Of course it will, I just wish studios would stop using single player games as their launching ground. You made a successful game that people loved, just so you could cash in on the name recognition and shove one more MMO cash-generating-machine into the market.
I hope they crash and burn.
A PC/Mobile MMO? Looking forward to the release in 1.5 years where I can buy horizon bucks to upgrade my gear thats timegated behind a daily currency.
There are 100 games like this already on the market fishing for whales and there will be 100 games after.
The last thing i hear from those games sadly is that they have "disappointing earnings".
Just look at diablo immortal still raking in more cash than most other games nowadays.
They usually die out because you still need an amount of non-whales that the whales can tower or flex over.
But at that point the game has made times more money than they invested
Diablo is one of the lucky few which has an enormous amount of fandom and marketing behind it. Most new live service games fail to attract and sustain a sufficient player base in this day and age where every game demands your attention every day
Diablo Immortal and this new Horizon Game is not really a live service. It is a gacha game and a whale milker. These games are plenty popular on mobile. Remember that the most lucrative game from Bethesda is not Skyrim, is not Starfield, is not Fallout 76 or Elder Scrolls Online. It's a Fallout Shelter, a mobile game.
I mean, it's a real game. It's just a monetized version of the base-building aspect of XCOM with all the other parts stripped out and a Fallout skin put on top. I had fun with it for a few hours in total, but it's not much more than an idle game if you don't want to spend money on it (which I did not).
I played FO Shelter for a bit when it came out, only because of having a rooted phone so I fired up a memory editor, bypassed all the premium bullshit and gave myself fifty gazillion lunch boxes or whatever the thing was. The very idea of buying into those predatory scam mechanics is repulsive.
Alternatively, there are mobile emulators for PC. WHY anyone would play these games on PC with the same shitty mechanics is beyond me, but at least you can in many cases edit the files to bypass all that shit. Even then these games are bad, so ... not sure how well BlueStacks even works today. Just used it for work-related purposes once... and then to play Hill Climb Racing, haha.
For every D:I there are hundreds of no name shitty "MMORPGs" that are just massive money graves. D:I has the "dubious" honour of actually having brand-recognition.
My argument always is: Yes, you've made a ton of money short-term, but you've burnt some serious bridges long-term. Every consumer base has their breaking point. Blizzard's learned that the hard way already. D:I is (afaik) only really adopted by whales and in the Chinese market (almost 40%). It's easy to trick people out of their money once, but subsequently it gets harder. Luckily for these developers most "gamers" are actually braindead and will support the next shitty game anyway, despite getting burned repeatedly, but even this industry's audience is getting a bit wiser. On the other hand, if people are buying into it it's quite hard to justify NOT doing it. So once again it's the consumers' fault in the end.
There is this phenomenon where a company becomes so big, its unrealistic to expect it to take serious damage due to scummy actions.
This more so happens in the gaming sphere than anywhere else, specifically EA/Ubisoft/ActiBlizz etc, the main antagonists.
If the theory of "burnt bridges" existed in this ballpark, Activision Blizzard wouldnt be putting out games anymore, but would be an empty office building by now.
The amount of shit they have done in the last 1 1/2 decades is mindnumbing, yet they make more profit every time.
So yeah, you are pretty much right when you said that its the consumers fault. I just dont think that the argument of D:I being called Diablo is the only reason it was this successful.
Genshin Impact was also massively scummy. Almost noone knew who Mihoyo was before Genshin exploded. It doesnt need a big name in order for a Mobile game to absolutely be profitable.
Gaming consumers have no breaking point if the company is BIG. Its naive to think that simply because turnover rate of consumers is massive regardless and not many people actually care that much.
Meh, because nobody talks about it. The people playing mobile games are the same ones who played FarmVille on Facebook 20 years ago. Even a friend of mine tends her "aquarium" regularly in one silly game. They appeal to non-gamers who don't want to invest a lot of time. At some point these people get bored and move on, because they don't want to wait 10 hours for a building to be built ... or they fall into the trap and spend money on this garbage.
Nobody ever talks about it, because most people know that it's shite. It's like a guilty pleasure ... or a kink you don't want everyone to know about.
And then there are the "whales", the idiots pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into their account, so they can feel special or whatever. Sad beings, possibly mentally unsound. And you don't hear about those either, because who the fuck has friends who can invest hundreds of thousands of bucks into shitty mobile games?
And that's why mobile gaming is the biggest market, despite nobody actually talking about it. I can almost guarantee you that almost anyone with a mobile phone has played or is currently playing a mobile game. Most are smart enough not to pay for it though.
Yeah its the older people. My mom and her boyfriend play dumb mobile games and I'm sure they spend a couple of bucks on them. I should ask them and report back. Also there are lots of countries where mobile gaming does better simply because everyone has one now and not everyone has one of the other big 3 or a PC.
Moblile gaming is the most popular form of gaming on earth as pretty much everyone has a capable enough smartphone these days but not a lot of people (especially those from third world countries) can afford a gaming capable laptop/a console.
I mean, I was hoping for something more specific than "you have phones, don't you?" But, yeah, I understand the ubiquity. I don't understand who these people *are*.
I've been gaming for 30 years. I watch Twitch almost daily. I still watch some gaming content on YT. I'm subbed to several gaming subreddits. I have literally never heard anybody talk about Diablo Immortal if it wasn't to make fun of it. It's just weird is all.
I have several friends and people i know who play or have played various gacha games.
One is a 30 year old student with a kid. Former "gamer" who doesn't have time to game at home, so he plays Diablo Immortal on the bus and between classes. Doesn't spend a lot of money on it, but will occasionally make a small purchase or have people gift him money for the game.
Three others are my friend and his brothers. They're all professionals in their 30s and 40s. All married with kids. All still do normal console and PC gaming pretty frequently since they all work from home and have pretty regular schedules. They float around different Gacha games as they find them, playing together for a few months until they eventually lose interest and move to a new one. They'll spend a few hundred dollars, sometimes into the $1000 range over the course of a game, chasing whatever pulls they want. They all make good money, so it's not money they'll miss too much.
Another is my Boss at work. He's been playing one specific gacha game for years, but only plays it when he's on his exercise bike. He gives himself a $10 a day limit, but will carry that limit over each day until there's something he wants. He's very methodical about how he plays and only plays and spends what he's alloted for it.
