiny bit disingenuous to claim a moneyhat without providing details on the financial situation of the game's development? The picture that was painted by some of the more overzealous console warriors is clear.

Oh no I agree with you. If this is the case it is like Everyone goes to rapture but a worse deal for Microsoft since they don't get IP ownership. But it is technically the truth but with just a bit of negative spin on it. I do have to say though that the lifetime exclusive is pure moneyhatting.
 

antitrop

Member
I think the troubled development shows in the final game. It came out undercooked. A real disappointment.
Certainly not a patch on COD2/COD4/MW2.
Hopefully they pull it together for the next game.

It's no CoD4 (what is?), but I've definitely enjoyed it far, far more than CoD2 or MW2.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
It also makes a certain banned 'insiders' recent claims in the last NPD thread that Sony showed EA execs how much money they lost our by not bringing the game to PS4. And then had the EA begging forgiveness even more hilarious.

Oh man, I forgot about that. Those two things really don't go together for sure.
 
It also makes a certain banned 'insiders' recent claims in the last NPD thread that Sony showed EA execs how much money they lost our by not bringing the game to PS4. And then had the EA begging forgiveness even more hilarious.

Oh yeah, forgot about that. Even without the recent information, that never made any sense to me. How would A) Sony be ever to convincingly present this figure and B) EA not take this into account originally.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
I think the troubled development shows in the final game. It came out undercooked. A real disappointment.

Certainly not a patch on COD2/COD4/MW2.

Hopefully they pull it together for the next game.

Crazy that Sony shot themselves in the foot like that...

I think the game is fine, and it wasn't a buggy mess so I commend them for that. I think the issues come up in depth of content. You can tell they went light on content for the game, so I assume that time they lost went into that decision. Had they been working the whole time we might have a deeper game.
 
I'm just going based on the info we were given. Respawn went to Sony, got turned away, went again right before they had to lock down development and specify systems and Sony declined again. That's true.

It also reads like EA didn't put up cash and MS came and said they would, as they needed the game to be finished because it was to be their big game on Xbox One. It sounds like without MS' money it would have not gotten done.

If Respawn was an EA studio, then yes. The EA Partners program, which Respawn is part of doesn't involve EA fronting all the funds to develop.

your saying this game is dead in the water without MS funding and EA's expectations are so low that they wouldn't take a risk?
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
your saying this game is dead in the water without MS funding and EA's expectations are so low that they wouldn't take a risk?

That's kind of what it sounds like. The EA Partners program must just be for publishing platform and have nothing to do with EA helping out with development funding.
 
It also makes a certain banned 'insiders' recent claims in the last NPD thread that Sony showed EA execs how much money they lost our by not bringing the game to PS4. And then had the EA begging forgiveness even more hilarious.
Ah yes I remember that.
Sony also used it's own metrics in a meeting with EA last week and showed them what they would have sold on the ps3 and ps4. The money EA took from MS doesn't even begin to cover it. The EA guys went over the math and agreed. EA is in full "We're so fucking sorry, Sony" mode currently.
 
I think the game is fine, and it wasn't a buggy mess so I commend them for that. I think the issues come up in depth of content. You can tell they went light on content for the game, so I assume that time they lost went into that decision. Had they been working the whole time we might have a deeper game.

Agreed. Its amazing how much stuff they were working on so late in the process. A lot of the core factors of the game didn't arrive until December.
 

antitrop

Member
Ah yes I remember that.

Sony also used it's own metrics in a meeting with EA last week and showed them what they would have sold on the ps3 and ps4. The money EA took from MS doesn't even begin to cover it. The EA guys went over the math and agreed. EA is in full "We're so fucking sorry, Sony" mode currently.

NQihcvH.gif
 

LCfiner

Member
Final Hour stories have always been interesting reading. I’ll be picking this up. Seems like this one is particularly interesting.
 

randomwab

Member
Just to clarify, Microsoft were meeting with Respawn in January 2012 about Durango. To quote the section of the Final Hours:

"At the same time the team quietly reached out to Sony to see if it could share any information on the next PlayStation, another potential target platform. Respawn quickly found out that Sony wasn't ready to talk about its plans for PS4. Instead, Sony offered to help with developing a version of R1 for the hand-held PlayStation Vita platform.
Concerned about Sony's lack of disclosure, programmer Jon Shiring took one of his contacts to dinner and explained that the window of opportunity was about to close. "I can't emphasize this enough; decisions are being made about our game and we really need to know about the next PlayStation," he said to his friend from Sony over dinner.
It didn't work-Sony simply wasn't ready to talk PS4."

It should be noted that up to this point, Titanfall was a PS3/360 title and this was when they were planning to jump it up to next-gen.

Also, regarding the EA getting money from MS, the reason was because people at EA wanted Riccitiello and Gibeau to pull the plug on the project. The only way to keep it alive was for the money to come from outside EA, which Microsoft provided.

