Apex Legends is good —
Which isn’t surprising for fans of Titanfall,
And so far, it looks like it’ll be a smashing success
a very smashing success.
Which for this franchise is a genuinely.
shocking development.
That’s because the game’s publisher, EA has made some… choices.
The original Titanfall was released in 2014 as a multiplayer-only game — so naturally,
it needed a strong playerbase.
So what did EA do?
They released it exclusively for one console!
A brand new console.
But lots of people must have bought that console right?
The sales! They shot up up and uh...
aw… dang
Well at least it was also on PC.
And anyway, the game sold 10 million copies!
Or there was 10 million concurrents?
There was definitely 10 million something,
we’re still not entirely sure what Respawn’s CEO meant here.
Despite the game featuring big robots punching each other
a crowd-pleasing theme if there ever was one,
it just didn’t have the staying power of the other big multiplayer franchises,
perhaps because it lacked a single-player campaign.
But having an excellent first game in a new franchise is hardly an awful spot to be in.
I did mention that right?
That Titanfall was excellent?
Titanfall was EXCELLENT!
In fact, the franchise was well-positioned for a sequel.
Respawn knew they needed a single player campaign,
and made that a focus of the sequel,
And I don’t wanna read too much into this tweet
but it seems like they weren’t interested in being a console exclusive again.
Of course, this would make marketing a little tricky, because most anybody knew about Titanfall
Was that it was an Xbox One exclusive,
and was multiplayer only.
But Titanfall 2 did have an online beta. That's a great way to build hype!
Oh no.
Look, the Titanfall beta did what it was supposed to do:
it tested the netcode and helped the developer get valuable feedback.
But the rocky beta didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
And Titanfall 2 was barreling toward a much larger obstacle: its release date.
Launching one week before the sci-fi Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare,
Titanfall 2 also had to compete with...
E A !?
There’s probably a lot of blame to go around for this clustertruck(?) of a release calendar,
but the end result was a really bad deal for Titanfall 2.
It meant that EA had to ration out its advertising budget between two huge multiplayer first-person shooters.
And when a company has to decide between the
franchise IP that they own,
and the one that they don’t…
who do you think wins out?
On top of that, because the game was no longer an exclusive, it didn’t get cross-promoted by Microsoft
nearly as much as the first game did.
Xbox, go to Titanfall.
This is insane.
And which game did Microsoft decided to bundle with the Xbox One for the holiday season?
Battlefield 1.
And Sony wasn’t just not interested in promoting
a franchise formerly exclusive to its competitor,
they were all-in promoting Call of Duty
and its exclusive PS4 content.
But hey — at least there was EA’s social media campaign!
Oh, no.
Pro tip: insulting other games, including ones that share a publisher with you, is what
people in the industry call a bad look.
The really frustrating thing for Titanfall fans
is that Titanfall 2 is a stellar sequel.
The multiplayer was better than ever, with
more customization, more Titans, and a mother effin’ zipline.
Plus a wildly creative single-player campaign
that deservedly received accolades from across the industry.
And the big robot did make me cry.
What are you doing!?
Protocol 3:
I will not lose another pilot.
But Titanfall fans hopes for a proper sequel faded as the low sales numbers came in.
EA didn’t even mention the game at E3 2017.
Did Titanfall have a future? Did Respawn?
How do business work?
Okay, so EA buys Respawn, and they go about making
a new game set in the Titanfall universe.
Except it doesn’t have Titans,
and it doesn't have wall running,
... it mixes an Overwatch-style hero shooter with battle royale,
the most popular genre of the moment.
It’s also got loot boxes,
which are not exactly a popular way monetize games right now,
And instead of “marketing” it, they just released it the same day it was announced.
And yet, somehow….
This might be the best launch of a Titanfall game that EA's has ever done.
It helps that Respawn took the rock-solid underpinnings of Titanfall,
stripped away everything else,
and built a refined battle royale game.
And then they fixed just about every other problem they found in the genre.
Like the ingenious “ping” system for seamlessly communicating with teammates.
Fortnite’s already ripped that off!
Or an intuitive weapon upgrade system, where mods swap to your new gun automatically.
PUBG,, please rip this off.
High five!
Apex Legends looks to finally be the critical
AND commercial success that Respawn’s always had the potential to make.
And EA?
Well, they decided to launch another multiplayer, squad-based, sci fi shooter just a couple weeks later!
Clearly, they’ve learned their lesson.