Decline Stormdivers - Housemarque declines

[LESS T_T]

One of the prominent twinstick/arcade shooter makers quits making it due to disappointing sales of their magnum opus Nex Machina: http://www.housemarque.com/arcade-is-dead/

However despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers. While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality. We are extremely grateful to our fans and partners, who have enabled us to work on awesome games like Super Stardust HD and Outland. For your unfailing love and support we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

And it turns into Steam Early Access and "games as a service": http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...a-bittersweet-farewell-to-arcade-shoot-em-ups

Now is not the time for concrete details, though, save for the fact that the new game will embrace online and multiplayer to a far greater extent than Housemarque's previous work, and that it will very likely make its debut on Steam Early Access.

"We always try for polished games, to make each game as finished as possible given the time and the resources," Kuittinen says. "Typically, we've taken more time than we originally planned to make that happen. And now, we want to explore, hopefully in the very near future, getting something out quite early - much, much earlier than even we ourselves are comfortable with, to see if that's something that gets any traction.

"That also leads us to another kind of model: games as a service, and getting more in touch with the community, before the game is even half-finished. It's totally the opposite of what we have been doing. It's quite exciting, and scary at the same time."

 

[adrix89]

One of the prominent twinstick/arcade shooter makers quits making it due to disappointing sales of their magnum opus Nex Machina: http://www.housemarque.com/arcade-is-dead/

However despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers. While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality. We are extremely grateful to our fans and partners, who have enabled us to work on awesome games like Super Stardust HD and Outland. For your unfailing love and support we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

And it turns into Steam Early Access and "games as a service": http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...a-bittersweet-farewell-to-arcade-shoot-em-ups

Now is not the time for concrete details, though, save for the fact that the new game will embrace online and multiplayer to a far greater extent than Housemarque's previous work, and that it will very likely make its debut on Steam Early Access.

"We always try for polished games, to make each game as finished as possible given the time and the resources," Kuittinen says. "Typically, we've taken more time than we originally planned to make that happen. And now, we want to explore, hopefully in the very near future, getting something out quite early - much, much earlier than even we ourselves are comfortable with, to see if that's something that gets any traction.

"That also leads us to another kind of model: games as a service, and getting more in touch with the community, before the game is even half-finished. It's totally the opposite of what we have been doing. It's quite exciting, and scary at the same time."

It begins. Loot boxes in Indie games in 2018.

 

[Infinitron]

One of the prominent twinstick/arcade shooter makers quits making it due to disappointing sales of their magnum opus Nex Machina: http://www.housemarque.com/arcade-is-dead/

However despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers. While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality. We are extremely grateful to our fans and partners, who have enabled us to work on awesome games like Super Stardust HD and Outland. For your unfailing love and support we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

And it turns into Steam Early Access and "games as a service": http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...a-bittersweet-farewell-to-arcade-shoot-em-ups

Now is not the time for concrete details, though, save for the fact that the new game will embrace online and multiplayer to a far greater extent than Housemarque's previous work, and that it will very likely make its debut on Steam Early Access.

"We always try for polished games, to make each game as finished as possible given the time and the resources," Kuittinen says. "Typically, we've taken more time than we originally planned to make that happen. And now, we want to explore, hopefully in the very near future, getting something out quite early - much, much earlier than even we ourselves are comfortable with, to see if that's something that gets any traction.

"That also leads us to another kind of model: games as a service, and getting more in touch with the community, before the game is even half-finished. It's totally the opposite of what we have been doing. It's quite exciting, and scary at the same time."

Some brutal comments here: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/01/housemarque-say-arcade-is-dead/

Those arrogant dunderheads are vastly overestimating their own importance. The market is chock-full of arcade games, and we’re not just talking watered-down light beer, but genuine stuff, esp. on PC. Here’s the thing: Most of those games are cheaper, offer more content (and in some cases also better gameplay) than Housemarque’s products, and put less toll on the hardware; and people take all of that gladly over the visual spectacle with what they consider a premium price tag. I love Nex Machina, it’s been one of my favourite releases this year, but even I can’t help but shake my head at the absolute lack of awareness those guys put on display here.

Hey dude,

I think that’s the point of what they’re trying to say: the kind of high production arcade games that they’re trying to make is not justified by the amount of sales needed to continue.

I for one, admire their work from the looks of videos online. But it’s not a priority for me to buy it, because it’s an arcade shooter.