"The way Respawn saw it, the developer had never agreed to full exclusivity for Titanfall on Xbox platforms, only an exclusive window of up to 13 months. Zampella maintains that the team only found out that EA had turned an exclusive window deal into permanent exclusivity in the summer of 2013, weeks after the game's spectacular showing at E3. The deal was a complicated one as Respawn wasn't dealing directly with Xbox. Instead, terms were negotiated through EA, which signed a larger, overarching partnership deal with Microsoft for the Xbox One. In order to make the economics work and keep Titanfall alive, EA needed a first-party publisher to invest. Xbox was willing to step up and save the project, which turned out to be a wise bet. Xbox now has one of the biggest games of the year as an exclusive to it's platforms, although it lays no claim to any sequels."
 
He isn't saying that Respawn is. They had burned through their cash and MS stepped up to provide the funding that EA wouldn't.

Respawn should have cut the middle man here and gone second party and allowed MS to publish. I guess it was too late for that though, the deals were made.
 

Anion

Member
Ah yes I remember that.

Sony also used it's own metrics in a meeting with EA last week and showed them what they would have sold on the ps3 and ps4. The money EA took from MS doesn't even begin to cover it. The EA guys went over the math and agreed. EA is in full "We're so fucking sorry, Sony" mode currently.

I honestly would love to see what he says about this.

Also, regarding the EA getting money from MS, the reason was because people at EA wanted Riccitiello and Gibeau to pull the plug on the project. The only way to keep it alive was for the money to come from outside EA, which Microsoft provided.

Oh okay. Thats interesting
 

rjcc

Member
MS was willing to throw around cash, which contradicts what you are trying to even disprove here with your theory. Hence they paid money, aka buying.

so in the alternative, microsoft doesn't "buy" the game (because somehow this is a bad, evil an uncreative thing) and so there is no game.

development stops.

it doesn't happen.

this is better than microsoft putting up the money for the game to happen, except it only funds the game for its own platforms?
 

TomShoe

Banned
Question, was the radio silence by Sony because they didn't want to leak their final specs? If not, was there another reason? I can't read much, I'm on mobile.
 
Respawn should have cut the middle man here and gone second party and allowed MS to publish. I guess it was too late for that though, the deals were made.

They were under contract with EA to build the game. They provided $30M of funding to start up the studio. They struggled to get EA to release Jason West. There is no way they could have possibly gotten out unless EA turned off the faucet.
 

Into

Member
Dang...so much for the moneyhat? Seems that Microsoft played their cards well.


Sadly this wont put an end to the money hatting garbage posts.
Deserves it's own thread id say.


Yeah you go make that thread:

Also, regarding the EA getting money from MS, the reason was because people at EA wanted Riccitiello and Gibeau to pull the plug on the project. The only way to keep it alive was for the money to come from outside EA, which Microsoft provided.




Just to clarify, Microsoft were meeting with Respawn in January 2012 about Durango. To quote the section of the Final Hours:

It should be noted that up to this point, Titanfall was a PS3/360 title and this was when they were planning to jump it up to next-gen.

Also, regarding the EA getting money from MS, the reason was because people at EA wanted Riccitiello and Gibeau to pull the plug on the project. The only way to keep it alive was for the money to come from outside EA, which Microsoft provided.


That is very interesting. But it did not impact any other developer, since almost all multiplatform games came out for both consoles around the same time, and in almost every case the PS4 version ran and performed better.

So it seems like Respawn was so stretched out and thin on manpower that they could not get 4 versions of this game ready. They almost needed to be funded by both of them to get 4 versions even out (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4) and this is excluding the PC. Even if Sony provided them with information, how they could possible get 4 versions of this game out? They had the information on PS3, and no PS3 version exists.

This also fits with how barren the game is on content, and why they needed Blue Point to work on the 360 port. Sony did not provide PS4 information, but PS3 information was available and has been for years. But no version of that exists. Which questions whether PS4 info alone was enough to get this game

So yeah, money was involved, precisely what everyone here expected. And that is not a bad thing either. This is the entertainment business
 

antitrop

Member
EA is a great publisher if they needed a platform holder to step in to finish funding.
If Respawn wanted EA to fund their game, they would have had to give up their independence (if EA was even willing to buy them out in the first place). EA doesn't directly fund the development of their Partners games.
 

Gorillaz

Member
Question, was the radio silence by Sony because they didn't want to leak their final specs? If not, was there another reason? I can't read much, I'm on mobile.

I'm assuming they wanted to go into next gen not leaking as much as possible.So...I guess mission accomplished?


Hold that L Sony.


edit Let's also discuss the people that said this was a straight "buyout" my MS......
 
Wait so they didn't have enough money to develop for anything other then the Xbox one? meaning no development would have taken place for Sony machines because microsoft was funding it?

then i wonder what those dualshock 4's seen in those developer vids were for before the console release in August

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=661801

or how about dem PS3 files.

http://linustechtips.com/main/uploads/monthly_02_2014/post-41665-0-47539800-1392497028_thumb.png

Me thinking someone here is telling porkey pies
 

Into

Member
so in the alternative, microsoft doesn't "buy" the game (because somehow this is a bad, evil an uncreative thing) and so there is no game.

development stops.

it doesn't happen.

this is better than microsoft putting up the money for the game to happen, except it only funds the game for its own platforms?

