CA blog from Mike Simpson

[Suraknar]

@ the OP.

Hehe, this sounds so much like an MMORPG developer talking to the community....

Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher.

Then Publish your games yourself! How many years have you been making TW series games, haven;t you made enough money to be independent and not at the mercy of a Shark-like Publisher?



It must not be as simple, I understand, but you have to understand too that, this has been an argument many developers throw on to their communities, blaming it on the publisher and on sales.

But you are the one in the vicious circle here...not us. Your publisher is the one that will need to be patient and linient if they want more sales and invest a bit more in to you so you can spend more time delivering a quality product which in turn would yield more sales...

You have exhausted the random factor. It times to take a step back and pay a bit more in order to make two better steps forward.

Thanks for the blog, Cheers!

[Suraknar]

I would beg to differ. The game's not been out for two weeks, but Bioware's already published a toolset explicitly designed for creating your own adventures.

BTW, Biowares Toolset is full of WIN!!!

While CA has been moving away from Modding in the past years...others have been smarter about it. Maybe this is another factor why Sales are not doing so good?

[A1_Unit]

Well considering that mods add greatly to a game's replay value they are worth the inveestment in tools by the companies.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

BTW, Biowares Toolset is full of WIN!!!

While CA has been moving away from Modding in the past years...others have been smarter about it. Maybe this is another factor why Sales are not doing so good?

I have no ideas on the numbers (do we have any from CA/SEGA?) but I would think Empire to be their biggest success yet, which is why the whining about user ratings is all the more insulting.

Though I'd love to be wrong because that would mean we're actually getting through to them.

[Babblearossa]

I have no ideas on the numbers (do we have any from CA/SEGA?) but I would think Empire to be their biggest success yet, which is why the whining about user ratings is all the more insulting.

The initial reviews from the "press"(ign etc) were stellar for empire, leading to great initial sales. But with tons of players dinging it for bugginess press reviewers for napoleon and whatevers after will be very likely to a) mark it down regardless as vastly different user-reviews reflect poorly on their prognosticatory capabilities and b) check it against at least the most obvious/complained about bugs.

a lower scored initial review should translate to lower sales.

well that's my take on why they care about user reviews..