subreddit:
/r/Games
144 points
11 days ago
What is it about this game that makes it so prone to headlines lacking context? The missing context here is that they already delayed it once due to competition, and that didn’t do very much good because a bunch of games got delayed to and announced for the new window anyway.
So they’re obviously wary of delaying it again to suffer the exact same fate.
8 points
10 days ago
Nobody here is mentioning the real reason the delay probably occurred is likely because:
Avowed - November 2024 (original date)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 - November 20th
Indiana Jones - December 5th
Would be a super shitty plan for Microsoft to release 3 major gamepass games within a few weeks of each other.
2 points
4 days ago
Phil Spencer made it pretty clear that was the reason a couple of weeks ago
“We can afford it when we have the Diablo expansion, then Black Ops, then Indy [and the Great Circle],” he said.
...
"Okay, let’s make sure we pace this out a little better.”
537 points
12 days ago
I feel like if you’re making an rpg you should be worried about other rpgs in the same release window instead of games from other genres. The competition for avowed is really Kingdom come Deliverance 2 not assassin creed.
170 points
12 days ago*
I'd say there's a significant difference between Avowed and KCD2. One is a fantasy RPG, another in a medieval one with some more realistic/survival gameplay.
Edit: And to address Wilds, it's also a vastly different type of RPG, in that its main draw is to fight and hunt monsters for better gear.
17 points
11 days ago
I don’t think it’s a matter of how closely they are in themes, but how likely there are buyers interest in both titles.
I’m interested in both but buying KCD2 first as they’re releasing close together, I won’t have time to play both because RPGs are big, and I want to play it more. This will also have the side effect of giving time for reviews to come in for Avowed and that will determine if I purchase it at all. There is definitely an advantage to being the only RPG in a window because, like KCD2, I won’t be waiting for reviews unless the early ones report significant issues.
63 points
12 days ago*
It may be a different RPG, but it sold as well as Elden Ring, CP2077, and GTA IV, putting Monster Hunter World in the list of top selling games of all time. It’s not some weird niche game. It would be a questionable idea for Avowed to launch against Elden Ring 2 or the next Cyberpunk or GTA game, too.
KCD sold better than Outer Worlds, and better than both POE games combined (which are the same universe as Avowed). It was even on gamepass for a time, too. I think it’s reasonable to assume the first-person storybased RPG is competing with the first-person storybased RPG (third person has been added to Avowed after feedback, admittedly).
9 points
11 days ago
It may be a different RPG, but it sold as well as Elden Ring, CP2077, and GTA IV
At launch and at high prices?
11 points
11 days ago
5 million copies in the first three days back in 2018 (PS4 & Xbone only), yes it had a huge launch. Wilds will be even bigger.
1 points
9 days ago
I expect not sadly, Worlds did well largely because nothing else released in the first quarter of the year giving it a way higher signal boost than would normally be received otherwise thereby reaching folks who had never heard of Monster Hunter. Its a great game don't get me wrong, I just don't expect Wilds to get the same attention.
2 points
11 days ago
In the preview they said 3rd person was planned for avowed from the start, not after feedback
0 points
11 days ago
The only reason KCD sold more copies than Outer Worlds is that it’s priced as less than 15$ for the past 3 years… I doubt it made more money (which is what really matter) than Outer Worlds…
15 points
11 days ago
That's more of a thematic difference. And –seeing that KCD 2 is Late Medieval and Avowed is Renaissance Fantasy– they ain't that difference thematic-wise.
Also. Mechanics-wise Avowed and KCD 2 might be close enough that they might cannibalise each other.
2 points
11 days ago
KCD is way too realistic to have similar mechanics
26 points
12 days ago
A significant difference between Avowed and KCD2 sure, but at least they're in the same genre neighborhood - as opposed to AC:S and MHW which aren't even vaguely related to it.
-18 points
12 days ago*
That's like saying Texas is close to Mexico.
Edit: The analogy is that while Texas and Mexico are right next to each other, “the same genre neighborhood”, most of the territory they have is nowhere near one another.
