Did it "flop" though? Not that I am defending the game, but I thought it had healthy sales. People bought it because they liked the first game. A good franchise can coast off it's earlier popularity even after getting woke. Basically spending the fan credit they banked.
e.g. Mass Effect 3 was a disaster, but that didn't truly show through until Andromeda.
People don’t seem to understand that popular IP and creators tank after their first bad game. Look at The Last Jedi. It made $1.3 billion, but it was a failure because of what it did to Star Wars. None of what followed was good either, but TLJ was the first real misstep. People just had to pay to see it in order to find it.
TFA reaction was basically split into three groups:
Group one basically hated it flat out. Correctly diagnosed all the problems. I think this was probably the smallest group at the time. In retrospect, they were also completely correct.
Group two was lukewarm on it. Acknowledged problems, but also held out some hope that the second part would retroactively fix problems with the first by explaining certain things—Rey’s power, the backstory for basically everything—etc.
Group three just uncritically enjoyed it, either because they were lefty feminists, enjoy pacing and spectacle over consistency, were blinded by love for the brand, or a bit of all of the above.
Then TLJ happened. It not only dashed every hope group two had, it also did other stuff that was even worse than failing to fill in the gaps of the first movie. It was so bad it pushed some people from group three into admitting group one was right. It still had fans, of course, but not enough. However, had TLJ been awesome, I think it could have gone the other way and converted people from group one and group two into being complete fans. TFA may have put a couple cracks in the foundation, but the franchise wasn’t doomed until TLJ chose to take a hammer and chisel to those cracks rather than fixing them.
Oh, yeah, I was in group two as well. I think it was a bit naive, but what can you do? Sometimes you're wrong, and I've definitely learned at least some since then.
I was somewhere between group 1 and 2. I didn't diagnose all of the problems, but I recognized that Rey didn't earn or deserve what she was given, and Han was done triple dirty. Also that it was almost beat for beat, A New Hope. At the time that was the greater sin to me. I remember thinking how incredibly safe and lazy that was. It was such a cowardly move from JJ. Then interview after interview seeing him hailed as a genius, laughable.
TLJ did still turn a profit, but the audience numbers were way down from TFA.
TFA turned a lot of actual Star Wars fans off: the ones who knew the story well enough to recognize it as just a shitty do-over with no
fresh ideas. TLJ was the beginning of the real slide because it turned everyone off: even the normies were able to see at the time that it was shit. I'm not sure TLOU is a good video game allegory for that: even now most gamers will insist the first one was good.
I thought the first WAS good, for one playthrough. But after that, "ball and chain dialogues" would hurt every run afterwards. It wasn't in-your-face queer propaganda until that DLC, which I didn't play.
TLOU1 (with no DLCs), I played it with a dormmate in college, and the game was so piss-easy that we had a rule that you could backseat game at any time, and it had to be obeyed so long as it wasn't immediately suicidal. That made for a fun playthrough, and we both riffed the game the entire time. Game-and-story separation was a common riff. "Oh, the kid is whining again, that means we just killed the last enemy, it's amazing she can instantly tell, I thought for sure there was one more".
...But it's a narrative game with one predetermined ending, and juuust preachy enough to be mildly grating. Which is fine when learning that ending, but not so much on re-experience.
TLJ was so bad that Episode 9, which should have been close to a 3 billion dollar movie like Infinity War and Endgame, barely made more money than Joker and Joker wasn't even released in China.
ME3 was ok until the last 5 minutes just blew out any and all effort put in by the players across 3 entire games. With the added multiplayer mode you could even get enough rewards from there to buff your war campaign points that missing entire chunks of the story rewards wouldn't matter because you still passed the thresholds for the better endings where whatever happened wasn't quite as bad. The Destroy ending for example could either simply wipe out the Reapers and other AI at best, or incinerate the surface of Earth as well at worst killing countless humans and others because the method wasn't working as best as it could.
At that point though it's literally the end of the trilogy so the only ones who can avoid that are those who never played it in the first place and are told by others. TLOU pulled its switch around halfway through the game, so much earlier and susceptible to backlacsh significantly sooner.
I'm amazed that more people didn't consider the story was trash with the intro of ME2. They ignored the consul believing in the reapers than killed Shepard for a time skip. They made the story about fighting bug monsters in a main plot that made no sense unless you already read the script. I could go on and on and on
Its because ME2 was a lot of people's favorites, either for being a lot tighter in the gameplay department or because of the squadmate stories being quite good (with a few really good newcomers). Not to mention the Illusive Man killing it VA wise.
The overall story of ME2 being trash gets forgotten in people's memories until you actually have to go back and replay it. Which means it gets hyped up well beyond its flaws.