Whether they realise they can make low-budget arcade shooters for a profit, or whether they would rather eat their hat is another matter altogether.

Not really. They’ve been desperately running after what amounts to a revival of “arcade culture”, which simply is not a thing anymore outside of, well, actual bloody arcades and clubs that offer the actual social experience. You cannot replicate that on home consoles and PCs, and no number of leaderboard and replay options are gonna help you with that; it’s a public thing. It’s the same reason why all those skill-based arena shooters such as Lawbreakers are failing; outside of the small competitive scene they cater to, they’ve been part of a specific social environment – network parties, with booze, grub, sleepovers – that simply doesn’t exist anymore, and cannot easily be replaced with an online experience.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Housemarque, makers of my favourite game of at least the past 10 years (Nex Machina) and many other fucking great, true arcade-style games in the purest sense (Resogun, Super Stardust HD), says "Arcade is Dead"

http://www.housemarque.com/arcade-is-dead/

Basically, they're no longer gonna make games in this style because they don't sell. This is awful news. Their games were real gems, and Nex Machina is such a jewel of game design, it should be fucking enshrined. Pearls to swine, as they say.

Fuck faggots who don't buy good games for peanuts and buy shit like Cawadooty, Ubishit open world game #38 and lootbox simulator #125 day one for 60 dollars. Fuck them up the ass.

 

[RuySan]

I think they're taking the wrong lessons here. There's way too much competition, specially in the indie scene, and unless you make a game that somehow builds ridiculous hype (like Cuphead and it's difficulty discussion) there's not much chance of having a hit like in 5 or 6 years ago. Quality just isn't enough anymore.

My brother in law, which is 10 years younger than me, is pretty much from the CS/DOTA/Twitch generation of gamers (he's 26 or 27, so i would say he should know better), and he came talking to me asking if I heard about Cuphead.

Housemarque should convert all their games to the Switch. What will all these people play when they're done with Mario and Zelda? Seems like a good opportunity.

 

[Durandal]

The arcade mentality is too dead in both the West and East for developers to be able to expect reasonable profits for high-production value arcade-style game releases. You simply need to make some concessions to make arcade-style games palatable to the home gaming audience in order to not be swamped with complaints about the game being too short or too easy because they're able to creditfeed their way through, complaints which actually hold no weight at all but will impact the imago of your game simply because of the nature of the audience you're presenting your game for. There's too many people out there who will look at you with disdain if you expect them to finish a fifty-minute game with no continues and charge them more than ten bucks for it. The game isn't inherently better or worse for being so quick to finish and being expensive, the road towards 1cc'ing an arcade game can take over fifty hours, but that much effort being expected is what gets most people to start posting their favourite autism-related reaction images.

For example, had Cuphead expected you to beat all bosses in one single run, that would simply be too much for the modern gaming audience, even for the ones who tried their damndest to finish Dark Souls for gamer cred. To beat all bosses in Cuphead in one single go takes around 30-40 minutes. The average completion time of Cuphead is around 6 to 8 hours because of how difficult those bosses are to defeat. The average time to obtain an 1cc for most arcade games would be even higher, but whereas Cuphead lets you retry at the start of each boss which only has you lose about under two minutes of time, for most arcade games you need to replay the entire 30-50 minute stretch depending on how far you got, which might annoy a lot of people. That's why home ports of arcade games usually have a practice mode so you can practice individual stages without having to replay everything before which you can beat with ease, but again the act of having to practice a game and having to work for their fun is what gets most people to start posting their favourite autism-related reaction images.

Another difference to note here is that in Cuphead you work towards completion, whereas in Nex Machina you work towards an 1cc, which is an entirely self-imposed challenge. I hate self-imposed challenges as much as anyone else (should), but that's simply the kind of playstyle arcade games are built around and by what Nex Machina is built around. It makes the consequences of creditfeeding rather obvious by resetting your score and depriving you of your power-ups which causes you to die more often to the point where it's easier to win if you restart the game, but not a lot of people actually get that. Though if there's one thing that goes over the heads over a lot of developers on these kinds of games, is that people don't want to play for high score rankings and scoreplay off the bat. They just want to survive the game and win despite having a shitty score, like how first-time players in Bayonetta will get Stone Awards all around. One method to encourage scoreplay is to interweave survival with scoring, where it's simply easier to survive if you play for score, like getting HP bonuses for every few million points. Or the Platinum method of having Normal mode be more of a tutorial mode with higher difficulties expecting much more out of you, but that will fall apart if the player doesn't feel like replaying the game on a higher difficulty to begin with.

