They are just proving they don't understand what makes games sell at all then. Anybody who had experienced the early access (they had like 3 years to do so) knew this was a special game. Anybody who tried the DOS series also knew and are probably here because of those anyway. The success of this game was obvious way before it came out. This is just another proof that the people running the business have no idea of what they are doing. They just cannot judge of stuff before they have numbers and it's why we should get rid of these leeches. So again, the only surprised people are the idiots that don't understand shit about modern games.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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They're not thinking about these things as games, generally, but specifically how they'll be perceived by the Xbox audience. It looks to me like they discounted BG3, at least in part, because it couldn't split-screen on series S. They're thinking about games you play on the couch, in a group, maybe during a party - not games you play solo for hours or days on end.
That may end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. BG3 isn't out on Xbox (officially) yet. We don't know what their advertising will look like, and it well turn out that everyone who wants to play it will already have gone the PC route.
They’re not thinking about these things as games, generally, but specifically how they’ll be perceived by the Xbox audience. It looks to me like they discounted BG3, at least in part, because it couldn’t split-screen on series S. They’re thinking about games you play on the couch, in a group, maybe during a party - not games you play solo for hours or days on end.
And that's what I mean. They are wrong on all counts because they don't understand what makes a game successful. They only consider the monetary success of their own. They also think "xbox" audience is somehow different and want something else than other platform users. Sure couch is cool but let's not pretend that this is really how people are gaming nowadays. People like all games when they are well made, complete from the start and just fucking work. Throw a bit of good writing in there and you have a GOTY contender. BG3 is just far above that only and that's why I'm saying if anyone an MS looked into BG3 and Larian and chose not to sign, they are incompetent idiots.
because it couldn’t split-screen on series S
Makes me wonder if they actually took the backlash on Halo Infinite to heart.
Even if they did, it's after ignoring the same backlash about Halo 5.
They didn't ignore they backlash, they promised to "always" have split screen going forward.. Only to not even make that promise last a single game. Infinite didn't even have network coop at launch. At this point no one should trust anything 343 says. Their track record speaks for itself.
Fucking what? Why are they so concerned with couch co-op?
They are concerned with features missing compared to other platforms.
These documents are from 2019 dude, so it's not like could have tried the early access.
I know, but DOS existed. Larian was already well known for their sprawling rpgs. BG3 isn't an outlier here. Point is, it was foreseeable if you actually looked and knew what to look for.
“This is really a disaster situation for us given all we’ve invested in content across studios at our GP [Game Pass] content fund,” ... “We set a very high bar in 2021 on quality and pacing of content which was awesome to see,” he continued. “But to come off of that year with no big exclusives launching in 2022 is a portfolio planning miss that we can’t afford. If we need to delay launches (understanding there is a financial impact of that) to create more regular beats for us we need to do that. We have to all understand that the situation we are in now is a failure of our planning and production execution.”
My corporate speak is a little rusty, but if I understand the gravity of this statement correctly, is Spencer implying that GamePass is a house of cards that is only supported by the regular timing of new exclusive releases? It seems like that's a very risky business model then, and the consequences of GamePass folding would be consumers lose access to a truly massive number of games. This statement would basically make me lose a ton of confidence in the service, and I'd be looking to take my library (and money) elsewhere.
The way I would perceive it is that mega-hjts in games are very profitable. A hit sells like 200k-300k at launch. But from time to time, a game hits the cultural zeitgeist and can 3x that. Those are you're BOTWs and such.
Platforms bank on having those because they are the big bang for their buck. In Microsoft case, an exclusive like that would move a lot of gp subs. I think that is the idea behind making starfield elusive, and then getting rid of the reduced price trial.
So when people are busy playing BG3, and then ign gives starfield a 7, and people decide its not worth dropping everything to go and play, it can really mess up a company's tire venue projections. Poor babies.
Guess the execs will have to cut back on the avocado toast.
That's just how most streaming services work. You need the constant easy to make junk to keep people in, but it's the big hits that get people to subscribe for the first time or come back.
take my library
You won't be taking anything anywhere if it goes tits up. It's their library.
It’s no secret that they are “hemorrhaging” money into gamepass just to be competitive. Would have a tough time finding the article, but there was something about them doing it JUST to keep some games out of the hands of other companies.
How does this guy still have a job? Xbox has just been failure after failure.
Honestly. This is a fine look for Microsoft. This is inside baseball executives trying to make sure the lineup on their game pass platform is appealing to people throughout the year. They're going to make bad predictions, but they're not doing it out of spite or evilness, they're just trying to maintain engagement in their game pass.
You would see similar discussions behind any other subscription platform. Did they underestimate it sure, but their job is to predict, so they're going to have to make good estimates and bad estimates.