TLoU2 had a long and tumultuous development cycle, where they burned and cycled through workers at a rapid pace, getting to the point where every game animator in L.A. outright refused to have any more dealings with Naughty Dog. With that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if they bloated the budget to insane levels that would have needed to sell something like 10 million copies just to break even. Heck, ND was working on a multiplayer spinoff that was abruptly canceled in 2023, which says to me TLoU2 didn't meet expectations. That, or they burned through all their talent and have no one left to make such a game.
How bad? I'm betting Starfield level, a game abandoned by modders even though they are dedicated enough to make Fallout London in F4 engine, only with worse sales.
Part II is one of the best-selling PlayStation 4 games and the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 exclusive, with over four million units sold in its release weekend and over ten million by 2022.
How long until he gets to his point, if he even has one? I stopped when he assumed everyone watching was a fucking moron with his "games do not make 60 dollars of profit when you buy them". No shit Sherlock, there are costs and anything sold by an intermediary be it Steam or Gamestop means the studio takes in even less. If you assume your audience is that dumb I can't imagine any insightful commentary tailored to an audience that dumb.
The budget was way higher than initially thought: $320M including advertising.
The game sold 10 million copies, only 4 million at full price.
Those 4 million copies made $80M, or $20 per copy, due to the retail cut, packaging/shipping and royalty fees.
The other 6 million copies would need to make $240M or $40 per copy in order for the game to break even, which is impossible as they were sold at a discount.
Some comments disagree on how much money Naughty Dog made from digital sales (due to being a first party studio), but even in the best case scenario, the game would barely break even.
A point that he doesn't bring up is that the European market is subject to a high VAT which hurts margins even more when a game is sold at a discount.
How are they gonna market this monstrosity? She's going to look stupid in action/gameplay sequences, and it looks like corporate HR brand in the cut scenes. This might be a true flop. Sci-fi is already more niche than other genres.
Did it "flop" though? Not that I am defending the game, but I thought it had healthy sales. People bought it because they liked the first game. A good franchise can coast off it's earlier popularity even after getting woke. Basically spending the fan credit they banked.
e.g. Mass Effect 3 was a disaster, but that didn't truly show through until Andromeda.
People don’t seem to understand that popular IP and creators tank after their first bad game. Look at The Last Jedi. It made $1.3 billion, but it was a failure because of what it did to Star Wars. None of what followed was good either, but TLJ was the first real misstep. People just had to pay to see it in order to find it.
The first? Really? Not TFA which just did ANH all over again?
TFA reaction was basically split into three groups:
Group one basically hated it flat out. Correctly diagnosed all the problems. I think this was probably the smallest group at the time. In retrospect, they were also completely correct.
Group two was lukewarm on it. Acknowledged problems, but also held out some hope that the second part would retroactively fix problems with the first by explaining certain things—Rey’s power, the backstory for basically everything—etc.
Group three just uncritically enjoyed it, either because they were lefty feminists, enjoy pacing and spectacle over consistency, were blinded by love for the brand, or a bit of all of the above.
Then TLJ happened. It not only dashed every hope group two had, it also did other stuff that was even worse than failing to fill in the gaps of the first movie. It was so bad it pushed some people from group three into admitting group one was right. It still had fans, of course, but not enough. However, had TLJ been awesome, I think it could have gone the other way and converted people from group one and group two into being complete fans. TFA may have put a couple cracks in the foundation, but the franchise wasn’t doomed until TLJ chose to take a hammer and chisel to those cracks rather than fixing them.
I am ashamed to admit I was in group two. Denial was a real thing for months after that. Felt so much cognitive dissonance leaving the theater.
Oh, yeah, I was in group two as well. I think it was a bit naive, but what can you do? Sometimes you're wrong, and I've definitely learned at least some since then.
i was in group 1, but almost everyone around me was in group 3 for TFA
after the TLJ only one friend moved to group 1 while the rest of the people i knew stayed in group 3 or some moved to group 2
the programming is still strong in these ones
I was somewhere between group 1 and 2. I didn't diagnose all of the problems, but I recognized that Rey didn't earn or deserve what she was given, and Han was done triple dirty. Also that it was almost beat for beat, A New Hope. At the time that was the greater sin to me. I remember thinking how incredibly safe and lazy that was. It was such a cowardly move from JJ. Then interview after interview seeing him hailed as a genius, laughable.
was the last jedi the 2nd or 3rd movie? I can't even recall the 3 names any more.
2nd
TLJ did still turn a profit, but the audience numbers were way down from TFA.
TFA turned a lot of actual Star Wars fans off: the ones who knew the story well enough to recognize it as just a shitty do-over with no fresh ideas. TLJ was the beginning of the real slide because it turned everyone off: even the normies were able to see at the time that it was shit. I'm not sure TLOU is a good video game allegory for that: even now most gamers will insist the first one was good.