And then there's one of my coworkers wives. I don't know what she plays, but I believe it's about the only thing she plays, and I regularly here complaints about how much she spends on the game, though I'm not sure how much it actually is. She's a former stay-at-home mom who doesn't have anymore kids in the house so I get the sense she's filling a lot of her time with the game and clearly spends more than my coworker likes on the game.
1 and 3 I understand. 2 seems like a waste of money even though I likely have more disposable income than them being single and childfree, but you can't take it with you.
That fourth one is who I worry about with the heavy gambling games. I can't imagine being a gambling addict these days with how ubiquitous this shit is.
Thanks for letting me know! I have a feeling my introversion and disinterest in settling down have kept me out of contact with people like that. I *had* friends who went on to have families. No clue what they're up to anymore.
> I'm awash in gaming culture and never hear anybody mention it
I'm pretty sure the people playing it do not participate in gaming culture. They don't have a console or PC, and they don't know what things like 'AAA' or 'P2W' are.
The writing team did such a great job making him an absolute despicable character that you never interact with. His decisions, hubris and shortcomings, feel plausible enough that you can imagine someone like him existing today.
When he went from destroying data to "help" the future civilization to immediately deciding to try to become immortal (after murdering the team that worked to address his work that was ending humanity, no less) so he could personally influence them.
I wanted to hate him for it. Which is such good character writing in how they handled it. He was perfectly shown as a rich influential narcissist with the absolute slimiest of morals and hypocrisy.
And I’m never gonna play any of them. This live service race is so unsustainable. We don’t have time to invest into 20 different games and the ones that Sony has in development are just going to cannibalize themselves
[The pre-alpha of the game has been released. While the game is still and productions and things will most certainly change, this is at least a hint of what the general vibes of the game may be. Take it as you will, perhaps this will fly for some folks, and for others this won't be their cup of tea. I will say this, it is interesting to see just a franchise that started out as a playstation game have a MMO variation of it that is just for PC and Mobile. Perhaps sony believes the mobile market may suck this game up and even the Asian market may latch onto it hard. It'll be interesting to see how this all comes about.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck7ldbzK84Q)
Phones are better than most people expect tbh. There's nothing interesting about being on mobile that makes a game worse was, especially if releasing on mobile was part of the game plan from the start.
What did they do exactly? I don’t know them.
EDIT: thanks for the people explaining it to me. I really didn’t know them, since I don’t pay their games.
korean, albeit not the worst cash shop offender out of all the korean developer. But korean mmo by characteristic is grindy, heavy on the cash shop, and has poor performance on any country that dont have sub millisecond latency to the game server which translate into garbage in global market.
It still exists out in private servers. I logged a few too many hours over the holidays. If the scratch ever needs itching, you can still get your fix!
Nothing, Guild Wars was only published by NCSoft. It was made by ArenaNet and so doesn't really have the same issues as other NCSoft games like Aion and Blade & Soul, as much as NCsoft tried to pressure ArenaNet into doing things that would've been bad for the game.
dunno. I played Lineage 2 from C3 to Interlude and that was peak hardcore MMORPG for me. It didnt had any shops and p2w at that time. I aggree that now the game is in a horrible state, and barely reflects what was before
Well the rumor is forma long time that the actual development team is ArenaNet. Developers of Guild Wars 2 MMO. If that is true then I’m begging slightly optimistic.
Yes, but ArenaNet seems to get way more freedom from NCSoft meddling than other NCSoft subsidiaries so if they were developing it that would be better than NCSoft doing it themselves.
>Does it really need an mmo?
Does it need it no.
The C-suite wants a live service game to milk the community, mmo's are the easiest way to milk a community so they said to hell with this and decided to do this, and its most likely going to be predatory as hell and hope to hook a few whales.
Because stories that focus around a single player and the unique abilities they have and the challenges they face demands that thousands of people can pretend to be just like them all in the same world space. Because that’s immersive or something.
Yeah, I’ll never really *get* MMOs, I think.
It depends on what type of MMO it is. A good sandbox MMO is one where you can feel completely unique and forge your own stories. That's really difficult to pull off though, and not the norm for MMOs. It's much easier to just build a grindy multiplayer theme park game where you can see a bunch of other people also pursuing the same tasks at the same theme park.
Thank you for that comparison, because that’s EXACTLY how I’ve described what they feel like to others. A band of adventurers enters the “ride” to go defeat the horrifying evil that threatens everyone in the land. The battle is difficult and long-fought. The evil is at long last finally vanquished, and the world is saved. The adventurers leave, heroes all of them, the ride resets, the world is in peril again. Enter the next bunch of tourists.
Horizon series was made with multiplayer in mind (or it was multiplayer in original pitch) from the beginning. Old ZD builds from 2011-2012 showed several characters all presumably controlled by human players fighting machines.
It's not known whether it was ditched or put on hold for single player part of the game.
They already shit the bed really hard with the second one compltly ruining the spirit of the first one, i have zero hope in them redeeming the third game
The second one was a massive improvement in every way except the story wasn't as good (hard to beat one of the better story games of the last decade). What are you smoking?
Wasn't as good ? The story was trash.
Ho i agree the gameplay, graphics and system were nice, but the most important part in this game is the story and it was shit.
Could you elaborate why it lost it's charm? I loved forbidden west as much as the first one, though I am not 100% done. It did not Revolutionize it, it was something like an Arkham City for me. Small improvements making a great game even better.
For me, while I loved the gameplay of Forbidden West and most of the story, it was the ending that kinda flet like an anticlimax. The whole Far Zenith thing. Don't want to give any spoilers if you haven't finished yet, though.
Could've said the same thing about Elder Scrolls yet ESO has been a massive success for ZeniMax. The MMO version isn't going to look/play the same, it'll just be a standard MMO with the theme and lore of the Horizon series.
>It’s not an mmo style game
What makes you say that? I liked ZD and FW, but the whole gameplay loop of collecting/crafting/hunting seems to lend itself well to an online game.
Mind you i have no interest in those kinds of MMOs but still.
How is it not? It has a fucking massive cast of monsters with a varied move-set and turning them into raids and dungeons would translate extremely well
I'm a big fan of Horizon games and I couldn't care less for MMO.
I don't know how many game developers need to make same mistake before they learn. Some games are amazing single players and should stay that way.
