Report: Mass Effect Put on Indefinite Hold

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Stupid, stupid stupid...

One game got a few bad reviews so we'll stop instead of giving the team a chance to improve

Reviews have nothing to do with it. The game didn't sell as well as they'd hoped. It's always about the money. What some gamers don't seem to understand is that people in charge don't give a fuck about games. They don't care if you enjoy the game. They don't care if the game isn't finished and that you'll never get to see what happens next. They don't care what the game is about, how long it lasts, how replayable it is etc. They're not invested in games as an entertainment medium because they are not gamers. They see them purely as products designed to make money. They don't care if it's a game or farming equipment. When their products don't do as well as they were expecting, they won't hesitate to abandon it and try something else. Your feelings towards the product are not a part of the equation.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Good.

They had a change to unfuck themselves with Andromeda and what we got was a spunk drenched rag.

I'm sorry Bioware, but you have become Ubisoft; a soulless videogame factory. Maybe take some time to sort your shit out.

 

[bladestorm91]

Bioware dead, GOOD. Next stop DICE. Once they are dead EA will have nothing left besides sports games.
God I wish EA would JUST DIE.

 

[lionsprey]

meh, i didn't buy the game because of the racist guy on the design team. but from what i've heard i wasn't missing much anyway.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Holy balls, I make one comment about liking a less-than-popular game and the whole world explodes at me. Fuck, I got less flack for saying I didn't mind the ME3 ending. You know what, I loved Andromeda so much I'm going to go make a thread about it right now in Gaming Discussion. I invite you all to come shit in my open mouth and tell me my opinions are objectively wrong there as well

 

[SirSullymore]

Well, this sucks. I was very happy to be surprised at how good Andromeda is, and sequels were clearly planned for it. If it really is over it will be a sad case of a good franchise killed by a shitty fan base, and that just upsets me.

I know! The salt over the ending of three killed the franchise!

 

[fix-the-spade]

I got the impression it was one of those projects that went on for so long and cost so much to develop that there was almost no reasonable level of sales that would make it "successful". Wasn't that the same problem Mankind Divided had too?

In Mankind Divided's case it was more to do with the decisions Squenix made in the run up to it's release.

Between the pre-orders, the multiplayer, the micro transactions and the decision to split the game into multiple 'episodic' parts yet still charge full price Squenix killed off the demand for Mankind Divided.

It had the same problem as Dead Space 3, taking a well liked single player series and cramming all of the worst elements of multiplayer and Free 2 Play games into it. The game just stopping at what feels like the half way mark doesn't help it either.

In this case I think the problem is two fold. The first is that Andromeda isn't a great game. It's full of bugs and the story isn't very engaging.

More important is that nobody really cares. Mass Effect was almost entirely about it's characters and their relationships, Andromeda has none of those characters, Shepard and friends arc finished with Mass Effect 3. If I had any interest left in Mass Effect it was to see the galaxy in the aftermath of the Reaper War, when Andromeda got announced it felt like a massive cop out.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Well, I guess I don't even need to wait for a sale anymore.

 

[Johnny Thunder]

More important is that nobody really cares. Mass Effect was almost entirely about it's characters and their relationships, Andromeda has none of those characters, Shepard and friends arc finished with Mass Effect 3. If I had any interest left in Mass Effect it was to see the galaxy in the aftermath of the Reaper War, when Andromeda got announced it felt like a massive cop out

Yeah, I agree with that. For that reason I wasn't interested in ME Andromeda in the first place, so at least I'm not disappointed. But what I would want from Mass Effect would be a game in which you can be the squad members doing their thing: like assassinating people as Thane or stealing stuff as Kasumi. It could be an episodic game were there are three story arcs per episode. Just thinking out loud...

 

[hermes]

Good. They made a bad game, they deserve to get shit-canned as a result.

That seems a little excessive.

Sure, the game didn't fulfill the unrealistic expectations of the audience, and there was a LOT of room for improvement, but people lost their jobs over it, real people. But hey, they and their families sure deserve it for making bad animations under a tight timeline, the bastards.

On an up note, I am sure Andrew Wilson and Mac Walters are pretty secure in their work prospects... can't say the same for the dozens of people that used to be on EA Montreal.

 

[Sonicron]

Well, I'm still waiting for them to patch the game into a mostly stable, glitch-free state, but I AM looking forward to playing ME:A. Frankly, I think it sucks arse that an initial luke-warm reception may have killed a wonderful IP, and I do hope we get to see more of it at some point.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Considering Mass Effect Andromeda sold over a million units in the first week it was released in the U.S. yet EA actually expected it to sell 3 million this just shows how insane the sales expectations have become. There was a time not that long ago when going anywhere NEAR 1 million units would've been considered a smashing success, but game development and marketing costs have risen well beyond the level of sustainability.