I thought the first WAS good, for one playthrough. But after that, "ball and chain dialogues" would hurt every run afterwards. It wasn't in-your-face queer propaganda until that DLC, which I didn't play.
It certainly wasn't the worst thing ever made, although I never though it lived up to the hype.
TLOU1 (with no DLCs), I played it with a dormmate in college, and the game was so piss-easy that we had a rule that you could backseat game at any time, and it had to be obeyed so long as it wasn't immediately suicidal. That made for a fun playthrough, and we both riffed the game the entire time. Game-and-story separation was a common riff. "Oh, the kid is whining again, that means we just killed the last enemy, it's amazing she can instantly tell, I thought for sure there was one more".
...But it's a narrative game with one predetermined ending, and juuust preachy enough to be mildly grating. Which is fine when learning that ending, but not so much on re-experience.
That would be the SOLO movie that happened AFTER TLJ. My God that movie bombed.
TLJ was so bad that Episode 9, which should have been close to a 3 billion dollar movie like Infinity War and Endgame, barely made more money than Joker and Joker wasn't even released in China.
ME3 was ok until the last 5 minutes just blew out any and all effort put in by the players across 3 entire games. With the added multiplayer mode you could even get enough rewards from there to buff your war campaign points that missing entire chunks of the story rewards wouldn't matter because you still passed the thresholds for the better endings where whatever happened wasn't quite as bad. The Destroy ending for example could either simply wipe out the Reapers and other AI at best, or incinerate the surface of Earth as well at worst killing countless humans and others because the method wasn't working as best as it could.
At that point though it's literally the end of the trilogy so the only ones who can avoid that are those who never played it in the first place and are told by others. TLOU pulled its switch around halfway through the game, so much earlier and susceptible to backlacsh significantly sooner.
I'm amazed that more people didn't consider the story was trash with the intro of ME2. They ignored the consul believing in the reapers than killed Shepard for a time skip. They made the story about fighting bug monsters in a main plot that made no sense unless you already read the script. I could go on and on and on
Its because ME2 was a lot of people's favorites, either for being a lot tighter in the gameplay department or because of the squadmate stories being quite good (with a few really good newcomers). Not to mention the Illusive Man killing it VA wise.
The overall story of ME2 being trash gets forgotten in people's memories until you actually have to go back and replay it. Which means it gets hyped up well beyond its flaws.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792
The 20 or 50 part essay series clarifying this.
nah the whole game is fucked. tuchanka and rannoch carry it on their shoulders like atlas.
TLoU2 had a long and tumultuous development cycle, where they burned and cycled through workers at a rapid pace, getting to the point where every game animator in L.A. outright refused to have any more dealings with Naughty Dog. With that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if they bloated the budget to insane levels that would have needed to sell something like 10 million copies just to break even. Heck, ND was working on a multiplayer spinoff that was abruptly canceled in 2023, which says to me TLoU2 didn't meet expectations. That, or they burned through all their talent and have no one left to make such a game.
NGL that's impressive. For all the wrong reasons, but still impressive.
It did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewEDE-NhrXE
How bad? I'm betting Starfield level, a game abandoned by modders even though they are dedicated enough to make Fallout London in F4 engine, only with worse sales.
Quite far from abandoned, to my surprise. Even more so, the mods aren't simple reskins either.
for some reason, I got starfield mixed up with even online
probably cuz i never played either, but yeah, lol.
https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/19A0okqYJM/he-managed-to-make-tlou-2-flop-e/c/
From Wikipedia:
Is that a flop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewEDE-NhrXE
How long until he gets to his point, if he even has one? I stopped when he assumed everyone watching was a fucking moron with his "games do not make 60 dollars of profit when you buy them". No shit Sherlock, there are costs and anything sold by an intermediary be it Steam or Gamestop means the studio takes in even less. If you assume your audience is that dumb I can't imagine any insightful commentary tailored to an audience that dumb.
TLDW:
The budget was way higher than initially thought: $320M including advertising.
The game sold 10 million copies, only 4 million at full price.
Those 4 million copies made $80M, or $20 per copy, due to the retail cut, packaging/shipping and royalty fees.
The other 6 million copies would need to make $240M or $40 per copy in order for the game to break even, which is impossible as they were sold at a discount.
Some comments disagree on how much money Naughty Dog made from digital sales (due to being a first party studio), but even in the best case scenario, the game would barely break even.
A point that he doesn't bring up is that the European market is subject to a high VAT which hurts margins even more when a game is sold at a discount.
I hope we can still meme the sex scene that gets needlessly shoved in.
How are they gonna market this monstrosity? She's going to look stupid in action/gameplay sequences, and it looks like corporate HR brand in the cut scenes. This might be a true flop. Sci-fi is already more niche than other genres.
Fucking lol nobody will buy a game with that thing on the cover