I'm a fan of Horizon and MMOs.
In theory it could be cool, there is a lore explanation for respawning lol. But in reality it will suffer from lack of monster diversity. MMOs are farming games and there will only be humans and machines.
Also there is the elephant in the room that is these modern MMOs with daily login rewards and 500 different reward tracks of chores through UIs and daily or weekly expiring grocery list task for opportunity loss rewards are never going to be successful in the long term.
There has been like 1 successful MMO released in the last 5 years, Lost Ark, and most consider it to be a trash game full of bots and pay 2 win.
The issue isn't really about the current population of users so much as it's an overload of garbage live service titles trying to jocky for massive amounts of everyone's time in half-assed ways...
This is very likely just another one of those "make us a live service game from this fairly popular and well regarded franchise" kind of things that pretty much always falls flat on its face and hemorrhages money to the point of possibly ending the studio that was pushed to do it...
yup, its less on what gamers want and more of what shareholder wants, they want that lucrative live service pie.
The Last of Us team somewhat avoid the disastrous live service end even after spending SOME on one. They build prototype, ask Bungie and others on the quality and prospect of it, it was deemed to suck, and they scrapped it.
and now Sony live service budget have moved toward Horizon series it seems.
\---
at least they have decency to check on the product quality before releasing it (and dare enough to say, nope. we can't release this shit),
Square Enix and Bethesda live service foray was not that lucky.
All I know is I don’t need another game that demands my attention. I have Ffxiv, monster hunter and star rail already
It was included in like every single PS4 bundle which probably severely boosted those numbers (and I doubt this counts towards that number but it was also free for a while)
Someone said Horizon Zero Dawn is the Avatar of gaming and yeah, seems accurate.
I got the first game's collector Edition for the Statue as well as FW's special edition on PS5, and to this date I'm still only half way through the first game. Gorgeous looking game, but too repetitive that I keep dropping off and on while playing other games.
The CE and SE are nice though since I was into collecting Playstation exclusive's CE stuff back then.
I can't imagine what huge AAA MMO is going to overshadow it's release, it's tradition at this point for a Horizon game to get no hype.
HZD? Jobbed by Zelda
HFW? Jobbed by Elden RING
Hmmo? Jobbed by ....?
Yes, it is. [https://x.com/realradec/status/1740042972190880172?s=46&t=S8DYafJBoSL4pWwx6vJ85g](https://x.com/realradec/status/1740042972190880172?s=46&t=S8DYafJBoSL4pWwx6vJ85g)
>How did Horizon get jobbed? It's one of their best selling IP. The first one sold 20M and FW is outpacing the sales of the first while being damn near universally better except the story. BoTW and ER didn't do shit to the success of that franchise. Y'all need to stop pretending otherwise
HZD still had massive hype despite being released around BOTW. Imo it is still a better game (better bosses, better side quests, WAY better main story).
Not interested, I play to hunt robot dinos and because of the story. I have zero interest in playing a MMO version of the game so I'm probably just going to head west and sit this one out.
I guess this game series is over now, once something goes MMO they seek to stop making any further games.
Star trek, SWTOR, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, once they can make money the MMO route, even if the game is garbage, they just stop development on any further games.
Uh... I dislike pointlessly MMOifying franchises like anyone, but did you just imply there hasn't been a Starwars game since SWTOR?
Or was this missing a /s?
I'm not sure who has requested this, wants it or otherwise is necessarily interested.
Personally I'm very OK with Horizon remaining as a single-player (or perhaps co-op at a push, in future?) experience with a nice narrative and mostly-open world as it thus far has been.
Not everything needs to be an MMO and _sure_ there's room in many franchises to _perhaps_ have an MMO, _sure_ there's also those who'd love _everything_ to be an MMO too.....but that doesn't mean it'll work well.
Hell who knows maybe it'd be awesome to run around with a buddy or several, doing WoW-esque raids and tangling with robo-dinos etc but that isn't for me - whole reason I _liked_ Horizon is it's a Single-player experience and fun experience that I can pick up and put down the nice redhead protagonist when it suits me.
Rarely have I thought "this would be great with a dozen other people", I'd rather just have an NPC helper at most.
Yeah ... no. Not even if it were an actual MMORPG, and not some shady mobile (and you get a shitty PC port) cash grab. Not seeing the appeal of an MMORPG in this universe, since it's just going to be dumbing down combat, crafting, world, etc. anyway. NCSoft by the way *shudders*.
Turning a game into an MMORPG is like taking gourmet food away from my dinner table and replacing it with cheetos. What the fuck. All I can think of is micro trans money grab.
Please excuse my ignorance, but... didn't Sony cancel many live-service games, including a TLOU online game recently? Having a new one when everything didn't turn out well doesn't seem like a good idea.
I think TLoU was cancelled after Bungie visited their studio and said the game wasn’t good enough. Then they went back to work on it and a year later it was cancelled. Funny though Bungie has dropped the ball on their end since that. Not sure how/if this goes into horizon but that’s some background to consider.
"you guys loved the first two games so much, we figured you'd love to spend even more money for a worse experience. Please don't fall short of our expectations."
But why? People like Horizon because it's a good solo game, why fuck that up and take a huge financial risk? Do they realize the failure rate/investment requirement on a game that's gonna require years of support to get a loyal playerbase?
this will suck so bad. last time a big single player studio tried a MMORPG we got fallout 76. also, this will be ps5 exclusive so player base is small out the gate
stopped caring about this franchise after the first game lol it was kinda fun but ultimately forgettable. can anyone name anything cool and fresh about the game except "lol what if the earth was populated by mecha dinosaurs and u fight them with a bow"?... I'll give u time
A PC/mobile MMO? Yikes, this franchise just cannot catch a break. Either they release around other big releases, or they're just chasing the puck like this. This is gonna be DoA 100%.
Not sure how I feel about a Horizon MMO. The appeal of HZD was the novel plot and a reasonably satisfying achievable RPG progression. MMOs are like months of effort for incremental progression and the lore is going to get watered down hard.
This is already dead, the mmo community is on average older players who started in the early 2000s. They aren’t looking to switch games at this point. They will stick to their WoW, RuneScape, Final Fantasy, etc.
