Arkane Austin and Redfall: what happened?

[80251]

Supposedly Arkane Austin developed Dishonored, Prey (I'm not sure which one), but they really dropped the ball with the $69 Redfall. The game has mostly negative reviews on steam and Redfall is priced like a AAA title!

 

[cvaldes]

It is unlikely that we (the general public) will ever know the full behind-the-scenes story as to why this game has turned out to be an abject failure.

However I would put the majority of the blame on the game director along with other senior managers on this project. Bad titles like this are the result of poor decisions being made 2-3 years earlier for key elements like storyline, characters, visual design, combat mechanics, overall gameplay, etc., most of which cannot be fixed by a patch.

It was likely apparent to key Arkane and Bethesda managers a year ago that they had laid a turd. They decided to go ahead with the title as is because tossing everything out and starting over would have been too expensive and time consuming.

Pricing it at $70 retail was ballsy however they also put it on Xbox Game Pass on day 1 which is the 2023 equivalent of a film going straight to video. My guess is some people will play it with their Xbox Game Pass subscription a couple of times then move on to something else.

I expect to see this type of massive failure more frequently in the upcoming years. The gaming community has low standards which continue to drop year after year. If the industry really cared, Cyberpunk 2077 would have been the last massive failure. But no, the video game industry is comfortable pumping out garbage because they know a certain segment of the marketplace will happily pay for it.

When things start going south, the best and the brightest are the first to leave (this is definitely not specific to the video game industry). So likely Arkane Austin's best employees left this sinking ship and those behind were stuck pulling the galley oars, many whom probably needed to finish the project to put on their resumés.

So there's some reasonable speculation for your otherwise unanswerable question.

 

[80251]

Just out of curiosity was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided a failure from a profit standpoint as well?

 

[cvaldes]

Just out of curiosity was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided a failure from a profit standpoint as well?

I have no idea. I do not have access to that game developer's books. Or any game company's accounting files for that matter.

The Mankind Divided main developer was Eidos-Montreal (published by Square Enix Europe) not Arkane Austin though so a totally different team. However there were other companies involved in the development: Nixxes, Feral Interactive, and General Arcade. My assumption is that profitability varied for each company.

Publishers typically do not disclose net profit. They will use general vague terms ("it sold beyond our expectations!") without disclosing costs.

Feel free to contact Square Enix for clarification. Start with the PR or investor relations department. If they divulge financial performance on individual game titles, they will let you know or point you to the proper location for that information. If it is publicly available, a search engine probably indexed it years ago but I will not play Internet search engine on your behalf.

 

[80251]

What kind of profit margins do games publishers expect on AAA titles? Millions? Tens of millions?

 

[ir_cow]

Another story of a game being pushed out before its ready. M$ clearly had a firm deadline.... It kinda seems like the game just left Alpha and is ready for the main development stage.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Clearly games these days need to use vast amounts of VRAM to be good anyway apparently.

 

[kiddagoat]

I mean most games now seem to be games as a service, they release it and then improve it over time. I have about 6 hours in on Redfall myself and I don't think it is as bad all these reviewers make it out to be. Granted I have it through Game Pass. It's probably been 10 years at least since games were full fledged and released complete. I mean games even have planned DLC that they can nickel and dime you over when it should have been in the game in the first place.

 

[64K]

What kind of profit margins do games publishers expect on AAA titles? Millions? Tens of millions?

For AAA Titles I would say tens of millions profit is an absolute minimum. Looking at Activision with COD sales they make hundreds of millions of dollars profit every year on the new COD. EA cancelled Dead Space 4 because DS3 didn't meet EA's expectations of 5 million units sold. Cyberpunk 2077 has sold 20 million copies. The king of all AAA titles has sold 175 million copies of GTA5 and who knows how many Shark Cards. We're talking billions of dollars profit on GTA5. Developing games and marketing them are very expensive but most Publishers make a lot of profit on them.

 

[80251]

@64K
Wow, I never knew. I remember reading the gaming industry had long since surpassed the movie industry in profits, but I never realized by how much.

Maybe I should invest some $$$ in Rockstar before they come out with GTAVI!

 

[Hyderz]

Redfall is like a frozen meal being microwaved less than its supposed to be and the outside is nice and hot but inside is still frozen

 

[joemama]

There's a lot of videos of the game on reddit, it really seems that the developers were in a rush to finish it, leaving a lot of bugs and flaws

 

[Bomby569]

Prey and dishonered (great games) didn't make millions so they decided they needed to do multiplayer games (they said so), so now they are in a even worst position releasing crap game after crap game. Bethesda/MS will probably shut them down and disband them soon to other projects. Can't say i'm sorry for them.

 

[biggermesh]

What happened is that Bethesda execs did not want another dishonored/prey as they did not meet their profilts targets, so they asked for a generic online loot game that you can put micro transaction into because that's what made money when development started. If you look for it deathloop has those same characteristics but arkane lyon was able to make a game out of it.

 

[GerKNG]

Microsoft to Arkane: Make a Game.
what about a farcry like looter shooter with vampires. we need around 4-5 years and x million dollars.

sounds awful... alright here is 1/3 of the money that you need and the deadline is in 18 months...
...Redfail releases

 

[mclaren85]

When I watch the trailer, I mostly feel Dishonored vibes. The atmosphere, soundtrack, characters and even the fonts has many resemblence with Dishonored. Will definitely play no matter what the authorities say. Waiting for Skidrow!

