Commence collar tugging.
Square Enix has been in the news a fair amount recently, and not for good things. And if you thought that streak was going to end soon, well, I’ve got some bad news. Specifically, Babylon’s Fall might be their biggest dud in a long time. And that’s taking into consideration the fact that they actually put out a remastered version of Chrono Cross.
Babylon’s Fall, however, managed to set a new high… low(?) score this week. As Steam Charts shows, Tuesday night saw the player base dip to all of one active player. Which is kinda bad for a live service game that sells for full AAA retail price.
For frame of reference, Square Enix’s other disasters, Marvel’s Avengers and Outriders, are both doing better than Babylon’s Fall. They haven’t seemed to have ever dipped that low. And they’re both widely considered to be dead games.
Granted, this is just on PC. There’s no corresponding service like Steam Charts that I know of for either PlayStation or Xbox player counts. That said, I can’t imagine it’s doing much better on either platform. My interest evaporated the second I found out that it was a live service game, and most word of mouth isn’t good. Frequent points raised are the fact that they probably shouldn’t have charged full price for a live service game, and also that it shouldn’t be paywalled as hard as it is, as well as the fact that there was basically no marketing for it.
As if to add insult to injury, Platinum Games’ new CEO has stated that their focus in the future will be less on expertly crafted titles like Bayonetta, and more on live service games. Factor in Square Enix divesting themselves of some of their western studios, and the picture gets a bit more grim. The likelihood that nobody leans the proper lesson from this game’s failure is… well, it’s unbelievably high.
Source: PC Gamer
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