Game as a service?
There are many games that really gets the money in the longer term, especially competitive games.
And every new DLC with a "crazy" character could not just make people buy the DLC but also lure in new players that really gets hooked by it. Or an "overhaul" makes the "community" so happy, it makes other people aware and want to join the party.
There are for sure more business models.
Ubisoft just announced, there will be no new R6 game, as the current game works great.
But I also see that you cant compare it to NRS games, just wished there would have bin at least one more KP with some love to the gamesystem and variation moves.
The 2 game cycle as an MK fan just saddens me, MK12 2025/26 ... I hope I am still alive by then
(At least I hope after 3 2D games, the next title will be a 3D game again, with finally good animations.)
No matter how many times NRS patches the game, once they stop, there will be so many people saying the exact same thing.
“Just one more patch!”
This literally has been a thing in I believe every single NRS game. People have this super strong belief that if NRS really put in the time to have one last huge patch, the game would be perfectly fine and live on for years to come. But when you just think about it for a little bit, you’ll realize why that is heavily flawed logic. And it’s pretty simple, the last huge patch MK11 had didn’t fix everything, it didn’t have this effect you believe this mythical #OneLastPatch would have.
I am by no means defending MK11 or even really defending NRS. I just don’t understand how this same thing keeps happening when NRS has been pretty consistent on what they do, and what they don’t do.
As far as what you quoted, you left out the “especially in regards to NRS games” part. NRS games follow the NRS business model, which no other fighting game follows, at least not to my knowledge. Also, NRS games overwhelmingly get their sales from casuals. When I say overwhelmingly, I’ve done the math before. I can’t remember exactly and don’t feel like doing the math again, but I do remember the competitive playerbase making up
LESS than 1% of sales. That’s an astronomically staggering ratio. Likewise, compared to other fighting games, the math was calculated as well. And in most other competitive fg’s, casuals are still the vast majority for the most part, but more along the lines of around 80-85% or so estimates (for some games, the comp playerbase %
is actually much higher. Guilty Gear in particular [not counting strive since I haven’t seen the math on strive yet]). Which is still a lot, but having a comp playerbase of 15-20% is, once again, an enormous difference when compared to NRS game comp playerbases of less than even a single percentile.
I know this has been explained a lot, but I felt that it was relevant to this discussion. Of course, a percentage of those casuals DO come back to purchase DLC packs and play for a week or 2. But this is when diminishing returns really come into play. The percentage of casuals who come back to buy the DLC gets a lot smaller the longer the lifespan is for an NRS game. Also, to put it in another way, even if 100% of the NRS competitive playerbase were buying every single DLC, you would
STILL need A LOT of the casual playerbase to be buying them as well. In other words, it is impossible for competitive players to carry an NRS game on its own as far as NRS support is concerned in this regard.
That said, you don’t
need dev support to continue playing or supporting a game. As long as you have players that want to keep the game alive, you can keep it alive as long as you want. While UMK3 does come to mind, it isn’t anywhere
NEAR as popular or as successful as Melee has been in terms of ‘old fighting games lasting for multiple decades competitively’. I do hope a future NRS game is so well made and well received enough for something like this to happen, I’m sure most competitive players do.
Anyway, I know you and most people are aware of most of this. Was essentially just clarifying what my point was. I have a ton of different criticisms of NRS. From gameplay decisions, balancing decisions, extremely poor communication from pre-release all the way until they stop supporting their most recent game, and so many more I don’t feel like getting into. So I 100% understand people’s frustrations and disappointment. But I
do think some people have skewed, and oftentimes unrealistic expectations when it comes to NRS and refusing to look at them as a business, or from a business perspective. And to be frank, I feel it’s either due to simply not being aware of the business side of things, or being aware and just for some reason not taking it into as much consideration as they should.
