Titanfall 2 Should Have Sold Better, Dev Says

Megalith

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While Respawn boss Vince Zampella believes that Titanfall 2 was successful, he admits that the game didn’t sell as well as it should have, citing “aggressive pricing” as one potential reason (which is odd, being that it debuted at standard cost). Most everyone, of course, knows who to actually blame, being that EA sandwiched the release between Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The good news is that the franchise hasn’t been inadvertently and mistakenly killed off, as Zampella suggests that Titanfall will return in some form.

"We're working on more Titanfall--we're not announcing what that is yet, but there's a few other things in the works--the mobile game, which turned out fantastic and is super fun, the fans love it and allowed us to expand on what we did in the last games. So I'm pretty happy with what the franchise has become." We also learn in the interview that Respawn does not plan to release more Titanfall 2 content now that the Ultimate Edition is out. "Probably not. We want to work on new stuff," Zampella said.
 
Because they keep launching against Battlefield or another big title. Not to mention the little to no marketing the game receives. The developers at Respawn are great at making games but shit at promoting, or might be EA to blame on that one. They spent millions promoting Battlefield 1 but Titanfall 2 got barely a mention.
 
Agreed. They also need to come up with something new. Not sure what that is but gameplay got too repetitive. TF2 was a repeat of TF1. Campaign was very good though.
 
1-Timing, not only released between 2 big franchises, but most ppl who like fps, are already busy playing overwatch, n1z1, player unknown, etc.
2-Titanfall1 didn't have solo mode, i think alot of ppl thought this one didn't either
3-Not alot of marketing, and time between the reveal and the release was very short, not enough to build up a hype and clear things up about the compaign mode.
 
TF2 really should have been a Jan-Feb game or even an August one. EA basically tossed the game out to die. EA loves to compete against itself and also toss games out near much bigger competition. They've been doing this for years. EA is obsessed with trying to beat Activision and continues to make stupid mistake after stupid mistake in their efforts. I wouldn't be surprised if EA released Anthem right on top of some expansion or something for Destiny 2. Or, hell, tossed Anthem out against COD.
 
When you go against the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield, and you're also a shooter, you should expect to have a bad time.
 
Bought TitanFall1. Played out after 3 weeks.

I'm not paying $60 for a game that has limited replayability.
 
EA can definitely schedule a better release window but I think the main issue is that PC gamers just have not embraced Titanfall...it's actually a pretty decent MP game with some interesting gameplay mechanics but the PC community is very finicky...no matter the release date I see this being more successful on consoles
 
It should have but EA seemingly aren't interested in giving the Titanfall series the right launch windows and breathing space, nothing they love more than shooting themselves in the foot.
 
TF2 have single player? hmm maybe i'll out it on my wish list
yeah, and its not that bad honestly.

But as polished and nice as TF2 was, it just doesn't have it for the replay value, even with the limited MP crowd. There are just too many other options that check all the boxes for folks.
 
TF2 have single player? hmm maybe i'll out it on my wish list

Its on Origin Access so if they run a free month trial thing or if you just want to pay $5 you can play through the SP. Its worth it. Its pretty well put together and has some fun missions and boss fights.
 
Everyone already covered many excellent points on the decent SP, the poor launch window (against the uber-hyped BF:One and COD!?), and I'll add one more:

I could have sworn it was an Xbox exclusive, just like its predecessor.
 
I think that excuse is bullshit. I would have easily bought TF2 had TF1 not been plagued by problems and quickly boring. Had TF1 been good the fact that I bought BF1 would not have prevented me from getting it too.
 
I think that excuse is bullshit. I would have easily bought TF2 had TF1 not been plagued by problems and quickly boring. Had TF1 been good the fact that I bought BF1 would not have prevented me from getting it too.