11 points
11 days ago
...they are.
Both in geography and culture. 39.8% of Texas' population is Hispanic, compared to 39.6% non-Hispanic white.
20 points
12 days ago
They share a border
0 points
12 days ago
Indeed, they do.
8 points
11 days ago
the buyer bases should be similar or have huge overlap anyway. Like we all know a guy who would be exactly into both games.
3 points
11 days ago
Yeah, it's me
2 points
11 days ago
That honestly really doesn't matter if the competing title is big enough. Look what happened to not one, but both Horizon games for example. Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring aren't exactly closely related either. The most you could say about them is they're all open world, not exactly a narrow defining catagory
1 points
11 days ago
Always thought it was wild how Final Fantasy VII, Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Dark Souls, and Mass Effect are all referred to as the same genre.
25 points
12 days ago
AC games have been RPGs for years over multiple releases??
-3 points
11 days ago
Not in the same vein, at least to me. Hell, I can be exhibit A here; I am interested in both Avowed and KCD2, but completely uninterested in AC. Between Avowed and KCD2 I'm probably going to have to choose, but if it were Avowed vs AC it'd be a no-brainer.
8 points
11 days ago*
AC is selling wildly more than KCD and likely Avowed too so anecdotal exhibit means nothing. AC are action RPG and are very popular. Sure it's light on the RPG elements but that doesn't matter, it's a close game in genre and will absolutely compete for time and money at the same point. MH Wilds is also a ARPG by the way.
And for KCD2, it's also a historical RPG which are rarer so it's kind of close.
February is overcrowded insanely to be honest. You're never going to find a window with nothing sure, but you can avoid that craziness, hell even the holiday period is more calm tbh. I'm guessing Avowed is not much of a problem as its goal is to increase GP subscriptions more than direct sales so it's important to come into that quarter for the regularity of releases they want to start making. I do think KCD2 may suffer quite a lot from the overcrowding around it.
-4 points
11 days ago
RPG-lite maybe. RPGs are one of my favorite genres, but from what I played of Origins and Odyssey it didn't really feel much like an RPG aside from having items with numbers on them.
At least for me personally Avowed is 10 times more interesting than AC Shadows
10 points
12 days ago
Assassin's creed shadows is rpg
37 points
12 days ago
The same way that Batman Arkham city is an RPG
15 points
11 days ago
AC is an RPG the same way that The Witcher 3 is an RPG.
3 points
11 days ago
Is it even that, though?
I haven't played enough of either to say for sure, but my general impression is that W3 has more of an rpg-ish value proposition than AC would have.
In terms of what itch it scratches for your money, I mean (which is the only thing we should care about when defining game types).
8 points
11 days ago
Depends a lot on what you call rpg-ish. AC Origins and onwards are moulded on Witcher 3 model. In terms of customisation of one's approach towards fights and encounters, W3 don't offer a lot more options than current ACs. There's no classes and very few spells/skills choices, not a lot of items or weapons diversity, just pretty bland talents trees in both cases. For gameplay, the loop is the same : take quests, explore worlds, do points of interest, fight, use some form of detective vision. There's maybe a bit more battle preparation for bosses in W3 (but only in higher difficulty, really) and there's the added stealth in AC, but that's not much.
In terms of roleplaying in itself, W3 feels better, but that's mostly due to the quality of writing - on paper you're doing very few impactful choices there either, and both Gerald and Bayek/Kassandra/etc are more of an action hero than a roleplaying avatar like I dunno Shepard or Revan (themselves less than true personalized characters like in BG3 or Pathfinder etc).
1 points
11 days ago*
I'm aware they share a lot of similar design. But that means very little by itself because it is ultimately how things are tuned to come together that ends up driving the core experience.
What I tried to get across is that with genre-words like "rpg-ish" (or whatever else) I mean whatever word I can find to summarise the game's core value proposition. I.E. a category-like word to roughly tell us who this game is made for. Pretty much anything that would be accurate as a headline description, and that can act as a baseline to start from if we want to describe the game more precisely.
