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Transformers Universe To Shutdown In January


Kaur

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Seems rather out of the blue imo.

 

The beta, though it had its faults, had reasonable game play and a decent amount of players. With a bit more time polishing and a renewed marketing push as it left beta I could've seen it fairing well overall.

 

I wonder whether this is a case of Hasbro pulling the plug instead of Jagex failing? I also wonder how long they knew about this before posting it, what with the known redundancies/reshuffles hitting the TU team.

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So did it actually ever leave the Beta?    I guess the fact  that the changed what genre the game was going to be half way through the project meant it was always destined to fail. I'm just surprised they scrapped it this early as it really hadnt had time for proper marketing. Perhaps just bad results from playtesting was enough to kill it.

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http://www.videogamer.com/pc/transformers_universe/news/transformers_universe_is_closing_in_january.html

 

Note to mods: please move the thread if you don't think it belongs here.

 

I know this doesn't concern Runescape, but it does have a potential impact on Jagex's only successful game. I'm wondering if the team they have over there actually understand how game design works.

 

It's actually a bit sad that the only successful game they have was created by a man that left the company years ago.

 

What do others think?

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I think that it is pretty hard to create a successful game in today's super saturated market. I personally never played it, but most people that I've heard from that have played it actually liked it. So, it probably wasn't a bad game, it just had no players.

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Lol his is now already on two other threads as well. Maybe a mod can move merge the discussion into this one? Thanks (if possible ;) )

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Lol his is now already on two other threads as well. Maybe a mod can move merge the discussion into this one? Thanks (if possible ;) )

 

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It's not the first time Hasbro has done something like this, pulled the plug on something older in order to prevent distraction from their new franchises. Transformers Universe was based on Transformers Prime which has now finished its run. Next year Transformers: Robots in Disguise comes out and I'm sure there will be new games based around that... until the next reboot etc etc.

 

The game has been in development hell for years anyway, so long infact that the number of months this game was released for is less than the number of YEARS this has been in development. It started off as a MMO then a MOBA and then some sort of weird MOTA hybrid which didn't really appeal to anyone except hardcore fans. The game was difficult to pick up, buggy, and not particularly fun.

 

I feel bad for the staff who no doubt will be facing uncertainty at this time of year but Jagex should have stuck with its guns and invested in Stellar Dawn rather than trying to piggy back on a franchise that, by the time this game was finished, the potential player base had already moved on from.

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"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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What positives can we glean from the string of negative press about Jagex lately? Well we can see that micropayments are down in RuneScape and the freemium model has failed in both Ace of Spades and no Transformers Universe. Jagex's newest game Block N' Load, however, is back to being a proper paid game. Does this mean that we can potentially wave goodbye to Treasure Hunter and Solomon's store?... I don't think so but I have a feeling that there will be less emphasis on keys and more on Solomon's customisations.

 

You cannot become too reliant on the "whales" in this industry. Jagex cannot continue to alienate the regular paying members. When the whales stop paying unless you've got a tank full of fish you're a gonner.

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"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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I also wonder how the financials worked for this between Hasbro and Jagex in terms of who invested the most in the game. The cost of this failing is a drop in the ocean to Hasbro, but it could quite easily have been 50% + of Jagexes profit from Runescape for the last few years wasted on this

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I also wonder how the financials worked for this between Hasbro and Jagex in terms of who invested the most in the game. The cost of this failing is a drop in the ocean to Hasbro, but it could quite easily have been 50% + of Jagexes profit from Runescape for the last few years wasted on this

From the language used in the post I think this is very much a Hasbro decision. This game still needed a vast amount of investment and development before coming out of beta and without the backing of Hasbro there was no way Jagex could fund it. This decision will have massive repercussions on the rest of the company.

 

Mark Gerhard once said that canning Stellar Dawn cost Jagex over £10m. You are right to ask how much was wasted on this that could have been invested in existing IP.

 

On a positive note, plenty of developers and artists with free time now to create more TH and Solomon promotions... :rolleyes:  /s

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"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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:twss:

 

Whoops, I meant this face: :o. I'm not very good at faking being surprised...

Yeah....Lol, me either.

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Well, this is becoming a textbook case of how to run a company into the ground.

I wonder how long before they start thinking about restructuring their company  by laying off employees and start selling off their IP in order to ensure the creditors and the management get their going out of business bonuses.

I wonder if their are any potential suitors for Runescape.

 

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I think that it is pretty hard to create a successful game in today's super saturated market. I personally never played it, but most people that I've heard from that have played it actually liked it. So, it probably wasn't a bad game, it just had no players.

I'm actually a bit curious about whether or not it's sustainable to try to break into the industry anymore. If it costs, to use the scientific term, a shitload of money to get a game to the point of just being playable, you can't really settle for moderate popularity... But moderate popularity is probably all you can hope for because there's no way your name is going to carry as much weight as League or Warcraft, and you can't really expect your backers to keep pumping money into it on the one in a million chance that it might in a decade or so.

 

I've really got no basis for any of this, but it seems to be a common enough thing these days rip dawngate

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I'm actually a bit curious about whether or not it's sustainable to try to break into the industry anymore. If it costs, to use the scientific term, a shitload of money to get a game to the point of just being playable, you can't really settle for moderate popularity... But moderate popularity is probably all you can hope for because there's no way your name is going to carry as much weight as League or Warcraft, and you can't really expect your backers to keep pumping money into it on the one in a million chance that it might in a decade or so.

 

I've really got no basis for any of this, but it seems to be a common enough thing these days rip dawngate

 

I think it is pretty much impossible to break into the market now days, at least the MMO/MOBA/MMORPG market anyway. With these type games (and much of the console market too) players expect such a high quality of graphics, that the amount of money that needs to be invested into them to make them even remotely appealing is going to be very high. Especially so in online games like Runescape and WOW where their defining feature is often their shear scale. Just look at what it cost to make GTA5!

 

Jagex are not alone in having massive struggles to get something new onto the market, as opposed to just resting on their main original success. Other examples are companies like Rovio, who whilst they are still making a killing from Angry Birds have yet to have remotely similar success with anything outside that game. Even Nintendo struggle greatly, how many genuinely successful new franchises have they put out in the last few years? 

 

I don't really know what Jagex should do, because they have a heck of a lot of staff to pay just funded off the back of a single game. But if any other venture is too risky and just likely to result in even more rapid loss of revenue and therefore staff is it really the only option to keep flogging Runescape until it finally crumbles?

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I wonder if their are any potential suitors for Runescape.

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"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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