It's a real shame, Mass Effect Andromeda is a very good game with great story, characters, and gameplay with an incredible amount of potential, but this probably means it's never going to reach that potential.

 

[putowtin]

Stupid, stupid stupid...

One game got a few bad reviews so we'll stop instead of giving the team a chance to improve

Reviews have nothing to do with it. The game didn't sell as well as they'd hoped. It's always about the money. What some gamers don't seem to understand is that people in charge don't give a fuck about games. They don't care if you enjoy the game. They don't care if the game isn't finished and that you'll never get to see what happens next. They don't care what the game is about, how long it lasts, how replayable it is etc. They're not invested in games as an entertainment medium because they are not gamers. They see them purely as products designed to make money. They don't care if it's a game or farming equipment. When their products don't do as well as they were expecting, they won't hesitate to abandon it and try something else. Your feelings towards the product are not a part of the equation.

Adam, love, did you breath anywhere in that?!
I get it really do, the bottom line is all most people care about anymore (depressing as that is)
But it's not as though it only sold two copies, I think it was close to 3 million in its first two weeks

 

[pookie101]

first mass effect now hitman.. may 2017 is starting to be come known as the culling

 

[jklinders]

Wasn't entirely their fault. A lot of animations were outsourced to a Romanian firm to save money. That's an awful lot of probably overworked people who had zero fucks to give about the franchise and were just collecting a paycheck. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that decision was made out of house by EA rather than Bioware Montreal. Also, the Montreal branch were the second stringers of Bioware to begin with. The Austin branch has most of the good ones these days. People who are rumored to be prototyping a reboot of of KotOR.

That the game shipped in the state it did suggests every bit as much about EA as it did the devs. Only thing is, EA is not getting shit canned for it but their underlings are being thrown under the bus for failing.

Sad part is, I'm still going to get it once I finally get this potato powered PC upgraded.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Its not art, its a business. They're selling a product. A product whose success depends solely on its content and quality. And it had neither, so as a product it was a failure. Thus the business people, with the job of creating s successful product, failed in their job.

Saying "When video games art?!" doesn't change the fact they're in this for the money.

 

[Elijin]

The worst thing I would say about ME:A is that it was average or uninspiring, and prone to being buggy (I think I personally had 1 noticeable bug in my playthrough). It has a fairly solid core that is fun if that style of gameplay appeals to you. But these days being a AAA and being average or uninspiring? Well, you may as well have committed a war crime. Especially if you're a developer like Bioware, who already upset the internet.

 

[Fappy]

The ultimate message is to STOP PREORDERING GAMES!

Thankfully most of my friends have stopped. Still, I think we're in the minority.

More on topic: Bioware's been kinda RIP for me since ME3. It's just not the same company anymore. Makes me sad

 

[JenSeven]

Welp.

The Montreal Branch frankly didn't deserve to be handed the franchise, as all they previously did was the Multiplayer, which didn't involve making the character models or write the story. And now they are downgraded to 'online support' which means that they will only be working on the Multiplayer, so no more fixes to the main game nor DLC.
This is EA being massively stupid again, as the Multiplayer is mainly there to keep people occupied and invested in the game till new DLC or fixes to the game are released. So they just killed the game and its multiplayer because they brought the whole thing down.
It's a typical EA move, stupid to the core and completely missing the point and how the market reacts.

They rushed a severely unpolished, but highly anticipated game, made by a studio that didn't know what they were doing and now canned the whole thing before more experienced people could come in and fix the horrible mess.

Congrats EA. Going for another Shittest Company Award?

 

[Bobular]

Played Andromeda, really enjoyed it, disappointed I wont be getting a sequel soon by the sounds of it.

I only had one crash the entire time I played it and that was due to a hardware fault on my PC rather than the game. I didn't think the animation was terrible, just not the best. The multiplayer was the same as ME3 which I spent ages playing so I enjoyed the multiplayer for Andromeda just the same. I like most of the characters in Andromeda. The story was quite good and I enjoyed the feeling of exploring a new galaxy, especially at the start when I had no idea what things were.

I'd say Andromeda was a good game, not the best game but good, worth the money I payed for it. I honestly don't see why people are complaining about it so much, I can only guess its due to people still being upset over the ME3 ending and so went into Andromeda expecting it to be shit and expectations will change how you see a game.