This is our new featured section, which is updated every Sunday
This week's focus: "Hades 2" raid release, who is not a good thing?
The biggest news in the indie game world this week is the release of "Hades 2". After the sudden launch of the EA version in the early morning of May 7th, "Hades 2" successfully set off a wave in the player circle and the industry, according to SteamDB statistics, the online peak of this new sequel reached 103,567, almost three times that of the previous game.
In the past few days, almost all the game groups around me have talked about the experience of playing "Hates 2", although the amount of content and gameplay depth of the EA version is not enough, but the overall discussion has not lost the first and second line of masterpieces.
Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: Rogue even announced that it had its own game skipped, citing the fact that everyone in the developer Evil Empir team was addicted to Hates 2.
Of course, this announcement wants to convey that even if the development progress of Prince of Persia: Rogue is fine, they don't want to force the same type of topic and EA blockbuster, and would rather disrupt the original plan and avoid it.
Compared with Evil Empir's helpless self-deprecation, on the Internet, some people directly pointed the finger at the release method of "Hades 2". Richie, who is well-known in the indie game circle, tweeted that the raid release of a game with a high profile like "Hedis 2" is unfair to other independent teams with small scale and small budgets, and the marketing plans of these games will be hit.
To explain simply, the point of his dissatisfaction is that small and medium-sized works were originally intended to avoid the release time of large traffic, but now "Hedis 2" does not talk about martial arts, and it will be launched directly without saying it in advance, stealing most of the traffic on the platform in one fell swoop, and how desperate it should be for an independent game that is forced to hit the schedule.
In fact, the X tweet itself did not have many retweets and comments, but after it was moved to domestic social platforms, it caused a fierce confrontation of positive and negative views.
Some people think that "if you practice more", other games have no obligation to take care of you, and there will always be someone to play the game when it is done, not to mention that "Hedis 2" has said before that it will be released "as soon as possible"; There are also people who agree with Richie's statement that if more big games in the future choose not to preview, lightning releases, or even such operations are targeted (extreme example, if on the day "Pinocchio's Lies" was launched, FS suddenly launched the DLC of the Old Man's Ring... ), which obviously constitutes bullying of influence.
In fact, if you take out the views of both sides and analyze them alone, there is nothing wrong with it. As far as the lightning release is concerned, last year's "Perfect Sound Wave" was released at the same time as the debut of the press conference, and it achieved quite good results, and even many players commented that the game release should not hide the appetite, repeatedly send trailers for teasers, and it is better to raid the release when the theme is suitable.
And in the week when "Hades 2" was launched, there were also independent games with considerable results, and they got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of sales in a short period of time, and "gold will always be found" seems to make sense.
And avoiding the popular schedule, in fact, has long been a tacit release logic in the game circle. For example, miHoYo's new game has set an open beta time, and other mobile games will most likely be avoided. Sony, Microsoft and other major manufacturers will also avoid suspicion of each other when setting a year's key game schedule, and last year's "Baldur's Gate 3" also took the initiative to reverse the ticket jump to avoid colliding with "Starry Night".
The same is true for indie games, after learning in advance of Steam's monthly plan to launch the works, the release often has to choose to cut the stitches, set the release date in a time period without too much "interference", and get 1-2 weeks of full exposure.
Therefore, as for "whether "Hades 2" should be released in a raid", the answer depends more on the different perspectives of substitution. If you are an ordinary gamer and want the market to compete freely, then you don't need to care about the small indie developers who are accidentally bombarded into cannon fodder; If you have a certain amount of empathy for development and distribution, and know that they have been preparing for many years, but they have not received the due return because of the "unjustified disaster", you will be a little sad.
Behind this, the reality is that it is getting harder and harder to release games on Steam.
According to SteamDB, throughout 2023, the number of games released on Steam reached 14,533, with an average of nearly 40 new games being launched every day, a number that is more than 30 times that of a decade ago and continues to hit record highs. This also means that many new games on Steam have no chance to be seen and played by players, and even fewer games that can achieve commercial success.
In recent years, European and American manufacturers have returned, and many consoles and free platform exclusive games have reappeared on Steam, to be honest, their emergence will indeed squeeze the sales ecology originally composed of small and medium-sized developers to a certain extent.
