It also had more players AND didn't burn $400M.
And to be fair, it did try to spice up the hero-shooter mechanic.Too bad all those ideas failed. It's like trying to taste filet mignon, gourmet sandwich, and caviar at the same time; They might taste amazing indvidually, but taste like crap since there is no harmony
I mean the studio just had a bad concept from the jump man. Another shooter, another live service, and throw in a bunch of mechanics that make no sense
In order for a new live service game to succeed it basically needs to be the best fucking game ever made at this point, because there are so many live services with established audiences that you are never going to rip people away from them. And even if you did make the best game ever, you still will struggle to pull people off their other game.
What I think game studios and publishers fail to understand about this whole thing isn't that you are trying to get a player to leave...say Overwatch, for your Highgaurd game. You are trying to get the player to leave hundreds and thousands of hours, hundreds and thousands of dollars in skins and perks, and a long standing years and years long history that player has with that game. All for the hope that they'll come TRY your game, nevermind stick around and give you any money for it.
Highguard only survived a month because at least it was free.
Next game on the deathnail is Marathon. Which admittedly is having a much more mixed reception than HG got. Apparently Marathon has a bit of promise and the mode itself is fun, but there are a lot of other problems in that it's not balanced well, the shooting feels weird, and some people really hate the graphics because the neon industrial blandness really doesn't end up being that interested as a whole.
But it's Bungie and maybe that brings enough name brand behind it to keep it working for a while longer. But again it's also launching as a $40 game like Concord, and it's launching right after Overwatch revamped itself again which people really seem to like so......I don't know.
Marathon peaked with 140K players on steam which is...well Highguard peaked with over 900k so.........