Part of Cuphead's success is just that, having a checkpoint system so players can alleviate their frustrations by being able to restart quickly, and a high enough difficulty so most players will spend enough time on what is essentially a rather short game to the point where they feel they got their money's worth with just one playthrough. On top of being a good game and a good-looking and a good-sounding game. And for the more experienced players you have Expert mode where you can S+-rank everything to your heart's content. You can only get S-ranks on Expert, so completionists will be driven to play it again on Expert. And I think having a grading system of some sorts is just a good design habit because you can clearly divide good players from even better players through encouraging speedkills and no damage runs, which in turns amps the competition and acts as a guideline for players to know how they can become better.

I think there's a lesson to be learned here. Home gamers (be it on PC or consoles) expect at least 6-to-8 hours of gameplay for about twenty bucks, and you can't expect all of them to spend that time on their own volition to get better at the game, because everyone's time is precious. You want them to at the very least have a good time with what little you have and have them react with positive reviews after finishing it, which in turn spreads through word of mouth to other people who might try your game and do invest more time into it. For short amounts of content you should rely on high difficulty and replay value through scoring systems or just fun gameplay to 'pad' out the game's length while still being able to offer an arcade-like experience for the purists who in turn make superplay videos highlighting how your game is played at a very high level. Personally I would offer a STANDARD difficulty setting which includes about 80-90% of the game and lets you quicksave a limited amount of times/has a checkpoint system for people who just want to complete the game, and then an ARCADE mode for people who want to play the game the way it's meant to be played, maybe an ARCADE LIGHT and an ARCADE MAX setting to ease out the difficulty curve.

Nex Machina OTOH takes the more pure approach, with no tutorials to speak of and allowing you to creditfeed. I still don't know why you're even allowed to creditfeed in these games as otherwise players would be forced to restart and play the game like it's meant to, otherwise they're just going to complain it's too easy and too short anyways. It works very well for the niche it appealed to, but outside that niche it just didn't stick with people. Platinum games at least have the cinematic experience to create a proper experience, but Nex Machina doesn't have that either. While the visuals do look very dynamic, Housemarque's particle fetish alienated a lot of people with toasters which in turn generated less sales, which I guess is an oversight after having predominantly worked on consoles. My rig is decent and yet I still had to lower the settings to get a decent framerate. People say the visuals are cluttered, even though I think that's only the case when you're looking at gameplay footage, the visuals are surprisingly clear when you actually play the game and focus on what's important.

I think these arcade-style games should at least manage to have dynamic graphics, not necessarily technically good-looking graphics. People fondly remember Einhänder and G-Darius because they remember the cool giant robot fishes and robots and backgrounds with tons of animation and life to them with unique artstyles, kind of like with Cuphead, even if the former have jittery PS1 graphics. People will overlook outdated-looking models and textures if the game moves at a fast pace and has some life to its animations, and if it has a consistent artstyle which doesn't look cheap. Nex Machina kind of blundered here with its seemingly generic sci-fi artstyle. Perhaps they could have profited a bit more if they went with an artstyle that wasn't so expensive to develop and to get running on your PC while being more attractive.

I still think Nex Machina is the best game from Housemarque and a genuine GOTY contender which I'd rate above even Cuphead, but it is unfortunately more of an acquired taste. If you really want your arcade-style game to be successful, then I think this can be done without sacrificing the integrity of your gameplay through presentation and difficulty settings, and making your game more presentable as both a home system game and an arcade game. You might not receive the same amount of success as Cuphead without yuge amounts of marketing, but if word gets around and the game's good it should be good enough.

I believe Housemarque should downsize and focus more on accessibility without sacrifice rather than abandoning their niche, but I guess that boat sailed after the middling sales of their magnum opus. Hopefully they don't jump on the latest indie trends like roguelike multiplayer procedurally generated online card games and the like. The sole reason I bought Nex Machina on a whim is because I heard the levels were handcrafted. I don't know what the hell that guy in Infinitron's post was talking about when he said that the indie market was filled with arcade games and the like, as in actual 30-50 minute journeys you're expected to 1cc, because too many I've seen are compromised with unnecessary upgrade systems and narrative cancer, especially when looking at new releases. Indie games of this level of confident minimalism, replayability, and production value are a dime a fucking dozen, and I hate to see Housemarque go out like this.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I still don't know why you're even allowed to creditfeed in these games as otherwise players would be forced to restart and play the game like it's meant to, otherwise they're just going to complain it's too easy and too short anyways.

