Amazon Delays Next Video Game Half a Year After Latest One Flops (bloomberg.com) 8
Following scathing reviews of a computer game it released in May, Amazon.com is delaying its next big-budget game by at least six months. From a report: The decision represents another setback for the technology giant's ambitions to break into the gaming industry. The next game, New World, was supposed to debut in late August but is now scheduled for spring 2021, Rich Lawrence, director of Amazon's game studio, wrote in a blog post Friday. The company wants extra time to implement changes suggested by players who have been testing the game, he wrote. Delays are fairly common in the video game industry, but this was an important opportunity for Amazon to redeem itself after a recent flop. Amazon is trying to make a name for itself as a maker of big-budget video games that can compete with those from the likes of Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. But Amazon's Crucible, a free-to-play PC game introduced in May, was panned by critics, prompting Amazon to take the highly unusual step of pulling the game from wide circulation.
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In related news, Segway production is about to stop. [hackaday.com]
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I was thinking it'd be a dashboard navigation game, where they add new ways every week to give them all your money, and you can relearn where everything is.
At least the docs are verbose.
Amazon meh (Score:2)
Not expecting an Amazon game to be pay to win, now that would take some advertising, so just subscribe to Amazon prime and get primed up with endless advertising and you know it is going to get much worse.
Yeah, we sure needed that (Score:2)
What the world needed was yet another Battle Royal shooter. There's by far not enough of them.
Quite frankly, could we get some, I dunno, innovation? Everyone and their dog just copies whatever the flavor of the month game is when they're not busy selling the same game they sold us last year with the current year in the title so we don't mistake it for the old, identical, one.
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Yep, this seems to be a problem with their studio. There seems to be little creativity in game selection. Their other game is just as generic, and is entering an equally crowded genre (a fantasy-ish MMO). And I suspect it'll have many of the same problems - perhaps not terrible, but nothing that really stands out. It feels like they chose to make games in the most difficult-to-compete-in genres, which seems like a very bad strategy for a brand new studio.
The other problem for Amazon games is the clunky
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Crucible ran very well. That was pretty much the only thing about it that was good.
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Honestly, Crucible was supposed to be more of an objective based shooter (i.e. overwatch) and whoever did basic gameplay design actually had some really nice ideas. But when it came to execution of these design ideas it clearly went for "diversity is our strength" in both hiring and game systems implementation, and we ended up with a pile of steaming garbage that had no focus at all. Gameplay was incoherent mishmash of many systems that seemed to work well standalone but didn't work together at all in most