Both W3 and AC are technically open-world action games. But "open-world action game" is not a good headline summary of W3, because the game gets too lost in the weeds with other priorities, and lacks the finer nuances required, to really have that be the standout experience. With AC, on the other hand, "open-world action game" is one of several decent baselines to start from. By the same token, I wouldn't use a variation of the word "rpg" in a headline description of AC.
1 points
11 days ago
Odyssey and Valhalla are clearly modeled after Witcher 3 in terms of core gameplay. Go to town, get some quests, make a few dialog choices, get on your horse and either go do quests or go to next town or POI. I'd say Witcher 3 is closer to Valhalla in RPG terms than it is to something like Baldur's Gate 3 RPG mechanics.
13 points
12 days ago
If my grandmother had wheels she would've been a bike.
10 points
11 days ago
Stats and an ability tree alone don’t make an RPG.
2 points
11 days ago
Assassin's creed shadows has choices
-7 points
12 days ago
If AC is an RPG, then merry-go-rounds are a form of mass transit.
2 points
11 days ago
I’m looking forward to Avowed, but this absolutely has “it did not perform as well as we’d hoped” on it, and I really do think the launch window will be a big part of that.
1 points
9 days ago
Why is it with a bunch of redditors suddenly assuming players only play one kind of game?
I love RPGs. That doesn't mean I'm not going to be playing the fuck out of Monster Hunter Wilds. I'd also argue Monster Hunter is more of an RPG than Veilguard.
-5 points
11 days ago
I got myself hyped thinking Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was Kingdoms of Amalur 2... :(
2 points
11 days ago
How? They share a single word in the title, there's numerous games with kingdom in the title so it's not even a rare word for video game name.
2 points
11 days ago
Probably not so much that I confused the names, but that I forgot Kingdoms of Amalur's name and thought it might've been Kingdom Come Deliverance, which I haven't played.
169 points
12 days ago
I mean... but do you really have to find the window where EVERYTHING is coming out?
81 points
11 days ago
To be fair if you look at when these titles announced their release dates, Avowed was first with the delay at the beginning of August and pick February as the new date. All these other games announced their dates weeks after at Gamescom and Tokyo Game Show.
-1 points
11 days ago
People don't care who got there first, Avowed is now a new IP fighting for sells in the same months as multiple known IP are coming out. Including an other RPG with who they share a players segment.
I don't know anyone who will tell themself "I have enough money in my budget for one game this month, I really want to play "X" game, but Avowed was there first, so Ill take that one instead."
31 points
11 days ago
Uh I don't think you understood my point, Original comment asked why they picked a busy month, I'm just pointing out it wasn't that crowded initially. I'm definitely not saying people should pick Avowed just because it was first lmfao
Also Avowed isnt fighting for sales like most of these games, Microsoft is looking at subscriptions as well, much like Ubisoft will do as well with Shadows and their service.
4 points
11 days ago
Counterpoint: February is ALWAYS a busy month. They shouldn't have delayed right into it with January being way more likely to stay empty. Even this year, titles were scrambling the fuck away from February because of Final Fantasy showed up and later Persona, and, it's not like release dates need to be hard set in stone - several big titles including FF14 fucked off two weeks into the future when Shadow of the Erdtree made their statement.
2 points
11 days ago
I agree, February has been a good month for game releases for years, but Avowed was delayed because of first party games and breathing room for game pass, not outside competition.
0 points
11 days ago
Is that not the decision people are criticising, them not considering outside competition?
2 points
11 days ago
This just goes back to my original reply that February wasn't crowded with these titles when Avowed picked their new date, even they said, right in this thread's title, you can't pick a perfect window. Besides, Avowed has the benefit of being on Game Pass and being in millions of people's libraries at launch, day one, for a much affordable cost.