It's a catch 22 - allowing people to credit feed without the monetary constraint of an actual arcade environment leads to people not understanding the game and how it's meant to be played, but on the other hand not allowing people to credit feed means they'll never get past the first couple of minutes, since everyone blames everything except themselves for failing these days, which would result in an instant refund request.

Otherwise your post is great, Nex Machina is absolutely brilliant (and we have to remember, that's not simply thanks to Housemarque themselves - Jarvis himself helped with the design of the game, and I'm sure that's a direct cause for the levels being as tight as they are). Sadly though, I don't think Housemarque will try anything close to the same ballpark anymore. They're going to go full retard with multiplayer/skill trees/persistent online and have no pretense with purity of purpose/handcrafted levels anymore. They're techincally proficient and they want a slice of that easy money pie. Time to fleece some monkeys with garbage procedural levels and item drops.

 

[Leechmonger]

I played the everliving shit out of Super Stardust HD and Dead Nation, would buy them again on PC if I could.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Buy Nex Machina. It's their best game.

 

[Leechmonger]

Buy Nex Machina. It's their best game.

I've already checked out its Steam store page hoping to find info on game mechanics, weapons, etc. Here's what I got instead:

Nex Machina is an intense arcade style twin-stick shooter from Housemarque. Taking hints from both Robotron and Smash TV, Nex Machina focuses on pure action, voxel destruction and competition in the distant, cablepunk themed future.

In the world of Nex Machina, humans have become so dependent on technology that they cannot avert their eyes from portable devices anymore. Around them, machines have reached consciusness and surpassed human intelligence tenfold. No reasons to be servants now – robots are clearly the superior lifeform. And to make their point, they start eradicating all human life...

Housemarque, the creators of Resogun, and Eugene Jarvis invite you on a trip back to the age of arcades and play Nex Machina, the twinstick shooter of this generation. Destroy the evil robots, free the humans and defeat your friends' high scores along with their dreams of success. Do you have what it takes to make it to the top?

- Explosive twin-stick arcade shooter gaming at its finest
- Over 100+ challenging levels in 6 different intense worlds
- Secret paths, levels and humans
- Local cooperative multiplayer
- Deep scoring system, rich metagame and replayability
- Specially tailored feats and achievements
- Community and friend leaderboards
- Unlockables and player profiles
- Next gen signed distance field (SDF) ray-tracing and morphing tech
- Voxel driven, significantly reworked version of the Housemarque engine

For an arcade game that is presumably all about gameplay the devs provide remarkably little info beyond it being a twin-stick shooter. They mentioned that three times, to make sure you got it. What makes the game so great, @Great Deceiver? I enjoyed the weapons and gore of Dead Nation and the enemies of Super Stardust HD. What does Nex Machina have to offer?

 

[Great Deceiver]

It was designed by the designer of Robotron and Smash TV (Eugene Jarvis). The guy knows his stuff, and Nex Machina has almost nothing in common with generic twin stick shooters. I've shilled quite a bit for the game here on the Codex, it's my favourite game in a very long time. Basically, it's a true blooded arcade game, with very tightly designed levels, a smart scoring system and very rewarding gameplay that just keeps on giving the better you get at it. It's one of those games where you get in the 'zone' and forget everything else around you.

There's a fixed rotation of weapons that can drop in the levels, every player has a different preference. Levels are designed like puzzles for you to figure out when you want to peel back the scoring layers. To get a high score, you basically need to keep a string of "humans" saved, they are fixed spawns in every level and there's a bar that you can't let expire until you get the next one. There are cool bosses at the end of every level. You can also just play it for 1CC if you'd like - that will take you quite awhile on anything above the easiest difficulty. There's a challenge mode in which you play individual levels, and a mode where levels are mutated in strange ways with different rules (enemies are faster, no powerups, etc.) I suspect this modified mode was supposed to get regular updates for different rules but sales being shit, they're not doing anything new with it.

The gaming media clowns and usual retards thought the game was 'too short' because they credit-fed through the whole thing on easy and didn't understand the first bit about what they just went through. It's actually quite a long game if you're competent, it takes almost an hour to clear it - as far as arcade style games go, that's a very long time.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ed-posts-allowed.57009/page-1159#post-5208642

It also has a killer soundtrack:



The fact that the company that made this game, probably the pinnacle of arcade-style games in 20 years, just announced it won't do games like this again because people are too dumb to play/buy it is just another nail in the coffin of my interest about gaming and the industry as a whole.

