If you don't have a vision, don't try to turn money into more money by making a game. Everyone loses. Dumping money on assets doesn't make your trope copy/paste any better than the other million cheap Chinese clones on an app store.

Also EA has to understand more and more people have experienced their garbage launches and will skip their gold plated launch prices because of the risk you end up buying a lemon that is subsequently abandoned.

Making sure the gameplay loop is interesting and the game performs properly is important. Focussing on all the latest engine features that requires people to have top tier hardware is only good for marketing. Marketing then eats up a tremendous amount of budget without adding anything to the offer they make.

Maybe if you market it at all so that I've actually fucking heard of it that'll help?

Most notable thing about this game was it was one of the first to launch with FSR3 frame generation. Other than that I think I’d have completely forgotten about it.

Unlike many people in this thread, I actually have heard of the game. The makers of a podcast I follow loved it, and had the head of the studio on their show for a pretty frank interview, too. When I learned that there was a free demo, I decided I would give the game a try some time.

And in light of the overwhelming negativity in this thread, I did so last night. And what can I say? I spent an hour and change going through the prologue, the training and the first battle sequence, and I really enjoyed it. Movement and ~~shooting~~ slinging magic are great fun, with a diversity of spells available pretty much from the get-go. Just shoot, or throw a massive armor-breaking spell at a wave of enemies, or use a lash to pull a remote enemy close and whack them. I wouldn't have know what to expect from the 'CoD with magic' premise but it's really enjoyable so far.

The voice acting is very good, and while the facial animations are a bit uncanny valley, I am enjoying the snarky dialogues and matching facial expressions. Gina Torres has presence, and the rest of the cast so far blends in fine.

I will definitely spend some more time with the demo, and if it doesn't annoy me too much, I might just buy this. And that seems to be the feedback the devs got from many people - once players actually get their hands on it, they actually enjoy it. According ton the studio head, sales have picked up towards Christmas, and they've been getting a lot of conversions from the free demo.

Why does a game cost that much to make? I'm not saying every game should be an indie, but given what indies can accomplish it's a little ridiculous to spend $125 million.

Or maybe EA is just a garbage corporation that aren't actually good at making video games?

I had to look up a video to realise this wasn't the "I guess that's something I do now" game.

Looks like a confusing mess of a game tbh. When a game's failure is blamed on it being released close to fucking Starfield, you know it never had much going for it.

A GENERIC AAA (visual only) single player shooter was a bad idea.

Aveum was literally mid. It just looked good since it was the first game to use UE5.

It was flawed from the start, clearly people that love COD and magic aren't that big of an intersection, also like people said already the magic acted more like guns and they had a pretty dumb system of calling it by their colors.

Still looked fun though, but I would never pay the asking price for it.

This guy's a tool, Atomic Heart was fantastic and I'd love getting more games of that calibur every year

EA is a truly awful idea. I'm curious if their sports games are the only thing keeping them in business.

"(...) AAA (...) was a truly awful idea"
ftfy dev

"potential customer hears about product for the first time after it's announced a flop"

I mean, a single player FPS... Oh it's an EA game we are talking about! NEVERMIND.

Whenever I saw that game it looked like a generic, soulless, made-by-committee shooter… All footage had strong tech demo vibes. The only thing I can remember about it is „the guns looked kinda weird.“