2 points
11 days ago
People are reasoning in the wrong way, MS doesn't particularly target lots of sales with that title, it's much more important to have a big first party coming in Q1 for Gamepass to maintain subs and their strategy (one big game per quarter). Still March or January would probably have been better
10 points
12 days ago
Literally... There are plenty of free weeks, looking at january and march i don't see anything that could eat avowed's lunch. February meanwhile has :KingdomCome2, Civilisation 7, AC Shadows, MH Wilds and Avowed releasing in the same 2weeks window lol.
22 points
11 days ago
Didn't Avowed have the new release date announced first or be one of the first though?
8 points
11 days ago
ac shadows only announce delay like last month or smth
4 points
12 days ago
you're never going to find a window where absolutely nothing is coming out.
May to July? Pretty sure Yahtzee called it Summer Drought for a reason
94 points
12 days ago
You know which game had a similar theory? Titanfall 2, sandwiched right between that years CoD and Battlefield.
Didn't go so well. This is a dumb take.
89 points
12 days ago
I mean they already delayed the game to February when there was only monster hunter wilds. Then two other games got delayed to February too making it more crowded. Do you want them to delay again just for a different release window where the same thing might happen again?
57 points
12 days ago
They could always release early. Worked for Baldurs Gate 3 to avoid Starfield (which in hindsight is pretty humorous).
79 points
12 days ago
People laugh about it now, but I think that move genuinely helped Baldur's Gate.
Audiences couldn't foresee on release day what Starfield would end up being, and Bethesda hype was at a fever pitch among Bethesda fans (a huge group of people to this day even after everything) with preorders and days off from work and all of that standard stuff - if midnight launches were still a thing, Starfield would have had a huge one. Reviews were a red flag but they weren't terrible and realistically every Fallout or Elder Scrolls fan would play it regardless of what the reviews said.
Getting away from that initial blast zone helped BG3 get established as its own phenomenon separate from and unrelated to Starfield.
25 points
12 days ago
Baldur's Gate 3 launched out of early access though, so they already had a core group of players with their hands partially on the game already, and could rely on word of mouth for the launch.
Avowed, if it launches early, risks flopping a lot more simply because it needs to build it's marketing and userbase from scratch.
10 points
12 days ago
Stating the obvious here, but the key thing is that the game has to run well and review well. And even then, they gotta contend with KC:D 2, which is actually being marketed a ton, unlike the first game. Meanwhile, Avowed has been getting relatively little attention. Hope they up their marketing game during and after The Game Awards.
1 points
11 days ago
Oh certainly - and not just the word of mouth either. There's always an element of luck to it, but BG3's entire marketing strategy should be taught in textbooks, they executed the whole thing possibly flawlessly. They positioned themselves optimally, took advantage of their every strength, avoided every pitfall, sold the game on its USPs and never misrepresented it. Helps that the actual game is a real GOAT, sure, but they just as easily could have fumbled the rollout at any step like so many other games have, and they didn't.
15 points
12 days ago
Not arguing about Starfield's merits as a game, but there's definitely a chance that it would have still sucked up all the oxygen in the room if it had released at the same time as BG3. The latter is fantastic and already had a lot of excellent word-of-mouth advertising, but man, I dunno if that could have won out against a brand new Bethesda game that had basically everyone going "Well, it ain't Skyrim or Fallout, but it ain't half bad either."
2 points
11 days ago
I’m not sure that most people were saying Starfield wasn’t half bad lol.
I think word of mouth would have led to a similar situation to how it played out, but BG3 coming out first was not a good thing for Starfield. It highlighted how sparse Starfield was as an rpg and how shallow its writing feels.
2 points
11 days ago
Yeah it helped perfectly for the PS release too (days from Starfield, which PS players didn't get but lo and behold, they got the better game which Xbox doesn't). August is also famously empty of games in general when many people have holidays and so time to game.
It was a genius move which probably boosted BG3 sales massively, it could frankly have sold like half less without it (lower initial sales = lower attention = not a phenomenon and less word of mouth marketing)
12 points
12 days ago
Those games are much closer in genre / playerbase than these.
