When restructuring and cutbacks occur, the focus is on preserving the “golden goose” and targeting new projects with high long-term profit potential.
Based on my own analysis and what I’ve seen from other analysts—
If we look at this from a cold, corporate perspective—focusing strictly on numbers, profit margins, and growth:
Everything points to Age of Empires II remaining safe.
Sure, there might be some drop in quality, but I wouldn’t worry about that just yet. Certainly continue to receive DLCs, simply because it sells well and the production costs are relatively low.
Development on a future Age of Empires V will likely continue.
Now, the teams involved in other games in the series that were affected by the restructuring will likely be reassigned to provide full support for this new Age of Empires V project.
New projects like Age of Empires V will shape the series’ future, so the priority is to target higher profits and expand.
However, Age of Empires III and Age of Mythology will unfortunately likely suffer as a result.
I don’t want to give false hope, but their sales figures are very low compared to the other titles. The investment isn’t justified if the goal is growth and cost-cutting.
As for Age of Empires IV, I would say we might see a reduction in the number of DLCs. That said, I believe they will try to keep the game active, while constantly monitoring and analyzing sales and production costs.
I just gotta say, this is some of the roughest luck i’ve seen. Do feel bad for him for sure.
I do have a little bit of hope because the cost-cutting is moreso focused on the management side, but yeah i’m nervous for them for sure. I don’t think its a “100% they’re getting the axe” situation but if the chopping block comes in to play they probably are the first on it.
Tudo bem meu amigo, depressivo é uma palavra exagerada pois estou com medo do suporte acabar com Activision ou dertuparem o jogo de maneira realnente irreversível, mas um pouco triste verdadeiramente, as vezes você é muito negativo e apesar de algumas críticas suas serem boas e o que você escreve ser com honestidade, eu e meus amigos nos reunimos toda sexta a noite para jogar e jogamos juntos desde 2004, não quero que o jogo acabe .
If this “new project” that was cancelled or shelved refers to Age of Empires V, then my prediction was wrong.
They aren’t even going to try to invest in continuing the franchise.
I hope the team gets reassigned and that, sometime soon, they move forward.
They probably cancelled AOE5 because of the AOE4 sales. Originally wanted AOE2 people to move to AOE4 (same Medieval theme) but it did not work. AOE4 is a different game. Additionally, AOE4 failed to build a fan base because their DLCs were mostly civ variants and not new civs. Making new civs in AOE4 is expensive because the units have way too many voicelines.
AOE4’s sales are a wrong message to receive from Activision. AOE5 should be about WWI or WWII or the modern ages. But they might not want something to compete with Starcraft 2 in theme.
It is safe to assume that Activision will focus on developing new DLCs for the existing games based on the sales of this year’s DLCs. But future DLCs will become more predatory. i.e. 1-2 civs per dlc, at 10-15 euros each and they will be 4 dlcs per year.
The first AoE4 DLC was officially the “best selling expansion” in the history of the entire franchise. So it wasn’t that bad. I think the issues mostly come down to shifting the work from Relic to Forgotten Empires, who where unfamiliar with the engine.
Starting from today we can blame Activision for every bad decision?
Jokes aside. It’s really hard to tell from now on who decided what when it comes to all future decisions in the franchise because now we have 4 different actors having various amounts of control over it. We have no idea how much less World Edge and Xbox will influence future development now and how much more will be done by Activision. If you look at some forum posts there should be some people that are happy about the layoffs at Worlds Edge because they were blamed for pretty much every wrong decision in the last 5 years. But then again, I don’t think those people are fans of Activision either…
We also have no idea how long term the current structure is. Maybe everything will be reshuffled in a year. Not long ago Microsoft was busy buying up every developer and publisher they could find, but now they realised that the bought up way more then they could handle so they have to layoff a lot of people.
I wonder if they’ll be greedy enough to sell skin packs for individual civs. I would buy them, of course, but not at once. Africans/Malians/Ethiopians would be the first, Japanese - second.
Wouldn’t be individual civs, but maybe by region. Tbh I think that would be a bad call, but selling a DLC for regional unit skins that is all-in-one I think could actually be a good idea, as long as they make sure whether the skins are shown is determened on the player’s side, that way people that don’t want regional skins just don’t buy the DLC and they don’t have to deal with it at all, and people that want it can buy it and get that experience across the board. That way it isn’t shoving anything down people’s throats but those who have been wanting it for years can get it
Who gets what job? Remember an important rule: segregation of duties is a checks and balances so if someone is assigned to civ craft/game design that person or people are the only ones to do so
maybe, but alot like campaigns and they are short on the ground really compared to 2 and they already acknowledged that more than they expected just do single player and for me aoe 4 is more an online game for competitive play.
It couldn’t have been any other way.
It was the biggest DLC in the entire franchise. It promised six new civilizations (sure, some were variants, but it was still a huge amount of content in a single DLC, not to mention the other extras included).
Age of Empires 2 would only be “abandoned” if players lost interest and migrated to Age of Empires IV.
That didn’t happen.
Age of Empires 2 is still the best of the lot.
It will be very hard to dethrone it, precisely because the sheer amount of content is almost impossible to match.
→ I think the only way to surpass Age of Empires 2 would be to create a 3D remake with realistic physics and beautiful graphics.
Add some new physics mechanics, more polished skins, and smoother animations, while keeping everything else the same.
Create regional or cultural skins for all units—including villagers—for each civilization group.
Expand support and improve the AI so it can form and control armies more realistically, and include “personality” options for the AI to create more variety.
It would be crucial to maintain full mod support, just like in AoE2.
Maybe then it could be surpassed.
. Another possibility:
In a few years, new generations of players might prefer playing a different Age of Empires game set in a different historical period.
That’s possible too, since we’re getting old. Hahaha.
Well, I don’t consider your designs better than mine, so you could be a junior game designer. I suppose we could work together to make the best designs, though, and leave ego out of it. That’s probably the best option.