Therefore, for Steam game distribution, under the current pattern, it is difficult to find space to insert needles, and even after a month, each schedule is occupied by highly competitive peers.
This forced game publishing to become "professional". Today's space is limited, so I'll give you a small example. Steam homepage has "new and hot products", "hot products", "hot coming soon" and other 4 lists, each will display 10 games in real time, this kind of list belongs to the Steam platform "free" to give promotion resources, if the new game can appear in the new product list, the exposure effect will go directly to a higher level.
In fact, some people have been studying how to make their games easier to get on the list very early, such as how to plan the release time, how to arrange the rhythm of EA and turning positive, and you can get the resources of "hot and coming soon" and new product lists at the same time.
In recent years, the competition on the list has become more intense, and you will find that some garbage page tours take turns to dominate the list, which is brushed through running water and comments, and individual independent games will also use some marketing operations to make themselves appear on the list at the beginning of their launch. This situation is already very similar to the game between the iOS free list and the best-selling list.
A game on the list right now
Since there are rules, there are people who take advantage of them, and this part of the undercurrent is often out of the player's field of vision. As the competition in the Steam publishing and indie game industry becomes more and more close to the hand-to-hand combat in the commercial world, the controversy over raid sales will erupt sooner or later.
Steam is still the game platform with fewer restrictions, lighter review, globalization, many types of players, and can create business miracles with small and large games, but the era of simply wanting to become a hit on the platform without publishing support and wishlist publicity and accumulation with good game quality is long gone.
NEWS
Industry Watch
2024/5/6-5/12
Large companies
Microsoft executives responded to the closure of four studios. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the closure of its three studios, Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog, and the merger of Roundhouse into Zenimax. This caused a huge controversy, and some players protested by giving praise to Perfect Sound and going to Fallout 76 to bomb Phil Spencer's camp with a nuclear bomb.
On Thursday, Sarah Bond, Xbox's vice president, responded to the decision on a Bloomberg show. "Despite the many high-quality game releases in 2023, the overall industry has had a mediocre sales performance," she said. As we see this trend, we feel a deep responsibility to ensure that the games we make, the devices we build, and the services we provide work at all times. To a certain extent, the blame is attributed to the fact that when the market is in a recession, Microsoft pays more attention to ensuring service quality and long-term healthy development.
But this statement was not recognized by players, but attracted ridicule because of the inconsistent statements of Microsoft's top management. According to foreign media reports, the day after the closure of the Tango studio, Matt Booty, head of Xbox games, said at the all-hands meeting: "We need some small games that can bring us prestige and awards." Tango 'Perfect Sound' fits that description.
Capcom's financial report has increased for 11 consecutive years. On the 9th, Capcom announced its annual financial results for the 2023-24 fiscal year, with net sales of 152.41 billion yen, up 21% year-on-year, and operating income of 57.081 billion yen, up 12.3% year-on-year. This is the 11th consecutive year that Capcom's operating income has grown, and it has hit a new profit for seven consecutive years, with a total of 45.89 million copies sold this fiscal year, which is also the highest in the company's history - among them, "Resident Evil 4: Remake" sold 3.3 million new copies, with cumulative sales of more than 7 million, "Street Fighter 6", which was released in June last year, reached 3.3 million copies, and "Dragon Dogma 2", which was released in March this year, sold 2.62 million copies.
Steam banned in Vietnam. This week, a large number of Vietnamese players responded that they could not use the Steam platform normally, and all network service providers in Vietnam have blocked access to the apps and websites of V Society. According to foreign media reports, this move may be related to the entanglement of interests of local developers in Vietnam. Some developers in Vietnam have complained that they need a version number to publish games in Vietnam, but Steam can bypass the Vietnamese official license to release games, which is unfair competition to the Vietnamese game industry, and there will be sensitive games with violent elements and adult content on Steam.
New trends
The Japanese government, together with a number of publishers, has invested in AI comic translation. The project was initiated by 10 companies affiliated with the Japan Publishing House Shokukan and the Japan Industrial Innovation Investment Organization, with a total investment of 2.92 billion yen. It is expected that the translation speed will be increased by up to 10 times by using the AI technology of Orange, a start-up company in Minato-ku, Tokyo, and then handing it over to the translator for editing. The company is currently expected to launch a manga e-book in the U.S. this summer, and hopes to increase the export of Japanese manga to 50,000 units through AI translation in the next five years.