 

[Big Wrangle]

A Tragedy Has Befallen All Mankind.
Housemarque was a company driven by passion and love of the arcade, reflecting in their games. Considered by some to be mankind's only hope of long-term arcade games survival, it all fell apart with Nex Machina's low sales. Housemarque's passing may well sound a death knell for the entire arcade community.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-game-stormdivers-sounds-like-a-battle-royale

Housemarque's new multiplayer game Stormdivers sounds like a battle royale

The first game of Housemarque's post-arcade future will be Stormdivers, a multiplayer game.

A very brief video was shown during Housemarque's Reboot Develop 2018 talk today (embedded below - skip to 45 minutes). The trailer shows a moody forest with some basic structures in and a storm raging through it.

Housemarque said Stormdivers began as a concept three years ago and had been in production for two. It is multiplayer-focused and made in Unreal, but the studio gave no detail beyond that. I found out more, however, speaking with head of publishing Mikael Haveri afterwards.

And it sounds like Stormdivers will be a battle royale game.


"You can compare it to a lot of the multiplayer experiences you have now," Haveri told me, which I remarked sounded like Housemarque was doing a Fortnite game - a battle royale game. "That's a very good assumption," he replied.
"Right now we are saying it is multiplayer. It's a very competitive environment, specifically with those types of titles. How can you even compete? We know what we do and we've been making something for quite a while. Hopefully it will be able to compete."

PC and consoles are the focus for Stormdivers, probably one before the other to see if the game works first, and it could be released this year.

"We've been playing it for almost two years now," Haveri said. "Internally we've been perfecting the gameplay part of it and now we need to catch up with the stuff we haven't been able to focus on" - things like art polish.
"It's not far away but we're not in a hurry to push it to market before it's done. Hopefully still this year but maybe, to be cautious, we shouldn't say it's going to be this year."

What actually is Stormdivers? Haveri wants it to remain mysterious but said the trailer was "a very blatant tease". "We're giving you a lot of what to expect," he said. "Most of your expectations and first ideas [your hunches] will probably be on the money.

"It's fast, very gameplay centric," he added. "We hope when people pick it up they start feeling good. We want there to be adrenaline, we want them to be moving, we want them to be really getting into it - a fast experience where you have to go outside and take a breather from it. Couple that with visual flair; you play Resogun, you see all this stuff exploding and going off - that's what we're bringing to the multiplayer. This is a Housemarque take."
There's no publisher or partner for Stormdivers yet, although that might have already changed over the course of Reboot Develop 2018, and no business model locked down. But Housemarque is treading very carefully so as not to "swindle" players.

Ilari Kuittinen (left) and Mikael Haveri (right) on the Reboot Develop 2018 stage with the Stormdivers logo behind them.

Stormdivers isn't the only new game Housemarque has in the works. Around 20 people are making Stormdivers but there is another, bigger, triple-A game in development too.
"Definitely triple-A comes with a lot of connotations," Haveri said. "Especially coming from where we do it seems like an insane leap - and that's what it's going to be."
He wouldn't say how long the bigger game has been in development but suggested it was further off. "We're going to be able to pull off some surprises for sure," he said, "but definitely right now we're focused on Stormdivers."
He concluded: "This is like the renaissance of Housemarque. It's very exciting internally. We've been able to, we feel, perfect some of these formulas we've done in the side-scrolling and top-down genres, and now it's how do we take on the other stuff? How do we really make an impact, and how do we make it so people will say 'oh that's Housemarque'?"

 

[Great Deceiver]

Well, all the fuckers who didn't buy Nex Machina certainly deserve this shit. Can't blame Housemarque for wanting to make money - they certainly did their part in making awesome games that didn't sell.

Without any hyperbole, I think Nex Machina is the best game I've played in the last 20 years. What a shame.

 

[Big Wrangle]

It's gritty Fortnite, but with hoverbikes. No sign of innovation or Housemarque's style shown as I would've hoped.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

OwO what's this?

 

[Ivan]

OwO

new kid lingo

 

[Leechmonger]

I bought Nex Machina.

Spoiler

I wish I hadn't.