You are not everyone. Not everyone buys tons of games all the time. The majority of gamers buy, at most, a handful of games every year. There are many that will only buy one or two, maybe three, games each year. Millions of people will only buy what their friends are playing or just stick with major franchises they enjoy. No one on this forum, or any hardware or gaming site, is representative of the normal gaming audience. Tossing TF2, a much less popular and much less advertised game, between the two biggest gaming launches of each year is retarded. There is a reason March has turned into a second Holiday season in terms of the game releases. Everyone else is smart enough to get the fuck away from the onslaught of Q4 releases unless they're able to survive the pile of releases and billions of dollars in video game marketing being thrown around.
 
Tf2 lost its charmed, the mp was not as good as tf1. Also releasing against juggernaut Bf1 was total fail on EA part.
 
Too bad EA keeps insisting on forcing Origin. Give it a Steam release, and it will sell much better.

I doubt it at this point. Since BF3 in 2011, its been 6 years since Origin was created, and I seriously doubt EA thinks that a Steam release will bring any more sales than its current method of distribution.
 
I never picked it up, was too into battlefield MP. I might pick it up dirt cheap just for the story campaign but that's it. I have several FPS buddies that picked it up on release and were disappointed it never took off, I don't know what concurrent multiplayer count it ever reached? Anybody have any numbers? websites like BF1stats.com BF4stats.com always have the current online player numbers which are good to gauge the health of the game, similar to steam charts.
 
I have little to no interest in a weightless, spray and prey, bunny hopping shooter with lifeless weapons and enemies that absorb dozens of rounds. I played it a bit on a free weekend, and I was not impressed... at all. I hardly touched BF1 as well because I dislike the theme and the changes they made from BF4 were dumb. It feels more like a console shooter with loose projectile ballistics.

I am enjoying RS2 on the few maps I enjoy, out of the few (7-8!) maps. I switch between BF4 and RS2 for my online FPS needs.
 
Titanfall games suck.. instead of a great mmo with all those mechs.. they limit it to a handfull of people... i refuse to play till its an mmo
 
When you go against the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield, and you're also a shooter, you should expect to have a bad time.

The launch window excuse is one dimensional lazy logic as far as the PC version is concerned, CoD Infinite Boredom sold appallingly (its not even in the top 100 played games on steam anymore) and whilst BF1 had as strong start with 200,000 max concurrent players it has now dwindled to a pathetic 25,000 max concurrent players in a very short space of time. Titanfail 2's problem is that Respawn thought it could get away with wrapping the same flawed MP experience (again featuring shitty console design philosophies) with a linear and fairly unremarkable 6 hour SP campaign. Respawn's arrogance is all the more demonstrable from its refusal to even have an open beta on PC. Now compare that to PUBG, an PC only early access title with nowhere near the media dollars of any of these AAA games, which is absolutely destroying everything in terms of online population numbers and growth. Activision and EA can only dream of those population stats for a game on a single platform, especially PC.

EA can definitely schedule a better release window but I think the main issue is that PC gamers just have not embraced Titanfall...it's actually a pretty decent MP game with some interesting gameplay mechanics but the PC community is very finicky...no matter the release date I see this being more successful on consoles

Give PC gamers the freedom to customise, host and administer games as they wish, and it absolutely would have done better. You would think that Vince Zampella and Jason West would know this as the creators of the initial CoD's, but it seems they learned nothing from the IWnet debacle and the sclerotic demise of CoD as a franchise.

You are not everyone. Not everyone buys tons of games all the time. The majority of gamers buy, at most, a handful of games every year. There are many that will only buy one or two, maybe three, games each year. Millions of people will only buy what their friends are playing or just stick with major franchises they enjoy. No one on this forum, or any hardware or gaming site, is representative of the normal gaming audience. Tossing TF2, a much less popular and much less advertised game, between the two biggest gaming launches of each year is retarded. There is a reason March has turned into a second Holiday season in terms of the game releases. Everyone else is smart enough to get the fuck away from the onslaught of Q4 releases unless they're able to survive the pile of releases and billions of dollars in video game marketing being thrown around.