Disney and Warner-owned streamers will be bundled. Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have announced that they will offer Disney+, Hulu, and Max streaming service bundles in the U.S. starting this summer. In the announcement, the companies described the bundle as "the best value embodiment in the entertainment space" that can "provide consumers with the richest collection of entertainment content" and provide "the most cost-effective streaming service".
other
Genshin Impact 5.0 will bring upgrades to the game's graphics and features. Genshin Impact officially announced that in the future version 5.0, the development team will upgrade the overall graphics and functions of the game. iOS, Android, PC, and PlayStation will all be adjusted. The official said that on the premise of striving for version 5.0 without changing the minimum equipment requirements, the development team will use a stricter performance optimization strategy to ensure that the game can run stably after the version is updated.
The new mobile game of the "Idol Master" series will be launched on May 16. The mobile game "School Idol Master" (学園アイドルマスター), jointly developed and operated by QualiArts and Bandai Namco, is confirmed to be available on May 16. This is a new work in the "Idol Master" series.,The stage is the idol cultivation school"First Star School",Players will be the producer.,Improve the abilities of idol candidates through courses and other activities in the school park.。 At the same time, it was officially announced that the manga version of the work will be serialized in "Weekly Shonen Champion" in 2024.
The Warcraft national server will release a teaser of the return trailer. The title is a bit awkward, but it's certainly not a typo. The official Weibo of "World of Warcraft" recently updated the dynamics, announcing that the "Blood Roar Recast" message campaign will end on June 6. After that, more specific information about the return of the World of Warcraft national server will be revealed - so, this is indeed a teaser of a teaser.
The 2024 World Gaming Hall of Fame inductees have been announced. They are Resident Evil, SimCity, Genesis, Asteroids, and Myst. Introducing a few titles that you may not be familiar with, such as Myst, released by Broderbund in 1993, was the best-selling computer game of the 90s, selling more than 6 million copies. Released in 1981, Genesis is considered the inspiration for many RPGs in later generations, with its blend of role-playing game mechanics, sprawling fictional worlds, and fantasy and sci-fi themes; SimCity, on the other hand, was released in 1989 and is not only the predecessor of the Sims series, but is also believed to have influenced the development of many city-building sims and even real-time strategy games, such as Age of Empires.
Finally, there are some new games to keep an eye on this week
"Female Ghost Bridge II: Soul Liberation Road", developed by Daewoo Information and published by Gamera Games, will be released on May 9.
The "Female Ghost Bridge" series is a domestic horror game with a high popularity of live broadcasts, based on modern real campus legends, rather than the common "Chinese-style horror" now. "Soul Release" is the second game in the series, the story takes place in Wenhua University, which is famous for its top ten campus horror legends, players will control four characters and experience the horror of the "ghost building" from different perspectives, accompanied by fear, anxiety and funny humor.
The official plot introduction is like this: In Wenhua University, which is famous for its top ten campus horror legends, the Great Ninjakan, which has many ghost legends, is about to hold a "Horror Carnival" joint welcome event. A group of film club students adapted the bizarre murder of the past on campus, intending to shoot a supernatural ghost movie here, but began to encounter strange things on the way to shoot late at night......
"Kitten Big City", developed and published by Double Dagger Studio, will be released on May 9.
Another fun cat simulation game. But unlike the popular "Lost" the year before, "Kitty Big City" is a purely lighthearted, funny, and humorous game, closer to trick-or-treating games such as "Goat Sim" and "Untitled Big Goose Simulator".
Kitty Big City is set in a modern urban open world, with a large map full of elements such as exploration, collection, puzzle solving, and all kinds of pranks. Although the main line of the game is "Lost Cats Come Home", players don't have to worry about the story line in the actual process, and they don't have to worry about time limits or missing the plot. Playing as a cute cat, not having to follow the rules of humans, and roaming freely in the city is the main tone of this game.
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*PS: As you can see, we have launched a new column, which is committed to selecting the most interesting pan-game information of the past week for readers in a way that is not lengthy and deep.
At present, the column has been updated to the eighty-fifth issue, and you can quickly jump back to see the content of the previous issue through the "Weekly Selection" in the menu bar of the official account!