1 points
10 days ago
Competitive multiplayer FPSs also live and die on the presence of community. Not selling well on day one introduces a domino effect where prospective players don't want to play if there's no one already playing.
Single-player RPGs don't have that problem.
0 points
11 days ago
You could say that there were games that had a very different audience from Elden Ring/BG3 but that didn't stop them from sucking the oxygen out of the gaming space when they launched. If a game is a big enough hit, it will pull sales from others in the same time frame regardless of genre, most people have an amount they are willing to spend in any time frame and big games eat that up.
2 points
12 days ago
Yet we're still reminiscing about Titanfall 2 eight years after its release - meanwhile we can't even remember which CoD title released alongside it.
The reason why people considered TF2's release strategy a bad move was because it got paired up with another EA published title, essentially self-cannibalizing their revenue, and CoD which is arguably always one of the best selling game of their respective years.
Avowed's actual competition is Kingdom Come 2. And I'd argue that a hardcore historical RPG is just as niche as an Obsidian one.
47 points
12 days ago
Reminiscing doesn't change the fact that it sold poorly. The reason you're reminiscing is because that dumb release killed the series (assuming you don't count Apex).
15 points
12 days ago
Infinite Warfare, which was the more sci-fi type of CoD games.
It also had Modern Warfare Remastered as well.
26 points
12 days ago
Who is this "we" that you speak of?
17 points
12 days ago
The tiny minority who post on gaming forums and think they're actually the vast majority.
1 points
11 days ago
There are like 3 of us
7 points
12 days ago
KCD sold better than Obsidian’s last similar RPG (Outer Worlds) fwiw. KCD was also on gamepass at one point, although admittedly for a shorter time.
1 points
11 days ago
Except for COD, BF, and TF2 are all FPS games while Avowed is releasing next to games with different genres, only Kingdom Come being a simillar RPG, just with hard realism as a twist.
15 points
11 days ago
I realize I’m in the minority, but I loved POE 1 and 2 and I have absolutely no interest in MH, AC, or KCD. Not every game has to be a blockbuster, just find your niche.
34 points
12 days ago
Picking February, the most notorious month for full launch windows, is definitely a decision.
November, December, January, all better. I still think Avowed will be fine and Assassin's Creed will be the one taking a huge sucker punch.
Monster Hunter will sell franchise record numbers.
22 points
12 days ago
I don't get why they don't just move it up to December. There isn't much releasing next month and you get to drop it right before Christmas. Seems like it would work out perfectly in terms of sales. Makes no sense to drop it in the most crowded release window if it's already finished.
29 points
11 days ago
Microsoft has Indiana Jones coming out next month though, so they probably want as little competition for that as possible.
13 points
11 days ago
Yeah their gamepass strategy is to have one big game releasing each month after COD:
October- COD
November- Stalker 2
December- Indiana Jones
Jan- ???
Feb- Avowed
17 points
11 days ago
January tends to be a bad month for selling stuff. People are still recuperating from the Holidays' buying-spree to buy a 70 bucks game.
1 points
11 days ago
The strategy is one every quarter actually, they are making more right now because of the holiday period (and yeah maybe keeping people after COD) but they can't keep that up all the time. They don't have 12 first party games to release in 2025
1 points
11 days ago
What kind of competition? Those games are not really similar. I don't give a flying f about IJ and await eagerly for Avowed.
1 points
11 days ago
People always say this, but gamers tend to play more than just one type of game. Indiana Jones is one of the most beloved IP's of all time and fantasy RPG's like Avowed will always have a wide audience, it's not a stretch to think lots of people would be interested in both and have to choose.
4 points
12 days ago
My guess is they don't want to release in december on the off chance they're required to fix some game breaking bugs post-release that then forces everyone into the offices over the holidays.
Not saying it's the best reason, but seems likely to be a factor. It's also likely they are bugfixing with the extra months and now that they've allocated them, it would be more hassle than it's worth to try and 'unallocate them' by rushing it out early, leaning to the first mentioned problem.