Again, that is not a convincing argument when referencing the PC version because CoD is no longer a dominant licence which sways users in any meaningful way from alternative purchases, and in any event history has repeatedly demonstrated that PC games are capable of generating higher sales volumes over time if the developers actually make the effort to appeal to the player base. Apart from the one free weekend, Respawn have done precisely fuck all to overcome the inherent problems with matchmaking coupled with anemic online populations.
 
I enjoyed Titanfall 2...while it was a short SP, it was still very much fun to play. I believe I beat it in around 8-9 hours.
 
Again, that is not a convincing argument when referencing the PC version because CoD is no longer a dominant licence which sways users in any meaningful way from alternative purchases, and in any event history has repeatedly demonstrated that PC games are capable of generating higher sales volumes over time if the developers actually make the effort to appeal to the player base. Apart from the one free weekend, Respawn have done precisely fuck all to overcome the inherent problems with matchmaking coupled with anemic online populations.

Respawn has no control over how the game is marketed or things like free weekends. That is entirely on EA's shoulders and EA dropped the ball, massively. If EA had given TF2 the kind of marketing budget they gave Battlefield maybe it would have done a lot better, but EA didn't do that because EA didn't want people to stop playing Battlefield. EA has fucked over Respawn repeatedly.
 
What's Titanfall 2?

;)

(Yeah, that's a stake in the heart to the marketing guys.)
 
They're basically the same thing. So, doubtful.

They're not.

Origin is EA-exclusive.

Steam is not. It carries cross-store games from people like UBIsoft. This means that you have one-stop shopping when they have a big sale.

If you're stuck inside your own smaller exclusive service (like Microsoft and Origin), then only people who are already big fans of your games tend to log-in and browse specials/promotions/free weekends. It's easy to miss that shit, since they're rarely announced in-advance.

It means you have a lot less visibility to expand your user-base, and titles that aren't carefully marketed die a swift death. I haven't bought an EA game since BF4/TF1 (sucked after a few weeks)/Crysis3 (just plain sucked), but I've bought several UBIsoft games since then. One was much easier to see than the other.

You can't expect a few big names to bring enough players to feed your other smaller fishes. Allow cross-store purchases, and I'll reopen my mind to EA games. But right now I never know when they're on sale or free-weekending it.

I don't mind using Origin to play games. But don't make me buy the games there too. The only company big enough to pull this "closed store" off successfully is Blizzard, and that's only because their PC games are way more popular than any of EA's trash.

Hell, you want to make that 30% that Steam eats out of every purchase? Why not make the games a 1-3 month timed exclusive to Origin., and THEN open it to the market for the curious people who have never heard of it. Guaranteed to give your older SP games new life, and prevent your best multiplayer titles from falling over dead inside of 6 months. There EA, I just solved your entire company future, but you're too stupid to see it.
 
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Titanfall = MechWarrior for Dummies.
Or
Call of Duty: PowerArmor Edition

At least how it appeared to be marketed.

Maybe it's great but it looked a lot like the same old thing with window dressing.
 
They're not.

Origin is EA-exclusive.

Steam is not. It carries cross-store games from people like UBIsoft. This means that you have one-stop shopping when they have a big sale.

If you're stuck inside your own smaller exclusive service (like Microsoft and Origin), then only people who are already big fans of your games tend to log-in and browse specials/promotions/free weekends. It's easy to miss that shit, since they're rarely announced in-advance.

It means you have a lot less visibility to expand your user-base, and titles that aren't carefully marketed die a swift death. I haven't bought an EA game since BF4/TF1 (sucked after a few weeks)/Crysis3 (just plain sucked), but I've bought several UBIsoft games since then. One was much easier to see than the other.

You can't expect a few big names to bring enough players to feed your other smaller fishes. Allow cross-store purchases, and I'll reopen my mind to EA games. But right now I never know when they're on sale or free-weekending it.

