EA to Decide Fate of Anthem (Update: Development Has Ceased)

But, that's ok. One lost hand is not going bust at this point. The deck is still stacked in favor if they play their cards right.

Don't butter us up, this was easy for you. COVID just accelerated it.

He is not saying Covid was the singular factor, but a factor amongst other factors.

Yup, they actually listened to their fans to see where they went wrong and what could be improved, and started acting on it immediately. Now personally I preferred the no NPC thing in 76 it gave everything a really creepy vibe. But most people didn't like it so NPCs were added in. Right now 76 is a really solid game, its not really my cup of tea as I don't like MP stuff, but its solid, it has a community, the devs constantly were communicating and working with the fans. Every studio will have there misses, its how they recover that matters. Bethesda recovered admirably, bioware barely even tried to.(not talking individual devs who i am sure busted ass, but resources put towards)

Well - What can I say?

My predictions turned out to be true. The moment I heard Anthem would be a multiplayer, and even worst - a "Game As A Service", type of game I lost all my interest. I said far before the launch of the game that it would be a failure. Bioware is a studio that has single player role playing stories in their genes. Apart from that I don't like multiplayer games, I knew that they never could give the same experience in a multiplayer game, as they had given in their single player games. And I was right. And as a result the game failed to be attractive to (most of) the older Bioware game lovers, and was not able to attract enough new gamers simply because they had the core stuff (party shooter-looter) simply wrong.

I am not happy with this outcome. I am still mad when I think that all effort and manpower that has been put in Anthem also could have been used to make Mass Effect Andromeda a really good game. While I still like that game, there is no doubt it could have been so much better. Mass Effect Andromeda was sacrificed for the good of Anthem. And what is the end result? In stead of one really good game (ME:A) we now have two failures. Yeah - It still hurts!

Anyway - I had high hopes for Dragon Age 4. However - As I learned that the core of that game is ripped out, and replaced with key components from Anthem, I got that sinking feeling that another game will be offered to the pitch dark god of "Game As A Service" and even "multiplayer" madness. If that really is the case, I predict Dragon Age 4 will be the next failure, and probably the end of Bioware.

Really - I am a fan of the older Bioware games, but absolutely do not like the new direction of game development in this studios. I can only pray Dragon Age 4 will be a REAL single player story driven RPG, otherwise it's the end of the line as far as I can see.

Sorry for being this negative, but Bioware MUST have the next ting really, really, really very good. And I still have some hope they do, but realistically... Yeah... Sigh...

The game was a resounding success. Second best selling Bioware game, so far.

Covid has become companies catchall excuse. But it was obvious to me at least well before covid they were not putting the resources necessary towards anthem for it to succeed, they were just looking to fail slower and less dramatically, they couldn't even pull that off.