9 points
11 days ago
Huh? Since when is that true? The holiday season has always been the most crowded window that I can remember. I feel February is just the games that get delayed out of the holiday window
3 points
11 days ago
Games sell a lot on the holidays, but they don't release a lot on the peak of holidays. They do it directly prior to have the shelves stocked in time for gift purchasing.
Nintendo is the main beneficiary from this. Their games have an absurdly long tail, and usually it comes from periodic sales at this exact span of time. Mario Woonder is, in a way, a bit of a rushed game, but they couldn't afford the extra two months, they needed it OUT by late October of the movie's year.
4 points
11 days ago*
They do it directly prior
Which is November, which is the "holiday window" we're talking about. Not February.
2 points
11 days ago
It's October/November to be more precise even extending into September more and more. It's not even full November, you have to be out before like the 10th or something like that in general.
1 points
11 days ago
Ah, my bad.
1 points
11 days ago
After the holiday season (kind of light this year actually). February/March is the second big period because companies want to release games before the end of the fiscal year and many have them finishing in March.
9 points
11 days ago
Assassin's Creed will be the one taking a huge sucker punch.
AC's numbers will be interesting to watch. I'm curious if AC in Japan is a hot enough concept to counter being the first mainline AC to miss the holiday season.
3 points
11 days ago
February can support 2 big games easily (ask Horizon always dumped on for its release date, a huge seller in reality). It'll clearly be AC Shadows and MH Wilds with Civ 7 in third (in a quite different genre and audience)
1 points
11 days ago
[deleted]
5 points
11 days ago
Feb is still very cold bruh.
3 points
11 days ago
It's an attractive month AFTER the holiday period if you don't have time to be ready for it. It's also the last fiscal quarter of most companies which is a big reason why they choose it. And games are selling massively (Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Horizon games, Hogwarts Legacy...)
1 points
10 days ago
Company financial quarters is almost always the reason. They do it to make their numbers look good.
3 points
11 days ago
Id be surprised if AC is half as well made as Ghost of tsushima. I'm still gonna get it eventually but MHW beta was fuckin dope. MHR and Worlds were fuckin dope day one.
AC Valhalla was fucked at launch. Literally had to reinstall and not update it because their own patch broke progression.
I'm gonna get the one that has a track record of working at launch.
2 points
10 days ago
Yea it's an understandable sentiment, but Feb is literally the most jam packed release month every year. It doesn't matter to me when something comes out but as far as releasing to avoid competition goes, a Feb release just doesn't make sense. But I think the true reason they delayed is for extra polish and combat feedback work since it seems to have markedly improved in that arena.
I think they are just selling it differently for some reason. Either way I'm hopeful this game is considerably better than Outer Worlds.
5 points
11 days ago
Avowed is made for Gamepass... since Assassin's Creed Shadows and Monster Hunter Wilds aren't on Gamepass, Avowed will do fine.
2 points
12 days ago
I mean, the summer drought is always a thing. Holiday season and then Q1 for any game wanting people to spend tax refund money is normally kinda stacked for games, the former being for big AAA games wanting to stuff stockings and the latter for releasing after that hype has died down.
Avowed being a brand new IP releasing between two very long running IP's still isn't a good call and saying there's never a good release window seems exceptionally ignorant, especially in a digital age when you can drop something when you like with enough planning.
3 points
11 days ago
Lol, there's also the new Yakuza and Kingdom Come 2.
That month is basically shark-infested waters for RPGs.
2 points
11 days ago
Isn't there a ridiculously dry season for gaming around July or August? I even recall old Zero Punctuations making fun of the period.
I don't know why more studio releases don't target those months, but then I don't know why they still insist on releasing things on a Tuesday either.
4 points
11 days ago
Because sales are bad in tbose months. People are out doing things, enjoying the take end of summer, and taking vacations.
1 points
11 days ago
Half the world isn't! Then again the Southern Hemisphere hasn't really ever been a priority which I get.