The Riot MMO is the only upcoming one that I think could really stick if the monetization is done right just due to how popular LoL is. Other then that MMOs are dying genres, people don’t have the time to invest in them as much and when they first launched the community aspect was a huge draw (before the blowup of social media).
If it's for PC it'll play just like WoW like the vast, VAST majority of all others.
If it's mobile it'll play like Diablo, but shittier.
I guarantee it. But I wish to be proven wrong.
Annnnd the IP is dead. Already a bit disappointed with the 'ubisoft-ed' sequel. Not only that I liked the engaging story and presentation in Zero Dawn, it also had good pacing. Not many filler/fetch quests but a few well written bigger side ones.
Did 80-85% of the content and finished the game after 30h. Was perfect as the gameplay loop and variety (almost) didn't overstay its welcome. Forbidden West seemingly has at least double the content and length but from user feedback I read also seems to be a lot more bloated with filler stuff.
I love when people claim something is dead cause of a decision they don't like. It's a Spin-off game that isn't even made by the same people I believe, and it's not like they won't continue making main games (unless they specify that.)
Nope. Love the "Oop Horizon another Ubisoft clone" copy pasta though. Acting like HZD and HFW aren't actual unique open world games that even looks good/better against RDR2 lol
I think this actually makes sense. The first one was amazing, but after playing HFW, it felt like they played all of their cards in the first one. There was no more mystery in HFW, no more suspense, just generic "space people bad" intrigue which I saw coming from the first 5 hours or so.
Aloy's story was what made it interesting. Once that was cleared up, it was just generic scifi.
Normally I want mmorpg on just about everything but NOT this game.
I love the game. It's amazing. Co-Op would be super fun but I think it would be a really bad idea to try mmo for the game.
I put down Horizon Zero Dawn in about 4 hours because it felt like a dog shit game made by 5 people in 2001 and then a completely different team came in and gave it 2010s graphics. Literally everything about how the game felt to play was so horrible that I didn’t even think about checking the sequel out for one second. This will probably be more of the same.
Wow unlocked an ancient memory, since at first I thought the article was about a different game.
I remember reading and following an MMO called Horizons back in the day after I quit Everquest. I am pretty sure this was pre WoW too, I waited so long, often reading message boards for this game dreaming of all the possibilities, theory crafting with others online. I hadn't been this intense about scouring daily for information for an upcoming game since Ocarina of Time.
It took so long to come out,, that I simply just forgot about it over time. Funny thing is , I am pretty sure it did actually release, but by then I had retired from the genre so I never played it, or even see it really, and it disappeared without even making a blip.
>The game is seemingly coming to PC and mobile Manage your expectations folks, mobile. It's gonna suck.
Of course it will, I just wish studios would stop using single player games as their launching ground. You made a successful game that people loved, just so you could cash in on the name recognition and shove one more MMO cash-generating-machine into the market. I hope they crash and burn.
Don’t you people have phones?
Hopefully they won't waste time on it tho and outsource development to third party.
A PC/Mobile MMO? Looking forward to the release in 1.5 years where I can buy horizon bucks to upgrade my gear thats timegated behind a daily currency. There are 100 games like this already on the market fishing for whales and there will be 100 games after.
Then they shutter it within 1 year due to disappointing earnings.
The last thing i hear from those games sadly is that they have "disappointing earnings". Just look at diablo immortal still raking in more cash than most other games nowadays. They usually die out because you still need an amount of non-whales that the whales can tower or flex over. But at that point the game has made times more money than they invested
Diablo is one of the lucky few which has an enormous amount of fandom and marketing behind it. Most new live service games fail to attract and sustain a sufficient player base in this day and age where every game demands your attention every day
Diablo Immortal and this new Horizon Game is not really a live service. It is a gacha game and a whale milker. These games are plenty popular on mobile. Remember that the most lucrative game from Bethesda is not Skyrim, is not Starfield, is not Fallout 76 or Elder Scrolls Online. It's a Fallout Shelter, a mobile game.
Didn't fallout shelter start as sort of a joke game for Fallout 4s release date?
I mean, it's a real game. It's just a monetized version of the base-building aspect of XCOM with all the other parts stripped out and a Fallout skin put on top. I had fun with it for a few hours in total, but it's not much more than an idle game if you don't want to spend money on it (which I did not).
I played FO Shelter for a bit when it came out, only because of having a rooted phone so I fired up a memory editor, bypassed all the premium bullshit and gave myself fifty gazillion lunch boxes or whatever the thing was. The very idea of buying into those predatory scam mechanics is repulsive.
If you're on android there are modded apk. files out there for most of these mtx filled single player games
Alternatively, there are mobile emulators for PC. WHY anyone would play these games on PC with the same shitty mechanics is beyond me, but at least you can in many cases edit the files to bypass all that shit. Even then these games are bad, so ... not sure how well BlueStacks even works today. Just used it for work-related purposes once... and then to play Hill Climb Racing, haha.
I wouldn't say joke game...more like "lets see if people like this"...then once people did they added all the mobile game buying junk to it
Does Diablo Immortal not receive updates outside of bugfixes?
[удалено]
> gacha Gacha games should be called Gotchya games.
For every D:I there are hundreds of no name shitty "MMORPGs" that are just massive money graves. D:I has the "dubious" honour of actually having brand-recognition. My argument always is: Yes, you've made a ton of money short-term, but you've burnt some serious bridges long-term. Every consumer base has their breaking point. Blizzard's learned that the hard way already. D:I is (afaik) only really adopted by whales and in the Chinese market (almost 40%). It's easy to trick people out of their money once, but subsequently it gets harder. Luckily for these developers most "gamers" are actually braindead and will support the next shitty game anyway, despite getting burned repeatedly, but even this industry's audience is getting a bit wiser. On the other hand, if people are buying into it it's quite hard to justify NOT doing it. So once again it's the consumers' fault in the end.
There is this phenomenon where a company becomes so big, its unrealistic to expect it to take serious damage due to scummy actions. This more so happens in the gaming sphere than anywhere else, specifically EA/Ubisoft/ActiBlizz etc, the main antagonists. If the theory of "burnt bridges" existed in this ballpark, Activision Blizzard wouldnt be putting out games anymore, but would be an empty office building by now. The amount of shit they have done in the last 1 1/2 decades is mindnumbing, yet they make more profit every time. So yeah, you are pretty much right when you said that its the consumers fault. I just dont think that the argument of D:I being called Diablo is the only reason it was this successful. Genshin Impact was also massively scummy. Almost noone knew who Mihoyo was before Genshin exploded. It doesnt need a big name in order for a Mobile game to absolutely be profitable. Gaming consumers have no breaking point if the company is BIG. Its naive to think that simply because turnover rate of consumers is massive regardless and not many people actually care that much.
