Kotaku: Xbone, W10, Halo 5, Minecraft por debajo de expectativas de MS + caída de Lionhead

- La visión de Phil Harrison para todos sus estudios en Europa era ahora para juegos basados ​​en el servicio . Eso es lo que él pensaba que era el futuro de los juegos. No quería hacer nada que fuera para una caja de £ 50. Dale y olvidalo. Quería gran cantidad de ingresos, incluso si no había una explosión más pequeña por adelantado de los ingresos". Esta creencia sería lo que determinanía la dirección de Lionhead (y, a juzgar por Sea of Thieves, Rare también) " pensé que iba a estar trabajando en un juego para un solo jugador, una versión más avanzada de Fable 3 ", dice una fuente. " Pero cuando fueron a conseguir la aprobación para el juego, los tres diseñadores de alto nivel que estaban echando se les dijo que " no se dará permiso para hacer Fable 4, o algo que sea la sombra de Fable 4'.

- "El juego fué expuesto a Harrison como un juego de mediana escala, un juego AA. Se suponía que iba a estar a la venta significativamente más temprano; habría sido en verano pasado" , dice una fuente. " Sin embargo, el tamaño del juego siguió creciendo. Y eso fué porque estábamos el servicio de dos amos. Reportamos a Phil Harrison, pero también tuvimos otra persona al que no informa: Phil Spencer [jefe de la división de Xbox]. Y quiere una hermosa experiencia de calidad AAA que para vender Xbox Ones . Así que ahora estamos haciendo un free-to-play que es tan caro como un juego AAA. Muy peligroso."

- Xbox One y Windows 10 no estaban cumpliendo las expectativas de MS dice un ex-empleado cercano de MS: "Tendría que haber el doble de Xbox One y Windows 10 en comparación con las que hay ahora."

- "Las first no lo están haciendo tan bien, Halo 5 es una gran pérdida en comparación con las proyecciones, y lo mismo con Minecraft.

- "La Windows Store es un gigantesco desastre . Está on-fire. El 98% de las ventas de PC de Rise of the Tomb Raider, un título de bandera de W10, son de Steam".

Rise of the Tomb Raider ha vendido unas 15.000 copias en la Windows 10 Store.

- "Lo mismo para Minecraft. Eso nos duele también. La tienda es un desastre; el número de personas que ni siquiera se ha podido instalar el juego desde la tienda de Microsoft fue... significativa".




Cita
Something else happened in 2012: former Sony executive Phil Harrison joined Microsoft as corporate vice president in charge of its European game development efforts. Harrison has a long history in the games industry – he is a part of the story of a great many high-profile games of the last two decades – and he had a very clear vision for where games were going. [B]Phil passionately believed in games-as-service: in other words, long-tail online games that evolved with their player bases, and were probably free-to-play. This belief would be what determined Lionhead’s direction (and, judging by Sea of Thieves, Rare’s too) “I thought I was going to be working on a single-player game, a more advanced version of Fable 3,” says one source. “But when they went to get that game approved, the three senior designers who were pitching it were told that ‘you will not be given permission to make Fable 4, or something that is a shadow Fable 4’. Phil Harrison’s vision for all of his studios in Europe was now for service-based games. That’s what he thought was the future of games. He didn’t want to make anything that was a £50 box, fire and forget. He wanted long tails of revenue, even if there was a smaller up-front burst of revenue.”

Cita
“The game was pitched to Harrison as a medium-scale game, a AA game. It was supposed to be out significantly earlier; it would have been last summer,” says a source. “But the size of the game just kept growing, and the fidelity value of the game kept growing. And that was because we were the servant of two masters. We reported to Phil Harrison, the master of Europe, but we also had another person that he does not report to: Phil Spencer [head of the Xbox division]. And he wants a beautiful AAA quality experience that he can use to sell Xbox Ones. So now we’re making a free-to-play game that’s as expensive as an AAA game. Very dangerous.” “The original pitch was for a really cheap game – it certainly wasn’t the $75m we ended up spending,” corroborates another source. “There were going to be three phases of release. But as time wore on, there were various voices that made it more complicated. For example, Spencer was very keen on having the Fable features: it was crucial that it could be played single player, for instance that was suddenly a big important thing. It was also supposed to be “the prettiest ever online game” – that was Harrison, he wanted it to be prettier than anything else out there.

Cita
Xbox One sales were falling far short of projections. Windows 10 installs, too, were nowhere near what Microsoft had planned.

“Let’s be honest – we make our projections based on a series of assumptions,” reflects a former employee who worked closely with Microsoft. “There are supposed to be 2x as many Xboxes out there as there are right now. There are supposed to be 2x as many Windows 10 installs as there currently are. So now, when we look at how much money Legends could make in the free-to-play universe, you have to halve it."


Cita
“First-party studios isn’t doing so well. Halo 5 is a big miss, versus projections. Minecraft is a big miss, versus projections. Compared to either one of those, Lionhead is practically a rounding error. But I think if your division is under-performing, you have to go to your boss with something on the altar.”

Edit:

Cita
“When we started the project we weren’t aware of Windows 10,” says a source. “We were going to ship on Xbox One initially and then we wanted to come out on PC at a later point, most likely though Steam. But we got burnt quite badly.”

“Without Steam, without other platforms, it was just painful,” says another. “The Windows Store is a giant disaster. It’s on fire. 98% of PC copies of Rise of the Tomb Raider, a flagship Windows 10 game, were bought on Steam. The same is true for Minecraft. That hurt us, too. The store’s a mess; the number of people who couldn’t even install the game from the Microsoft store was… significant.”

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/06/09/how- ... n-lionhead
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