 

[Machocruz]

Didn't they make that game Alienation on PS4, with the amazing looking plumes of smoke and kicked up debris? They really had some talent and vision. Still meaning to get Nex Machina when I have time to play.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yes, Alienation was theirs, although I've never played it. The 'save humans' mechanic in Nex Machina is similar to what they had in their last game, Resogun, which is pretty great although much more limited in scope. It also never got released outside of PS3/PS4, which is a shame.

They are definitely a very talented developer, both technically and design-wise. Too bad their great games didn't sell and they have now decided to make popamole garbage for braindead, attention-addled millenials. Can't say I blame them.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

Difficult arcade games in general, and shmups specifically, have been the niche of a niche for quite a while now. On top of that, twin stick shooters are an even smaller niche, which many shmups players don't even enjoy, and the bright 3D graphics with lots of lighting and particle effects are also something which I personally find rather distracting in a game like this. Nex Machina isn't very readable, which is one of the most important things for a good bullet hell game. Maybe they hoped for more casual players, but that's simply the wrong audience for a hard game like this. What I guess I'm trying to say is, I'm not surprised it didn't generate enough sales for them.

And instead of scaling down graphics- and budgetwise in order to be able to continue developing what they supposedly love, they now develop a shitty multiplayer, maybe battle royal even? Yeah, no respect for them whatsoever.

 

[Great Deceiver]

While I don't disagree that the audience for difficult arcade-style games is small, I don't think graphics had anything to do with how poorly Nex Machina sold. When you get used to them, they're perfectly readable and they serve the Running Man aesthetic they were going for perfectly.

It's not really a 'twin stick shooter' in any modern sense and it has much more to do with Smash TV than other recent games with the same control method. People were expecting popamole garbage with progression mechanics, what they got was a razorsharp, tough as shit game with incredible design that approximates a puzzle more than anything. Every level is a big puzzle if you're playing for score. Casual players as usual completely missed the point (credit-fed on easy and complained the game was 'too short' after dying 150 times). The game was never made for them, regardless of your opinion of graphics or whatever else.

It wasn't just Nex Machina. None of their excellent games sold very well, with the possible exception of Super Stardust HD, which might have sold more because it was very early days in the console downloadable games marketplace.

I also think you're taking the wrong approach - they're not scaling down, if anything, they're scaling up for a wider audience, which is a shitty move because they're moving to a completely crowded space where they have no foothold and no expertise, where the audience is nothing but addled mongoloids who play alt-tabbed while talking to idiots on the stream. I'm sure this is a terrible financial move and will probably have catastrophic results.

edit: maybe I misunderstood your point - perhaps scaling down to keep a niche audience is what you meant. I don't know about that, but these people want to make money. As I said, I don't blame them. They developed excellent games in both design and technical excellence, people just didn't buy them.

 

[Big Wrangle]

I have a glimmer of hope that they'll decide to keep up making the games they're known for in the form of side projects, but that would require Stormdivers doing well.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

I think you may have partially misunderstood me.

That casuals miss the point of tough as nails arcade games by credit-feeding and then complaining about shortness is nothing new. But that still seems to be the audience Housemarque were going for with these overdone visuals. I love shmups, but this game doesn't appeal to me at all, primarily because of the ovderdone graphics and effects. I get eye-cancer just watching gameplay videos. Compare it to some of the better Cave shooters for example: There's a lot going on as well, but everything is clearly readable in contrast to this.

And if none of their previous games sold very well, why didn't they budget accordingly for Nex Machina? The game is too hard for casuals, and not quite right for a lot of arcade fans. But Housemarque prefer to whine that there's no market for these games, and instead of adapting by scaling back their budget and/or trying to appeal even more to their niche, they now develop a Battle Royal, which might fail or not (who cares). And imo that indicates that's what they wanted in the first place: A mass audience. Had they accepted the fact that they're developing hardcore arcade games for a niche market, I'm sure there would've been a way to make it work.

Because I've read statements similar to this relativeley often:

[...] Without any hyperbole, I think Nex Machina is the best game I've played in the last 20 years. What a shame.

edit:

edit: maybe I misunderstood your point - perhaps scaling down to keep a niche audience is what you meant. I don't know about that, but these people want to make money. As I said, I don't blame them. They developed excellent games in both design and technical excellence, people just didn't buy them.

Exactly. Only difference is I think it would've worked if they'd been willing, and thus I do blame them. How do you go from "we love these great arcade designs" to developing a Battle Royal. That's beyond retarded.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Big Wrangle]

Yep, that pretty much confirms the game is gritty Fortnite.