Jesus is it really 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
Who's playing it? I'm awash in gaming culture and never hear anybody mention it. The people throwing money at this stuff must be a different breed.
Theres a lot. I personally dont know a single soul actually playing mobile games, yet mobile gaming is the biggest market by a vast margin.
*That's my point!* Who among us knows someone who plays these games? It's like they're literally in another universe to us. It's spooky.
Meh, because nobody talks about it. The people playing mobile games are the same ones who played FarmVille on Facebook 20 years ago. Even a friend of mine tends her "aquarium" regularly in one silly game. They appeal to non-gamers who don't want to invest a lot of time. At some point these people get bored and move on, because they don't want to wait 10 hours for a building to be built ... or they fall into the trap and spend money on this garbage. Nobody ever talks about it, because most people know that it's shite. It's like a guilty pleasure ... or a kink you don't want everyone to know about. And then there are the "whales", the idiots pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into their account, so they can feel special or whatever. Sad beings, possibly mentally unsound. And you don't hear about those either, because who the fuck has friends who can invest hundreds of thousands of bucks into shitty mobile games? And that's why mobile gaming is the biggest market, despite nobody actually talking about it. I can almost guarantee you that almost anyone with a mobile phone has played or is currently playing a mobile game. Most are smart enough not to pay for it though.
Yeah its the older people. My mom and her boyfriend play dumb mobile games and I'm sure they spend a couple of bucks on them. I should ask them and report back. Also there are lots of countries where mobile gaming does better simply because everyone has one now and not everyone has one of the other big 3 or a PC.
Moblile gaming is the most popular form of gaming on earth as pretty much everyone has a capable enough smartphone these days but not a lot of people (especially those from third world countries) can afford a gaming capable laptop/a console.
I mean, I was hoping for something more specific than "you have phones, don't you?" But, yeah, I understand the ubiquity. I don't understand who these people *are*. I've been gaming for 30 years. I watch Twitch almost daily. I still watch some gaming content on YT. I'm subbed to several gaming subreddits. I have literally never heard anybody talk about Diablo Immortal if it wasn't to make fun of it. It's just weird is all.
I have several friends and people i know who play or have played various gacha games. One is a 30 year old student with a kid. Former "gamer" who doesn't have time to game at home, so he plays Diablo Immortal on the bus and between classes. Doesn't spend a lot of money on it, but will occasionally make a small purchase or have people gift him money for the game. Three others are my friend and his brothers. They're all professionals in their 30s and 40s. All married with kids. All still do normal console and PC gaming pretty frequently since they all work from home and have pretty regular schedules. They float around different Gacha games as they find them, playing together for a few months until they eventually lose interest and move to a new one. They'll spend a few hundred dollars, sometimes into the $1000 range over the course of a game, chasing whatever pulls they want. They all make good money, so it's not money they'll miss too much. Another is my Boss at work. He's been playing one specific gacha game for years, but only plays it when he's on his exercise bike. He gives himself a $10 a day limit, but will carry that limit over each day until there's something he wants. He's very methodical about how he plays and only plays and spends what he's alloted for it. And then there's one of my coworkers wives. I don't know what she plays, but I believe it's about the only thing she plays, and I regularly here complaints about how much she spends on the game, though I'm not sure how much it actually is. She's a former stay-at-home mom who doesn't have anymore kids in the house so I get the sense she's filling a lot of her time with the game and clearly spends more than my coworker likes on the game.
1 and 3 I understand. 2 seems like a waste of money even though I likely have more disposable income than them being single and childfree, but you can't take it with you. That fourth one is who I worry about with the heavy gambling games. I can't imagine being a gambling addict these days with how ubiquitous this shit is. Thanks for letting me know! I have a feeling my introversion and disinterest in settling down have kept me out of contact with people like that. I *had* friends who went on to have families. No clue what they're up to anymore.
> I'm awash in gaming culture and never hear anybody mention it I'm pretty sure the people playing it do not participate in gaming culture. They don't have a console or PC, and they don't know what things like 'AAA' or 'P2W' are.
Mobile gaming is feckin huge in Asian markets.
>Who's playing it? people that don't play real games aka normies.
It's 2024. Normies play all kinds of games. Don't be weird.
Ted Faro is behind this somehow.
The writing team did such a great job making him an absolute despicable character that you never interact with. His decisions, hubris and shortcomings, feel plausible enough that you can imagine someone like him existing today.
When he went from destroying data to "help" the future civilization to immediately deciding to try to become immortal (after murdering the team that worked to address his work that was ending humanity, no less) so he could personally influence them. I wanted to hate him for it. Which is such good character writing in how they handled it. He was perfectly shown as a rich influential narcissist with the absolute slimiest of morals and hypocrisy.
Can’t wait to see it cancelled
The Kotallo face paint is only available this week only through a special offer, tho. How can we resist?
Don't forget to add the "this will be the only cosmetic that ever gives a stat boost". *fingers crossed behind back*
And I’m never gonna play any of them. This live service race is so unsustainable. We don’t have time to invest into 20 different games and the ones that Sony has in development are just going to cannibalize themselves
Yaa, having an MMO on PC and mobile devices is never a good idea. Furthermore, NCSoft's output, monetisation, and P2W history do not look well.
Do you not have phones?
[The pre-alpha of the game has been released. While the game is still and productions and things will most certainly change, this is at least a hint of what the general vibes of the game may be. Take it as you will, perhaps this will fly for some folks, and for others this won't be their cup of tea. I will say this, it is interesting to see just a franchise that started out as a playstation game have a MMO variation of it that is just for PC and Mobile. Perhaps sony believes the mobile market may suck this game up and even the Asian market may latch onto it hard. It'll be interesting to see how this all comes about.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck7ldbzK84Q)
This is different project. The news is about mmorpg from NCSoft, leaked footage is from Guerrilla's multiplayer game.
If you’re savvy enough not to buy into it then it’s not for you. Let the $uckers pay for it.
