Games
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
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I'm not sure we can help you if you've never heard of this game. It's been in every major gaming news site's release calendar, reviewed very well, and it's been in several of Sony's showcases.
EDIT: Folks, I don't care if you also personally never heard of it. That wasn't the point. This game had a marketing budget and was not set up to fail.
It was not set up to succeed, either.
I mean it's the first I've heard of it too :o
What sites do you follow for gaming news? OpenCritic aggregated 129 different outlets that reviewed it, and it's a front page sort of deal for any of them.
I just go to YouTube, Lemmy, BSky, maybe a few others. I don’t go directly to any major gaming news sites, since they’ve had declining track records for decades.
And of course, Steam. Criticize the monoculture if you like, but when Sony and MS have killed their community features in favor of EpsteinNet, it’s not surprising people will go to platforms designed to discuss games.
Your media sources aren't really indictive of monoculture. More the opposite and that's the problem for marketers. It's hard as shit to reach people because everyone can form their own niche media community. If people still treated IGN and like award shows as their mainstream trustworthy source, we'd still be in the pre-youtube monoculture
At the same time, that's not them setting the game up to fail; that's you purposely excusing yourself from everywhere that people normally hear about games. I'm not sure by what metric you're basing declining track records on, but wherever you hear about games on Bluesky or YouTube is probably still one of these outlets. Right here on this Lemmy community, we cite those same outlets for news, and Saros has been posted here four times on its own, as well as in a Sony State of Play mega thread.
Yeah, they never talk about games on YouTube
Several million hits across Saros' trailers there. It definitely comes up on all the biggest gaming podcasts. So I'm not sure what the other poster's blind spot is, but Saros is definitely there.
I've also never heard of it and I'm usually pretty up on new releases
Never heard of it before, personally.
I mean I've even heard of the specrcular failure that is Highguard but not Saros. The internet is definitely much more fragmented even within gaming niche.
Lemmy.
I mean, if I didn't have a standing appointment to watch game showcases with some friends, I could definitely see a scenario where I missed this. It's not the kind of thing that would pop up at all in my regular gaming feeds.
The funny thing is that I was genuinely tired of seeing it at every single State of Play for however long it's been now. It was heavily marketed within a specific media channel, and didn't stir up any controversy or buzz that reached my eyes or ears.
I’m definitely upset that influencers are more likely to talk about bombs and high profile failures than games they have moderately positive interest in. There’s a weird incentive to celebrate failure that makes game development less appealing.
I mean I only know about it because I saw a couple ads on Instagram, then I watched the sponsored (by Sony/Saros devs mind you) Iron Pineapple video.
It looks cool visually and seems like it'd be fun once you get into the flow of the game, but it's PlayStation exclusive and I'm not really a bullet hell person.
Edit response time: That people interested in games did not know about it would be very indicative of a major failing and current lack of relavance of mainstream gaming media. That would seem to be very much on point, as there is no need to help us for not knowing, but it would seem Sony might need help.
The fact that I never seen or heard of this is no surprise though, the only time gaming news coverage shows up for most is when there is some sort of scandal. Its why I know more about "Mix Tape", "High Guard" and "Marathon" then this game.
I like my small indie / oddball games but I find I get more info from people steaming a game and talking about it then a "review" that had clearly been bought and paid for. And it seems I am not the only one, as clearly no one is reading the "major" gaming news sites anymore. Well at least in this case no one from their target audience is.
This is the only gaming space I've encountered on the internet that has this many people unaware of Saros' existence. The prevailing theory elsewhere for its lack of success is launching at $70, only on PS5, and people having already bounced off of its predecessor, Returnal. There aren't 130 outlets reviewing the game because no one is reading them.
What other gaming areas are you thinking of? Are they user driven for content and discourse like this?
And there are 130 outlets reviewing the game because they are in the business of reviewing games and this one was a rare exclusive for the ps5. It would be odd if they did not review it (and give it questionably high marks). If you look at a game like xenonauts 2 that also came out recently that sold about the same number of copies (very odd since one is very niche) they only have 14 critic reviews vs 130. The issue is the critic reviews clearly don't hold the same value to consumers as they once did.
That is not made by clear by comparing those two games the way we just did, no. Game review and news outlets cover the games most likely to be of value to their audiences, partially because they foster that with their own interest, and partly because the data tells them what their audience is reading or watching. Saros got 130 different outlets reviewing it because it's generally seen as a big deal for their audiences. Xenonauts 2, not so much, which is why it was only covered by 1/10th as many publications. We're here on Lemmy because we're more likely to leave a thing we don't like even if we're used to it, like reddit. If you don't like traditional games media, fair enough, but I don't think either that preference or our choice of being on Lemmy is representative of broader trends. I was just at a board game night where we had to give clues about Sabrina Carpenter, and I knew nothing about her. It doesn't mean her publicist is bad at marketing; it means I'm not the target audience for it.
Have to vehemently disagree with this, it is clear that their coverage is not dictated by the value their audiences receive but from other more corporate values. And as time goes on the media coverage on games has been less and less valued. It has nothing to do with my option on the media but my observations on the industry. The reason I brought up zenonaughts 2 was that it has 1/10 the reviews but similar sales, and that is indicative of the clear decline of the main stream gaming review system not having the pull it once did.
It is very much not clearly indicative of that. It has 1/10th of the reviews because it is expected to be relevant to far fewer people than Saros. The audience tends to value games that they've had marketed to them, which is a correlation for what should be obvious reasons.
They sold a similar amount, your agument only works if saros sold a proportional amount more (10x in this case). As it stands the marketing clearly did not work.
The studio's previous game, which is very similar on a gameplay level, sold over 1M copies. Saros costs $10 more than Returnal cost and almost twice as much as Xenonauts 2. Beyond that, Returnal was a difficult game, and trophy data shows lots of people didn't get anywhere close to finishing it; distaste for the previous game and a slightly higher price for what is, by Sony's standards, less production value than you can find in other PS5 games at $70, are far better explainers for Saros' performance.
They definitely did a lot of sponsored YouTube content. Iron Pineapple did a sponsored video. Seemed mid, not a $700 (ps5 + game) game.