Evening Q&As - Blue's News Comments

Evening Q&As
[Apr 26, 2005, 8:09 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments

Tribes: Vengeance
Vivendi's answers to player questions regarding Tribes: Vengeance (thanks TheForumz) fills in some of the blanks regarding the cancellation of plans for upcoming patches for Tribes Vengeance (story), which was due to dismal (approximately 47,000 copies in North America) sales: "It essentially comes down to poor sales. T:V debuted weakly and did not pick up any appreciable strength in sales (game sales are often like the movie box office - a title debuts strongly then sales slow over ensuing weeks). The first price drop did boost sales but not sufficiently. Another price cut further reduced margin on the game but did not improve sales significantly. Meanwhile, the patch was bogged down with the PunkBuster dispute, another drain on resources. Marketing became caught up in other projects in January while the dispute dragged on. When an estimate of when the patch might be ready was given, the decision to terminate it was made. It was simply not economically viable, given the low sales and the high cost of a full QA cycle. It was also felt that nothing in the patch would have improved sales, either (even the community was somewhat split on the merits of adding PunkBuster, with some opposed to it)."
Sparta: Ancient Wars
RPG Vault's Sparta: Ancient Wars Q&A talks with Torsten Hess and Ingo Horn of IMC about this upcoming historical RTS game: "The target group is the typical RTS fan who enjoyed playing Age of Empires 1 & 2, Age of Mythology or the Total War series, but in addition, we think even sci-fi fans from Starcraft or fantasy fans from Warcraft will give Sparta - Ancient Wars a chance. The appeal of the game is so satisfying that even players who are used to only playing with high-tech tanks and planes will enjoy competing with their best friends an ancient battle, where man to man combat was a question of honour!"