Why Warhammer Online Failed — an Insider Story 235
sinij writes "An EA insider has aired dirty laundry over what went wrong with Warhammer and what could this mean for the upcoming Bioware Star Wars MMORPG. Quoting: 'We shouldn't have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn't done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out. We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down ever since. It's 'stable' now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade [old] make more money than our biggest project."
The (unverified) insider, who calls himself EA Louse (named after the EA Spouse who brought to light the company's excessive crunchtime practices) says similar trouble is ahead for the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA has not commented yet. God of War creator David Jaffe has criticized the insider for having unrealistic expectations of working in the games industry.
Re:Maybe it wasn't timing, but milieu (Score:3, Funny)
I'm only 31, and this is the second decade in which I've heard this claimed.
That's because Linux has poor game support and it's the Year Of The Linux Desktop.
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:David Jaffe misses the point... (Score:3, Funny)
It's *supposed* to be ridiculous. It's *Warhammer*. Warhammer is supposed to be ludicrously grimdark, with extra grim and some more dark piled on top.
Re:Maybe it wasn't timing, but milieu (Score:3, Funny)
oh gosh, you are crazy. If you think (even in a few years) that you can cram my desktop into a phone.. you're insane. The games i play daily are fairly demanding on a computer. I don't think a phone can even play HL1 at a decent resolution, that game is over 10 years old. A phone doesn't have the storage capacity to download my TV shows.. i can store about 20 good res episodes which means you NEED a pc to store and manage all that content. Unless you plan on paying a service to manage it for you. If you have your phone loaded up with music, that deeply cuts into your tv show storage.
Your phone is a communication device. If your phone becomes powerful enough to play high-end games and manage all your music/videos.. guess what? You have a portable Personal Computer (PC) that can also make phone calls.
I also doubt that people are migrating from PCs to Consoles. Consoles were the gaming machines before PCs were. The people who play on PCs like it that way and Consoles are for people who want something that "just works". They can also coexist together. Some people prefer their MMOs and RTSs on the PC and their FPS and RPGs on console.
Damn, i feel like i've been trolled.
I will agree though that smartphones will likely replace portable consoles like gameboy and psp.