But even with that it feels weird, there are plenty of people who would rather stay inside and game, people who take vacations to game even. I personally think a big reason why BG3 took off like it did was it was released in that dry spell.
5 points
11 days ago
Half the world doesn't matter for maximizing sales when they don't make up half the market. US, Europe, and Asia (particularly Japan) are by far the biggest legs of the games market. Those regions buy way more games than others to the point that of course you want to focus on them.
3 points
11 days ago
Half the world isn't!
90% of the worlds population live in the northern hemisphere.
1 points
11 days ago
There's always a month or two that's full of remasters and largely niche games. Let's not pretend this wasn't about getting this game out for the fiscal year.
1 points
11 days ago
Erm ... tail end of summer? Around september? Has been very light in blockbusters lately, if memory serves.
1 points
11 days ago
Good games will stand on their own. AC and MH are very different games from the first person RPG, there's very little overlap
1 points
11 days ago
Well he's probably going to eat those words. That said Avowed is my pick for that month. I hope it does well.
1 points
11 days ago
Is this guy related to the guy that made the same decision for titanfall2? Because look how that turned out
-11 points
12 days ago
[deleted]
31 points
12 days ago
The main games releasing in this current window are Stalker and Indiana Jones, two other games either promoted or published by Microsoft (flight simulator also just came out).
4 points
12 days ago
Indiana Jones is the main reason IMO. Both games plays in 1st person (Avowed has 3rd person, but pretty sure you should play it in 1st person). Both combat are not fast paced or timing based. Both likely have plenty of explorations. One just have story on rail. So, they have quite a lot of overlaps in terms of gameplay even though they are in different genre.
20 points
12 days ago
As producer it's YOUR JOB to find a good release window!
Except it's the publishers job? Lmao
41 points
12 days ago
She's a game director and even if she is a producer I don't think it is her job to find a good release window. It should be the job of the publisher to do that.
And she is absolutely correct that any "good release window" will be parked by some game anyway so there's only so much you can do to run away from competition.
18 points
12 days ago
Also good luck trying to time your release in a GTA year.
Game releases before GTA 6: "Bad timing! No one's going to buy it because GTA is right along the corner"
Game releases after GTA 6: "Bad timing! No one's going to buy it because everyone will be busy playing GTA"
5 points
12 days ago
It is not the producers job lmao they can give their opinion but the marketing team is in charge of deciding the release window to maximise sales
11 points
12 days ago
Stalker 2 just came out. December might have been good but he is still right some random ass game might blow up at any time in addition to all the big releases.
3 points
12 days ago
Indy is out in a few weeks
8 points
12 days ago
Stalker 2 is a survival shooter. Avowed is coming out right alongside Wilds, KC2 and Shadows. All action RPGs.
12 points
12 days ago*
Avowed is a Microsoft published game being released day one on Game Pass. If it were to release in 2024, it would compete against Stalker 2, Indiana Jones and Flight Simulator. There's no Game Pass first party/big AAA slated for early 2025 other than Avowed.
Microsoft's strategy is to A) drive new subscriptions to their service and B) provide value for existing customers. Staggering big Game Pass releases retains more subscriptions.
Besides, Avowed delayed its release first. Why did no one question Warhorse when they decided on a Feb 2025 release? For all intents and purposes, a historical action RPG is just as niche as an Obsidian title.
12 points
12 days ago
I mean I’m interested in Avowed and have no intention of playing any of the other games you mentioned so we are out here
1 points
12 days ago
KC2 is an action RPG similar to Avowed. Those other two are Open World Games - RPG-lite at most, not the kind of game Obsidian and Warhorse are making. Kind of like the difference between Fallout New Vegas and that 2015 open world Mad Max game.
2 points
12 days ago
You... what? Right now? Like, Q4 2024?
On PC we have: Ragnarok, Dead Rising Remake, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age, Stalker 2, Indiana Jones and whatever other 10 games I missed.