Sure, and there is nothing wrong with paying/buying/funding a game really, despite what some people here would like you to believe, especially if it turns out to be pretty good, which TF did.

I think MS did help save the game and fund it, because EA really wanted to bet on Xbox "720", as that goes hand in hand what Pachter said.


Do not reply to any of my posts unless you are willing to read the whole thread/my posts. Thank you in advance.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
Wait so they didn't have enough money to develop for anything other then the Xbox one? meaning no development would have taken place for Sony machines because microsoft was funding it?

then i wonder what those dualshock 4's seen in those developer vids were for before the console release in August

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=661801

or how about dem PS3 files.

http://linustechtips.com/main/uploads/monthly_02_2014/post-41665-0-47539800-1392497028_thumb.png

Me thinking someone here is telling porkey pies

Looks like exclusive window was 13 months and that explains the PS4 controllers. Also, the deal for complete exclusivity of the life for the title between EA and MS was done AFTER the E3 reveal, so that could sorta explain what Pete was saying.
 

antitrop

Member
I thought this little bit from Keighley's Introduction was cute:

"A lot of people -- including my good friend Joel McHale -- have joked that I seem overly excited about Titanfall, but the game has brought back the fun I had playing first person shooters in the 1990s".
 

DieH@rd

Banned
That's actually pretty interesting. Sounds like a Sony being Sony and not actually being aware of anything.

Which pretty much described them during a large amount of last gen.

Well you cant look at this completely that way. Early pitches can be very different from the look of the finalized project. Many games change in scope and form over their production, which is exactly what happened with Titanfall.

Recent example of this is Remember Me. Dontnod pitched a early draft of the game to Sony, who refused them. Then they redesigned the game a lot, found Capcom, and managed to get the funding to release pretty nice action/adventure.
 

solarus

Member
Yeah you go make that thread:









That is very interesting. But it did not impact any other developer, since almost all multiplatform games came out for both consoles around the same time, and in almost every case the PS4 version ran and performed better.

So it seems like Respawn was so stretched out and thin on manpower that they could not get 4 versions of this game ready. They almost needed to be funded by both of them to get 4 versions even out (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4) and this is excluding the PC. Even if Sony provided them with information, how they could possible get 4 versions of this game out? They had the information on PS3, and no PS3 version exists.

This also fits with how barren the game is on content, and why they needed Blue Point to work on the 360 port.

So yeah, money way was involved, precisely what everyone here expected. And that is not a bad thing either. This is the entertainment business
Yes money was involved but it isn't the type of money hatting people are thinking of when they make those posts, painting microsoft as evil and stealing the game away when in reality, without their funding, this game wouldn't exist.
 
Wait so they didn't have enough money to develop for anything other then the Xbox one? meaning no development would have taken place for Sony machines because microsoft was funding it?

then i wonder what those dualshock 4's seen in those developer vids were for before the console release in August

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=661801

or how about dem PS3 files.

http://linustechtips.com/main/uploads/monthly_02_2014/post-41665-0-47539800-1392497028_thumb.png

Me thinking someone here is telling porkey pies

You should read the article as it makes much more sense. I hate it when people just jump in and try and comment without reading the piece.

They were originally targeting the PS3/360 which is why they were bouncing around on engines. They even used the Ratchet and Clank engine for years. They didn't use Unreal because they couldn't get 60fps on the PS3/360 with the engine. Post Portal 2 they restarted with Source.

Also that controller looks like a PS3.
 

TyrantII

Member
Just to clarify, Microsoft were meeting with Respawn in January 2012 about Durango. To quote the section of the Final Hours:



It should be noted that up to this point, Titanfall was a PS3/360 title and this was when they were planning to jump it up to next-gen.

Also, regarding the EA getting money from MS, the reason was because people at EA wanted Riccitiello and Gibeau to pull the plug on the project. The only way to keep it alive was for the money to come from outside EA, which Microsoft provided.

Seeing how well the Feb 2013 reveal and E3 2013 went for Sony; I'm guessing they're pretty happy with their decision in hindsight. Titanfall would be nice for gamers and would have probably given them another boost, but I don't think it would have made the current dynamics exponentially better.

I'm also wondering now if this is why MS was seeming caught flatfooted. I always felt last winter/spring 2013 that MS was thinking Sony was launching later and was forced to move at a quicker pace when caught off guard. Sony not biting here, and not talking about their system much throughout 2012 might have influenced that perception that they weren't ready to go.
 
I thought this little bit from Keighley's Introduction was cute:

"A lot of people -- including my good friend Joel McHale -- have joked that I seem overly excited about Titanfall, but the game has brought back the fun I had playing first person shooters in the 1990s".

LOL @ him calling him his good friend, Joel's hosting was a gift to gaming
 
It reads to me like Respawn were so stretched for cash that the platform holders would have had to fund the game. When they tried to 'talk' to Sony I'm betting it was about money to finish the game. Sony said no but MS said yes and here we are. It's interesting stuff for sure.
 
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