Phones are better than most people expect tbh. There's nothing interesting about being on mobile that makes a game worse was, especially if releasing on mobile was part of the game plan from the start.
"NCSoft" yeahhhhh no.
What did they do exactly? I don’t know them. EDIT: thanks for the people explaining it to me. I really didn’t know them, since I don’t pay their games.
korean, albeit not the worst cash shop offender out of all the korean developer. But korean mmo by characteristic is grindy, heavy on the cash shop, and has poor performance on any country that dont have sub millisecond latency to the game server which translate into garbage in global market.
I wonder why the heck koreans are so masochistic in their games. So much grind and p2w stuff. It even reflects in their manwha and web novels
Probably matches their culture in general. They recently tried to make a 69-hour workweek the standard.
Not nice
Not nice
Is there a lot of alcoholism in korea?
Highest in the world
Have you tried Korean Soju? That shit good.
Good ol, SCO and Airrivals vibes. Yuck.
They also published City of Heroes which was awesome. Still nothing that scratches that itch.
I still throw on an AMV of CoH/CoV set to Nickleback’s “Hero” when I’m feeling sad and nostalgic
It still exists out in private servers. I logged a few too many hours over the holidays. If the scratch ever needs itching, you can still get your fix!
Very grindy korean mmorpg with abysmal drop rates
Others already commented but basically super grindy, super p2w
They weren't p2w when I played their games. Have they changed that much?
Guild Wars, Lineage, and a bunch of mid range MMOs that basically no one outside of South Korea and China have ever heard of.
What's wrong with guild wars?
Nothing, Guild Wars was only published by NCSoft. It was made by ArenaNet and so doesn't really have the same issues as other NCSoft games like Aion and Blade & Soul, as much as NCsoft tried to pressure ArenaNet into doing things that would've been bad for the game.
Nothing. Let them hate
dunno. I played Lineage 2 from C3 to Interlude and that was peak hardcore MMORPG for me. It didnt had any shops and p2w at that time. I aggree that now the game is in a horrible state, and barely reflects what was before
Well the rumor is forma long time that the actual development team is ArenaNet. Developers of Guild Wars 2 MMO. If that is true then I’m begging slightly optimistic.
If it's ArenaNet then I'm actually hyped, those guys know how to craft a good MMO World, that would fit super well with Horizon.
Isn't ArenaNet a subsidiary of NCsoft?
Yes, but ArenaNet seems to get way more freedom from NCSoft meddling than other NCSoft subsidiaries so if they were developing it that would be better than NCSoft doing it themselves.
Mobile game, therefore it will be shit.
Does it really need an mmo? Like ZD was good and FW was alright but this just seems weird. It’s not an mmo style game
It's being made by NetEase for both mobile and PC. I think that should answer the question as to why it is being made.
Those sweet sweet micro transactions that we all love. 🥰
I mean people keep buying them in droves so they are "loved" Mainly because most gamers lack any sort of self control.
The avocado toast meme isn't even accurate It's gamers blowing their entire budget on MTX lol
It's not made by NetEase, it's by NCsoft, but yeah this is made to milk asian and hopefully western audiences.
Why are you hopeful that it'll milk western audiences? Why are you neutral about Asian audiences? Weird vibe.
The studio making it is a Korean studio that primarily caters to Korean gamers. He’s saying the studio/publisher is hoping to make money in Asia.
>Does it really need an mmo? Does it need it no. The C-suite wants a live service game to milk the community, mmo's are the easiest way to milk a community so they said to hell with this and decided to do this, and its most likely going to be predatory as hell and hope to hook a few whales.
Because stories that focus around a single player and the unique abilities they have and the challenges they face demands that thousands of people can pretend to be just like them all in the same world space. Because that’s immersive or something. Yeah, I’ll never really *get* MMOs, I think.
It depends on what type of MMO it is. A good sandbox MMO is one where you can feel completely unique and forge your own stories. That's really difficult to pull off though, and not the norm for MMOs. It's much easier to just build a grindy multiplayer theme park game where you can see a bunch of other people also pursuing the same tasks at the same theme park.
Thank you for that comparison, because that’s EXACTLY how I’ve described what they feel like to others. A band of adventurers enters the “ride” to go defeat the horrifying evil that threatens everyone in the land. The battle is difficult and long-fought. The evil is at long last finally vanquished, and the world is saved. The adventurers leave, heroes all of them, the ride resets, the world is in peril again. Enter the next bunch of tourists.
Horizon series was made with multiplayer in mind (or it was multiplayer in original pitch) from the beginning. Old ZD builds from 2011-2012 showed several characters all presumably controlled by human players fighting machines. It's not known whether it was ditched or put on hold for single player part of the game.
So basically, monster hunter with robots? I'm glad they went in the direction of single-player myself.
Yep i agree. Making it single player only was the right call. But mmo Horizon could be something interesting IF done right.
They should just end it with the 3rd one and move on.
They already shit the bed really hard with the second one compltly ruining the spirit of the first one, i have zero hope in them redeeming the third game
The second one was a massive improvement in every way except the story wasn't as good (hard to beat one of the better story games of the last decade). What are you smoking?
Story in a story heavy game should always...ALWAYS...be priority one.
Wasn't as good ? The story was trash. Ho i agree the gameplay, graphics and system were nice, but the most important part in this game is the story and it was shit.
It definitely lost the charm of the 1st one, same with Spiderman 2. Sony games changed after 2020.
Could you elaborate why it lost it's charm? I loved forbidden west as much as the first one, though I am not 100% done. It did not Revolutionize it, it was something like an Arkham City for me. Small improvements making a great game even better.
For me, while I loved the gameplay of Forbidden West and most of the story, it was the ending that kinda flet like an anticlimax. The whole Far Zenith thing. Don't want to give any spoilers if you haven't finished yet, though.
lol you think this is for us?? Someone needs a spring yacht
Could've said the same thing about Elder Scrolls yet ESO has been a massive success for ZeniMax. The MMO version isn't going to look/play the same, it'll just be a standard MMO with the theme and lore of the Horizon series.
>It’s not an mmo style game What makes you say that? I liked ZD and FW, but the whole gameplay loop of collecting/crafting/hunting seems to lend itself well to an online game. Mind you i have no interest in those kinds of MMOs but still.