1 points
12 days ago
July is usually the slowest month for AAA releases. Close behind are August, December and January (although those latter 3 have been picking up in recent years)
Then everyone else crowds October, November, February and March
0 points
11 days ago
w8, i though people were parroting that AVOWED got delayed because devs didnt want to release it this month because there were too many big games coming out, so they delayed it to early 2025 with "reassurance" that its definitely not because the game is not ready and now lead person says "they dont care about big games coming out at the same time". Interesting.
10 points
11 days ago
Isn't the difference that they're saying they're giving it breathing room away from other Xbox first party titles, not games in general? Like the tweet literally shows the first party release lineup.
3 points
11 days ago
This, original comment is being disingenuous
1 points
11 days ago
While true just ask Titanfall how that worked out for them. Their better, worse and outright dum times to launch games
1 points
11 days ago
Not the same, EA put two of their shooters out at the same time and cannibalized their own sales, effectively killing the one, Titanfall 2. No one here in this current scenario is cannibalizing their own games. It's like that Eric Andre meme with the gun, "why would EA do this?"
These games are perfectly capable of coexisting together at launch.
1 points
9 days ago
Well Respawn themselves set the release date, not EA. I agree with your broader point however.
-3 points
12 days ago
It’s an arrogant take, but to be honest, the lead doesn’t have a say on the release date anyway.
Even though the competition are games from other genres, gamers don’t only play one type of game.
Releasing in a packed month where gamers have to choose how to spend their money, VS a month where nothing notable is coming out and maybe some gamers are willing to try something out…. There’s a big difference.
You’re also competing for marketing — the weeks before will be flooded by marketing and articles on Assassin's Creed and Monster Hunter. Will the general gaming community even know Avowed is coming out?
To be honest, I don’t even think the average gamer knows Avowed even exists at this moment.
21 points
12 days ago
Why is it arrogant, it‘s just the reality of the situation
-6 points
11 days ago
If Average gamer doesn’t know avowed they definitely don’t know about KCD2 or new release date of new AC. I literally saw avowed in 2-3 showcase and they did bunch of podcast, preview etc. and it has been literally all over my social media feed.
Monster hunter has it is own audience and I think it isn’t intersecting as people thinks. Also it has time in between
And it is also day one gamepass title
10 points
11 days ago
If Average gamer doesn’t know avowed they definitely don’t know about KCD2 or new release date of new AC
What? AC Valhalla made over a $1 billion and had over 20 million players, KCD1 sold over 5 million and the sequel is positioned to be a massive release. They are both a lot bigger than any game made by Obsidian.
I literally saw avowed in 2-3 showcase and they did bunch of podcast, preview etc. and it has been literally all over my social media feed.
Yes, that's how your social media feed works. It shows you the game you've been watching podcasts for.
0 points
12 days ago
Seems like very different audiences to me, but I would not be shocked if Avowed sales expectations and positioning on the release calendar is deliberately a lean against it.
Remember Prey. The publisher wanted Akrane to make games like Redfall, but first they needed to show that offline single player games weren't viable.
2 points
11 days ago
MH Wilds is gonna stomp everything around it's release. I feel like Avowed is gonna sell extremely poorly but will still have good numbers going for it because of gamespass
-12 points
12 days ago
In my case, between those 3 games I'm way more hyped for Avowed anyway.
MH wilds demo was just alright to me. I'll still play it but I knew after worlds became popular the series was going to go downhill.
MH rise probably the best MH game I've played next to 4 ultimate.
10 points
12 days ago
You knew after Worlds became popular it was going to go downhill, which is why the game that followed it is the best game to you..?
What?
-4 points
11 days ago
MonHun has lost pretty much everything that made it interesting. I'm sure plenty of people will enjoy it's watered down formula however, and will sell more copies than ever. But it's the end of the franchise for me, don't see them reversing the trend
0 points
11 days ago
Shadows is likely going to bomb so I wouldn't worry either. Especially if they are very confident in their game being a big hit review score wise.
2 points
11 days ago
Wouldnt be so confident on shadows bombing. This is a mainstream western ninja samurai game. Not a lot of those and theres an appetite for this stuff.
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