Personally I would not call Immortals of Aveum an AAA game. 😅
And I mean, that’s maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except “OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!”. Which are also pretty unoptimized, so you end up with:
- Only a tiny tiny fraction of players can even play it.
- Then, the game is utterly generic. Despite how it might look to someone not knowing about it, DOOM 2016 and Eternal are quite unique games and have a very well-designed gameplay flow that even differs divisively between the two.
- The writing is horrible and would make even an MCU movie/series writer question their decisions in life.
- The magic is still just guns with replaced graphics. They didn’t lean into the very premise of the game at all. And all they had to do is play Lichdom Battlemage from 2014 to get some ideas and that game already struggled with the concept. But at least it pulled it off.
Can’t really say I’m surprised the game flopped hard. But unlike the dev I would call the underlying idea solid, just not anything about the execution.
Case in point. Baldurs gate 3.
Single player (with optional co op multiplayer) but massively successful.
Not to beat a dead horse. Its just the first example that came to mind.
A huge amount of very successful indie games are single-player and even other AAA games.
They talk about the genre being dead but they forget that most games dont charge you to play them anymore. They make money through in game purchases selling cosmetics and battle pasees.
These game genres could be described as dead by the same criteria if they cost actual money.
Uh, in this case it’s a single-player, shooter, from a brand new IP. I’m probably just commenting just to argue but I don’t think Baldur’s Gate 3 is a good comparison at all.
I think you might be, haha.
But in the i terest of a fairer comparison, i had a quick google and found this game “atomic heart,” a generally well received game with high ratings and the following from Steam Revenue calculator
“We estimate that Atomic Heart made $55,756,625.68in gross revenue since its release. Out of this, the developer had an estimated net revenue of $16,448,204.58.”
New ip, single-player, shooter.
Comparatively, immortals lost money and tbey apparently laid of 45% of the staff who made it to avoid losses.