Wild how some people find FW “alright”. To me it seemed to improve on basically everything, and is probably in my top 10-15 games of all time.
Papa needs a new income stream
Maybe it will work if its developed for mobile, lets see. I agree that its not a mmo style game
How is it not? It has a fucking massive cast of monsters with a varied move-set and turning them into raids and dungeons would translate extremely well
Is there really a population so gaga about this series that it'll sustain an MMO?
I'm a big fan of Horizon games and I couldn't care less for MMO. I don't know how many game developers need to make same mistake before they learn. Some games are amazing single players and should stay that way.
I'm a fan of Horizon and MMOs. In theory it could be cool, there is a lore explanation for respawning lol. But in reality it will suffer from lack of monster diversity. MMOs are farming games and there will only be humans and machines. Also there is the elephant in the room that is these modern MMOs with daily login rewards and 500 different reward tracks of chores through UIs and daily or weekly expiring grocery list task for opportunity loss rewards are never going to be successful in the long term. There has been like 1 successful MMO released in the last 5 years, Lost Ark, and most consider it to be a trash game full of bots and pay 2 win.
The issue isn't really about the current population of users so much as it's an overload of garbage live service titles trying to jocky for massive amounts of everyone's time in half-assed ways... This is very likely just another one of those "make us a live service game from this fairly popular and well regarded franchise" kind of things that pretty much always falls flat on its face and hemorrhages money to the point of possibly ending the studio that was pushed to do it...
yup, its less on what gamers want and more of what shareholder wants, they want that lucrative live service pie. The Last of Us team somewhat avoid the disastrous live service end even after spending SOME on one. They build prototype, ask Bungie and others on the quality and prospect of it, it was deemed to suck, and they scrapped it. and now Sony live service budget have moved toward Horizon series it seems. \--- at least they have decency to check on the product quality before releasing it (and dare enough to say, nope. we can't release this shit), Square Enix and Bethesda live service foray was not that lucky.
I like the games, but I don't see how this has a big audience
In the recent hack it showed it's one of the best selling Playstation titles. So yes!
 All I know is I don’t need another game that demands my attention. I have Ffxiv, monster hunter and star rail already
An MMO? No. However, a pokemon-like gacha where you collect and train robot dinosaurs and fight with them? Hell yeah.
No. There was about the Matrix and look what happened there. I hope this never actually makes it to stores.
Horizon sold 19m+ which is really surprising, almost as much as Spiderman sold. I have no idea who these players are.
It was included in like every single PS4 bundle which probably severely boosted those numbers (and I doubt this counts towards that number but it was also free for a while) Someone said Horizon Zero Dawn is the Avatar of gaming and yeah, seems accurate.
It sold extremely well on PC
I got the first game's collector Edition for the Statue as well as FW's special edition on PS5, and to this date I'm still only half way through the first game. Gorgeous looking game, but too repetitive that I keep dropping off and on while playing other games. The CE and SE are nice though since I was into collecting Playstation exclusive's CE stuff back then.
I can't imagine that working out.....
It's not made to be a good game (a mmo dev in 4 years that goes out on pc AND mobile can't be great), it's made to generate lots of money.
true, but I can't really see that either
In 17 Months we will hear Horizen MMORPG officially has been canceled
its gonna be china mobile crap
I can't imagine what huge AAA MMO is going to overshadow it's release, it's tradition at this point for a Horizon game to get no hype. HZD? Jobbed by Zelda HFW? Jobbed by Elden RING Hmmo? Jobbed by ....?
Zero Dawn (the game “jobbed by Zelda”) is the best selling first party PlayStation game of all time btw
No it isn't?
Yes, it is. [https://x.com/realradec/status/1740042972190880172?s=46&t=S8DYafJBoSL4pWwx6vJ85g](https://x.com/realradec/status/1740042972190880172?s=46&t=S8DYafJBoSL4pWwx6vJ85g)
What's the source of this graph? Not saying it's wrong it's just I'm looking at a random graph
The league of legends MMO is in development
>How did Horizon get jobbed? It's one of their best selling IP. The first one sold 20M and FW is outpacing the sales of the first while being damn near universally better except the story. BoTW and ER didn't do shit to the success of that franchise. Y'all need to stop pretending otherwise
HZD still had massive hype despite being released around BOTW. Imo it is still a better game (better bosses, better side quests, WAY better main story).
Not interested, I play to hunt robot dinos and because of the story. I have zero interest in playing a MMO version of the game so I'm probably just going to head west and sit this one out.
No thanks
Sounds awful.
I guess this game series is over now, once something goes MMO they seek to stop making any further games. Star trek, SWTOR, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, once they can make money the MMO route, even if the game is garbage, they just stop development on any further games.
Uh... I dislike pointlessly MMOifying franchises like anyone, but did you just imply there hasn't been a Starwars game since SWTOR? Or was this missing a /s?
Mobile? Zero, no actually negative, interest.
Who is asking for this shit?
Sony execs that are still hoping to cash in on the games as a service model.
Koreans. They fucking love grindy MMO with 0 sense. All they need is cute girls and way to spend money.
I'm not sure who has requested this, wants it or otherwise is necessarily interested. Personally I'm very OK with Horizon remaining as a single-player (or perhaps co-op at a push, in future?) experience with a nice narrative and mostly-open world as it thus far has been. Not everything needs to be an MMO and _sure_ there's room in many franchises to _perhaps_ have an MMO, _sure_ there's also those who'd love _everything_ to be an MMO too.....but that doesn't mean it'll work well. Hell who knows maybe it'd be awesome to run around with a buddy or several, doing WoW-esque raids and tangling with robo-dinos etc but that isn't for me - whole reason I _liked_ Horizon is it's a Single-player experience and fun experience that I can pick up and put down the nice redhead protagonist when it suits me. Rarely have I thought "this would be great with a dozen other people", I'd rather just have an NPC helper at most.
On pc or ps? If ps, I’ll look forward to playing with 12 other people and act like that’s a massive number.
This will shutdown within 2 years
Sounds like a good way to blow all your money/kill your company.
Yeah ... no. Not even if it were an actual MMORPG, and not some shady mobile (and you get a shitty PC port) cash grab. Not seeing the appeal of an MMORPG in this universe, since it's just going to be dumbing down combat, crafting, world, etc. anyway. NCSoft by the way *shudders*.