 

[Sithaer]

Tried it yesterday since I have an active game pass almost till the end of 2023 and the game was 'partially' marketed as a looter shooter which is one of my fav genres.
Well its not exactly what I was expecting, maybe it gets better at a higher level and whatnot but I don't really feel like getting there in its current state.

Even if I ignore the technical issues it has currently 'it stutters a lot on my end with bad GPU % usage at certain areas for no apparent reason' I'm just not sure what this game is trying to be.

 

[Space Lynx]

Supposedly Arkane Austin developed Dishonored, Prey (I'm not sure which one), but they really dropped the ball with the $69 Redfall. The game has mostly negative reviews on steam and Redfall is priced like a AAA title!

probably too much partying, Austin is a party city now, and it used not to be. lol

also complacency destroys everyone eventually.

 

[Bomby569]

Tried it yesterday since I have an active game pass almost till the end of 2023 and the game was 'partially' marketed as a looter shooter which is one of my fav genres.
Well its not exactly what I was expecting, maybe it gets better at a higher level and whatnot but I don't really feel like getting there in its current state.

Even if I ignore the technical issues it has currently 'it stutters a lot on my end with bad GPU % usage at certain areas for no apparent reason' I'm just not sure what this game is trying to be.

Looter shooter with a brain, some elements of story, i think that was the objective. At this point they are a company that still wants to make smart games but needs to do them for dumb people / people that don't want to think. This is the result

I think they would be better off picking a lane at this point, and stopping the hybrid approach. People that want looter shooter don't want to think, and people that want rich story gameplay don't want looter shooters.

 

[Sithaer]

Looter shooter with a brain, some elements of story, i think that was the objective. At this point they are a company that still wants to make smart games but needs to do them for dumb people / people that don't want to think. This is the result

I think they would be better off picking a lane at this point, and stopping the hybrid approach. People that want looter shooter don't want to think, and people that want rich story gameplay don't want looter shooters.

I loved the first Dishonored and plan to play the second too.
2017 Prey already wasn't my cup of tea, I'm not a fan of running around collecting materials to craft my stuff and whatnot.
Looter shooters do require thinking but only at the end game level where if you want your build to work properly you need to understand how the game and your skills/synergies work,etc. 'same as ARPGs'

Redfall gives me some weird vibe of Far Cry with Vampires and some loot on the side but with a more cautious gameplay style. 'tho I would have to see a high level gameplay to judge that part'
Dunno I might check it again later the year before my game pass expires but for now I have better games to play than this.

 

[droopyRO]

Clearly games these days need to use vast amounts of VRAM to be good anyway apparently.

It looks slightly better than Dishonored 2, that game barely uses 4GB of vRAM. I saw a benchmark where a 4090 used 17GB of VRAM with this game.

 

[Bomby569]

I loved the first Dishonored and plan to play the second too.
2017 Prey already wasn't my cup of tea, I'm not a fan of running around collecting materials to craft my stuff and whatnot.
Looter shooters do require thinking but only at the end game level where if you want your build to work properly you need to understand how the game and your skills/synergies work,etc. 'same as ARPGs'

Redfall gives me some weird vibe of Far Cry with Vampires and some loot on the side but with a more cautious gameplay style. 'tho I would have to see a high level gameplay to judge that part'
Dunno I might check it again later the year before my game pass expires but for now I have better games to play than this.

I think peak Arkane was dishonored death of the outsider, maybe not for everyone, but i loved it. Just like Hitman you can do whatever you want to get it done, so much freedom and great level design. Not so much of a story but i loved it.

Borderlands for me is the best looter shooter, i love the mechanics, i would prefer a better story like the first games, but i still enjoy just mindless shooting and looting.

 

[Sithaer]

Borderlands for me is the best looter shooter, i love the mechanics, i would prefer a better story like the first games, but i still enjoy just mindless shooting and looting.

Same here, I've actually went back to BL 3 for a last rodeo with a Fl4k cause thats the last char I'm missing at max lvl so thats what I'm playing now.
I guess I would have to play Redfall with a different mindset to actually enjoy it but I'm not sure if I have the patience for that.

Dishonored 2+Death of the outsider is definitely on my list to play tho. 'I did try Dishonored 2's demo when I had my RX 570, it was pretty good from what I remember just never got to play the full game'

 

[Mister300]

Runs smooth on my 3080 at max eye candy, no VRAM issue, gameplay is like deathloop, prey and any other vamp/loot/explore genre, just can't get excited about it.

Runs smooth on my 3080 at 1440p max eye candy, no VRAM issue, gameplay is like deathloop, prey and any other vamp/loot/explore genre, just can't get excited about it.

 

[64K]

Unfortunately Arkane is swirling down the toilet bowl. Asking $70 for this turd is a damn joke. Don't buy this game right now. Wait to see if it ever gets properly patched and polished. According to the other site that I trust for unbiased reviews besides TPU:

Game crashes when trying to log onto the server.
Traversal stutters are even worse than Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Graphics are really bad.
Dynamic Shadows look bad.
Major pop-ins.
Objects change their detail quality right in front of you.
Lighting is subpar.

The only good thing that the author found in his performance review was that the game ran significantly faster on AMD GPUs for those that are running one.