I don't mind using Origin to play games. But don't make me buy the games there too. The only company big enough to pull this "closed store" off successfully is Blizzard, and that's only because their PC games are way more popular than any of EA's trash.

Hell, you want to make that 30% that Steam eats out of every purchase? Why not make the games a 1-3 month timed exclusive to Origin., and THEN open it to the market for the curious people who have never heard of it. Guaranteed to give your older SP games new life, and prevent your best multiplayer titles from falling over dead inside of 6 months. There EA, I just solved your entire company future, but you're too stupid to see it.


This -> I didn't even know that Titanfall 2 was available on PC because I don't load up Origin unless/until I want to play something through it. I load up and check Steam pretty much every time I run my computer because that's where every game I play except Diablo 3 is run/purchased through.
 
I loved Titanfall 1 & 2. The first one was why I bought my Xbox One. It did get old fairly fast, but I still played it. Just not as often. TF2 was good, but I was playing Battlefield 1 more.

Bad timing, bad marketing. They needed to push it a bit more. Some people still don't know it has a good single player campaign.
 
I know that the first one failed for me not because of the lack of single player but because they kept "balancing" everything and ruining shit. I used the Smart Pistol and the moment they took lock-on from 3 to 5 seconds or whatever it was it just ruined the gun for me and I just sort of stopped playing after that. I feel like you can't make drastic changes to stuff like that weeks after release where people, like me, are already use to things being how they are.

The second one was better and the single player was fun (if not a bit long in the tooth) but I never tried the online honestly. Definitely should have gotten more coverage though.
 
I loved both titanfalls but I can't white knight circle jerk the game the way some Titanfall Redditors do. The game had issues. At launch, the game had lots of gun balance issues, matchmaking issues, garbage maps (complex, crash site), no ability to host a custom game, no ability to filter out or play specific maps, reapers ruining end game, etc...

So while they fixed a few of these issues, they broke other issues. Stalkers got a buff (who asked for this?), reapers are still ridiculously op, you still can't play or exclude certain maps. My friends and I went back to playing Battlefield 4 because hit detection in Battlefield 1 is garbage and we are sick of getting Complex and Crash Site in Titanfall 2.
 
They're not.

Origin is EA-exclusive.

Steam is not. It carries cross-store games from people like UBIsoft. This means that you have one-stop shopping when they have a big sale.

If you're stuck inside your own smaller exclusive service (like Microsoft and Origin), then only people who are already big fans of your games tend to log-in and browse specials/promotions/free weekends. It's easy to miss that shit, since they're rarely announced in-advance.

It means you have a lot less visibility to expand your user-base, and titles that aren't carefully marketed die a swift death. I haven't bought an EA game since BF4/TF1 (sucked after a few weeks)/Crysis3 (just plain sucked), but I've bought several UBIsoft games since then. One was much easier to see than the other.

You can't expect a few big names to bring enough players to feed your other smaller fishes. Allow cross-store purchases, and I'll reopen my mind to EA games. But right now I never know when they're on sale or free-weekending it.

I don't mind using Origin to play games. But don't make me buy the games there too. The only company big enough to pull this "closed store" off successfully is Blizzard, and that's only because their PC games are way more popular than any of EA's trash.

Hell, you want to make that 30% that Steam eats out of every purchase? Why not make the games a 1-3 month timed exclusive to Origin., and THEN open it to the market for the curious people who have never heard of it. Guaranteed to give your older SP games new life, and prevent your best multiplayer titles from falling over dead inside of 6 months. There EA, I just solved your entire company future, but you're too stupid to see it.
When was the last time you browsed the store in Origin?

https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/far-cry/far-cry-4/standard-edition
https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/assassins-creed/assassins-creed-syndicate/standard-edition
 
Would have bought it if they would have included the game with EA access discounts... I was all ready to buy it until I realized that for some reason it didn't qualify for the discount through EA Access. They were too greedy... I moved on.
 
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