Final Fantasy 16’s core development crew have moved on from the project and aren’t expecting to work on a direct follow-up, according to the game’s producer.
27.11.2023 - 18:17 / pcgamer.com
Frontier boss David Braben has said the company has experienced a «turbulent and difficult year» after Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin struggled to find an audience.
As reported by IGN, Frontier issued a trading update this morning in the wake of the launch of its of its fantasy RTS, acknowledging the recent difficulties faced by the company, and its plans to improve fortunes going forward.
«We were pleased to see at launch that Realms of Ruin received mostly positive reviews from game critics and from players,» explains the update. «However, sales to date have been lower than expected.»
It certainly seems like Realms of Ruin has struggled to find an audience, with just 187 concurrent players at the time of writing according to SteamDB, and a total of 737 Steam reviews giving the game a «mixed rating». Regardless, Frontier plans to «evolve and support» the game with «post-release content» and hopes sales might pick up «with the December trading period approaching».
Nonetheless, following Realms of Ruin's disappointment, Frontier is adjusting both its prospects and strategy going into next year. Before the launch, Frontier expected to reach revenue of «around £108 million» for this financial year. Now it has amended that figure to «in the range of £80-95 million», with the company expected to make a «loss of around £9 million».
Because of this, Frontier is revising its current business strategy. In the last five years, the company has tried to «diversify [our] game portfolio», but this «has not delivered the anticipated success». Hence, Frontier aims to refocus the business on its «CMS games», such as Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution. According to Frontier, these games «continue to perform well», and the company hopes to «at least break even» in the next financial year. CEO Jonny Watts also confirmed «a third creative management simulation game on our development roadmap», so it sounds like we'll see another management sim from Frontier in addition to those mentioned above.
The new direction also brings one major change at the top. Chairman David Wilton is stepping down from Frontier's board, and will be replaced by the current Non-Executive Director Ilse Howling. Frontier's boss David Braben thanked Wilton «for his contribution during a turbulent and difficult year for Frontier».
It was clear Frontier was struggling this year long before this trading update. In June, the company ditched its third-party publishing label «Frontier Foundry», while October brought news of layoffs «following a period of disappointing financial performance.» Realms of Ruin seemed like it would do the business during previews, but our reviewer Noah thought its «clumsy movement and a baffling
Final Fantasy 16’s core development crew have moved on from the project and aren’t expecting to work on a direct follow-up, according to the game’s producer.
After recently being delayed to late 2024, Focus Entertainment and Saber Interactive have been toying with our emotions over the last few weeks over whether or not they'll reveal an actual release date for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2. Well, you can set your heart at ease. You might have missed its brief 30-second reveal during tonight's Game Awards, but at long last, we have a date.
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Short of somehow growing a Na’vi neural braid and jamming it directly into the base of James Cameron’s skull, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is pretty much your best option for taking a virtual tour of the stunning alien moon of Pandora. This open-world shooter serves up a mind bogglingly large slice of the fantastic fictional universe to explore, from staggeringly dense forest areas to picturesque open plains and properly intimidating mountain ranges both on land and suspended impossibly in the skies above. However, hidden amongst all that beauty is a disappointing amount of bloat, with copy-pasted enemy outposts and facilities that made venturing off the main story path far less rewarding than it has been in recent landmark adventures such as Elden Ring or the last two Legend of Zeldas. I still largely enjoyed the 25 hours I spent trying to fend off a resource-hungry human invasion, but I wish the environment itself had presented me with more compelling reasons to fight for it beyond its surface-level splendor.
Frontier Developments has announced its post-launch content plans for the recently-released real-time strategy game Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. Two Hero DLCs are planned for the game: Stormcast Eternals champion Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear, and Orruk Kruleboyz shaman Gobbsprakk, the Mouth of Mork.
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Frontier Developments is going back to its roots, declaring the company will return to focusing on sims, which brought the company its original string of successes. This comes after efforts to diversify the studio’s offerings were not as successful as they hoped.
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UK developer Frontier has said it will refocus on making simulation games following the launch of real-time strategy game Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin.
UK developer Creative Assembly will refocus on making real-time strategy games following the cancellation of online extraction shooter Hyenas.