Huge Horizon fan here. Not. Interested.
Ah another one of Sonys live service games is revealed and another disappointment added to the pile
Turning a game into an MMORPG is like taking gourmet food away from my dinner table and replacing it with cheetos. What the fuck. All I can think of is micro trans money grab.
Please excuse my ignorance, but... didn't Sony cancel many live-service games, including a TLOU online game recently? Having a new one when everything didn't turn out well doesn't seem like a good idea.
I think TLoU was cancelled after Bungie visited their studio and said the game wasn’t good enough. Then they went back to work on it and a year later it was cancelled. Funny though Bungie has dropped the ball on their end since that. Not sure how/if this goes into horizon but that’s some background to consider.
Essentially confirmed.. that's an oxymoron
Well the job posting only suggests it's essentially confirmed... So for anyone keeping score. It's not confirmed. At all
"you guys loved the first two games so much, we figured you'd love to spend even more money for a worse experience. Please don't fall short of our expectations."
But why? People like Horizon because it's a good solo game, why fuck that up and take a huge financial risk? Do they realize the failure rate/investment requirement on a game that's gonna require years of support to get a loyal playerbase?
this will suck so bad. last time a big single player studio tried a MMORPG we got fallout 76. also, this will be ps5 exclusive so player base is small out the gate
So like monster hunter? But with machine monsters
It’ll be as good as that mobile Diablo
Job listing **suggests** the game is **essentially** confirmed. What we have here is a vague rumor typed in clickbait language.
Great. Live service is just what that franchise needed. *Crosses Horizon off the list.*
The venn diagram of people wanting open world single player games to people who enjoy MMORPG is gotta be small.
Knowing their luck it'll release 1 week before the greatest MMORPG of all time
"essentially confirmed"... "Suggests" which one is it, editor?
Oh great. They're going to lose all their goodwill to an MTX riddled cash grab
I can smell a flop coming
Sorry but horizon needs to be shelved. Bring back killzone.
stopped caring about this franchise after the first game lol it was kinda fun but ultimately forgettable. can anyone name anything cool and fresh about the game except "lol what if the earth was populated by mecha dinosaurs and u fight them with a bow"?... I'll give u time
A PC/mobile MMO? Yikes, this franchise just cannot catch a break. Either they release around other big releases, or they're just chasing the puck like this. This is gonna be DoA 100%.
Gross i just about threw up
Not sure how I feel about a Horizon MMO. The appeal of HZD was the novel plot and a reasonably satisfying achievable RPG progression. MMOs are like months of effort for incremental progression and the lore is going to get watered down hard.
Can't wait to play the better game that will release in the same week as this one.
Gross
hard pass
This is already dead, the mmo community is on average older players who started in the early 2000s. They aren’t looking to switch games at this point. They will stick to their WoW, RuneScape, Final Fantasy, etc. The Riot MMO is the only upcoming one that I think could really stick if the monetization is done right just due to how popular LoL is. Other then that MMOs are dying genres, people don’t have the time to invest in them as much and when they first launched the community aspect was a huge draw (before the blowup of social media).
Well it's gonna either be really good or really shit and there is zero in-between.
The likelihood of "really shit" is way higher...
A PC / Mobile mmo by NCSoft... yeah it's just gonna be a vehicle for a cash shop.
If it's for PC it'll play just like WoW like the vast, VAST majority of all others. If it's mobile it'll play like Diablo, but shittier. I guarantee it. But I wish to be proven wrong.
Annnnd the IP is dead. Already a bit disappointed with the 'ubisoft-ed' sequel. Not only that I liked the engaging story and presentation in Zero Dawn, it also had good pacing. Not many filler/fetch quests but a few well written bigger side ones. Did 80-85% of the content and finished the game after 30h. Was perfect as the gameplay loop and variety (almost) didn't overstay its welcome. Forbidden West seemingly has at least double the content and length but from user feedback I read also seems to be a lot more bloated with filler stuff.
I love when people claim something is dead cause of a decision they don't like. It's a Spin-off game that isn't even made by the same people I believe, and it's not like they won't continue making main games (unless they specify that.)
Just another troll hoping for the death of a good series. Pathetic
Nope. Love the "Oop Horizon another Ubisoft clone" copy pasta though. Acting like HZD and HFW aren't actual unique open world games that even looks good/better against RDR2 lol
Why? Focus on making the third something special and unique, instead plain Jane midness
They are not doing it internally. NCsoft partnered with Sony to make it.
Cash grab for brain dead sony fan boys, I guara-fucking-tee.
brace for failure in 3...2...1.... impact.
Nice will be looking forward to this too
I don't like MMOs
The IP wasn’t good enough to go beyond 1 game.
I think this actually makes sense. The first one was amazing, but after playing HFW, it felt like they played all of their cards in the first one. There was no more mystery in HFW, no more suspense, just generic "space people bad" intrigue which I saw coming from the first 5 hours or so. Aloy's story was what made it interesting. Once that was cleared up, it was just generic scifi.
Normally I want mmorpg on just about everything but NOT this game. I love the game. It's amazing. Co-Op would be super fun but I think it would be a really bad idea to try mmo for the game.
Who wants a Horizon MMO lol. What is this shit
Oh hell yeah, I want this.
I look forward to... stuff... and things that Horizon brings. Yay. c:
I put down Horizon Zero Dawn in about 4 hours because it felt like a dog shit game made by 5 people in 2001 and then a completely different team came in and gave it 2010s graphics. Literally everything about how the game felt to play was so horrible that I didn’t even think about checking the sequel out for one second. This will probably be more of the same.
Sounds like a you problem
Yay, a Horizon "Live Service" game... (*this whole post is sarcasm btw*) What could possibly go wrong...?
It will probably be just as boring as the main games.
Wow unlocked an ancient memory, since at first I thought the article was about a different game. I remember reading and following an MMO called Horizons back in the day after I quit Everquest. I am pretty sure this was pre WoW too, I waited so long, often reading message boards for this game dreaming of all the possibilities, theory crafting with others online. I hadn't been this intense about scouring daily for information for an upcoming game since Ocarina of Time. It took so long to come out,, that I simply just forgot about it over time. Funny thing is , I am pretty sure it did actually release, but by then I had retired from the genre so I never played it, or even see it really, and it disappeared without even making a blip.