When you constantly miss though…
Where’s the good estimates? That’s the concerns people are having.
The issue isn't THAT you missed. It's WHY you missed.
That's kinda like saying an engineer builds good bridges and bad bridges.
Ok, not that, but it's still their job to get almost all predictions at least CLOSE to right, so this is the definition of failing to do their job.
Maybe, but most prediction based jobs have a middling success rate.Missing this big is always significant, but not catastrophic in this case.
When you have a history of failing and than you go and call Crosby second rate. It is actually quite catastrophic, it proves (again and again) that they have zero idea of the market they are in.
I guarantee that at least some of them would have been fired if they made the same magnitude mistake in the opposite direction, though, and unless they have specific safeguards to avoid overestimate that aren't in place for underestimates, they WILL.
I don't think they did a bad job at all. They wanted to have a lineup to keep their users engaged. If they underestimate one, even significantly, they still succeed because they insured they had a lineup to keep their users engaged. They're hedging their bets.
Not to mention lorian, themselves underestimated the success, because overestimating causes more problems. And lorien and Microsoft negotiator rate for game pass.
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Physics aren't quite as fickle as people's tastes.
Even looking past the “unprecedented “ success of BG3, they were ridiculously underestimating it…
Goes to show how out of touch they are with what people want. They’re so focused on their known market that they completely ignore everyone else.
You do have to look at it in some context tho.
As seen in many of the documentation, these documents were from 2020 and even earlier.
At that point, BG was set to be a decent game, but still being done by a small studio and far from finished. For a normal company, the development and production time for the game was stretched so long it was doubtful that it would see completion and if it did, it would probably be rushed.
Instead Larian got enough backing to finish it.
Besides, traditionally, that style of RPG is a niche market that does have a rather well defined target audience, but not an especially WIDE audience.
The fact it broke out of its niche and got such wide appeal is in fact not something you would've guessed.
But even with the needed context, the wording they used was rather harsh, to say the least.
And all of this is because Microsoft execs, or almost any exec, cannot even judge the market they are in properly. They only understand once the money starts coming in, after the selling data is compiled, and then claim it was impossible to predict. They have 0 foresight and imagination. They just cannot fathom a new game can be successful if someone involved hasn't already succeeded to the same level. They don't understand progress and cannot see signs of a good product if you don't tell them how much it sold.
Look at the product, not just the previous financial success. Look at the following (YES kickstarter success IS A GREAT SIGN IT WILL SELL). Look at the actual fucking game they are making since you had three years to check it out before. But they don't because they don't get it, they don't understand their own market. They, like always, based their entire opinion on past financial success and some arbitrary "niche market" they invented anyway. The market is much, MUCH wider that this. Every single gamer in the world plays a wide variety of genres, that is not what makes a game succeed of fail. The quality of them is.
Nobody who looked into BG3 before had doubts about this game's quality. Hell a lot of us are not here because of DnD but because Larian already made extraordinary games in that genre.
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Archive.ph version in case you don't want to accept all cookies or send a carrier pigeon to headquarters to be exempt in the future.
This article and a lot of people reading it seem to have interpreted second run as second rate. This is estimating they'll need to offer $5m to get Baldurs Gate 3 on game pass after it leaves PC/Stadia exclusivity.
It looks like the list was created based on name recognition.
Xbox dubbed Larian’s hit a ‘second-run Stadia PC RPG’ before its release
Man, ~~journalists~~ blog authors are really milking this whole "people in the industry feel threatened by BG3 and have commented publcily" thing just a tad dry now. At least the Twitter comments from devs on their personal accounts on its release were noteworthy in their timing, before the reflection of public perception had hit for many people, but this is just non-news dug up after the fact.
Ubisoft’s Just Dance
Will it be assassins dancing? If so, I'll consider it.
Shimmy shimmy, coco pop, shimmy shimmy, STAB!
As much as I hate to say if, trying to low ball Larian is probably a good business decision. They are studio with niche appeal (out at least they were, before bg3 released) and I have no trouble believing MS would have the upper hand in negotiations.
Making an agreement to release a game on game pass basically means betting against the developers on their own success. The game might be huge. It might be a flop. Whatever happens, the money from MS it’s going in the back.
I don’t think they were lowballing; I think they genuinely complete underestimated Baldur’s Gate 3. Their internal documents comparing games coming out classified it as a “second-run Stasis PC RPG.”
I can’t really parse the “second run”. Was it supposed to be Stadia exclusive for a while and is the list never updated? Do they mean the early access release?
Either way, Microsoft never really “got” gaming in any meaningful sense. That’s why buying Nintendo and/or valve would have made sense, those two really understand their respective markets.
I believe Second run in this context refers to getting the title on game pass after it leaves Stadia exclusivity. This document is pretty old, probably originally written while Stadia was still around.
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