I think Game Studios are sick of journalsts and all the whining ass fans, and finding ways around them.

1-Respawn straight up said they release their battle royal game without letting anyone know, cause they didn't want to give journalists and stupid ass people on twitter, several months to pick them apart. They completely avoided a Crackdown 3 or Battlefront 2 by not prehyping their game.

Quote:

"Now, “we have a free-to-play game with loot boxes,” McCoy says matter-of-factly, adding that he knows how that looks and what it sounds like on the surface. But that’s precisely why Respawn is getting the game out the door immediately, so players can try it and form their opinions instead of doing so in a Reddit thread or a YouTube comment section."

2-Sony completely separated themselves from E3 and canceled PSX, and likely cause they are sick of journalists and fans and don't want to show them shit just so a new puddlegate can happen.

Quote:

"“When we decided to take video games out of CES, back in 1995 during the PlayStation 1 era, E3 served two constituencies,” says Layden in the extensive interview. “Retailers and journalists. Retailers would come in – you’d see a guy come in, and he’d say, ‘I’m from Sears, and I handle Hot Wheels, Barbie, VHS and video games. So what are you about?’ There was a huge educational component. Then you had journalists who had magazines and lead time and jockeying for position on the cover. And there was no internet to speak of. So a trade show at that time of year for this nascent industry was exactly what we needed to do."

“Now we have an event in February called Destination PlayStation, where we bring all retailers and third-party partners to come hear the story for the year. They’re making purchasing discussions in February. June, now, is just too late to have a Christmas holiday discussion with retailers. So retail has really dropped off. And journalists now, with the internet and the fact that 24/7 there is game news, it’s lost its impact around that.”

What I think:

Fact is journalists are no longer needed and are the ones who will pick anyone apart for clicks and likes, and they are the ones spearheading the flame wars with their stupid scores and selective reporting, cause like all journalist they spin every news story just like a bunch of back stabbing rats like TMZ. And just spend 2 seconds on YouTube and Twitter, and countless ignat ass mofos who think they know everything.

Look at Crackdown 3, people online giving it shit cause it has visual downgrades from earlier teaser, the same echo chamber who complained about countless games for a demo looking better than final product. I mean people are ruthless and pathetic, and just want to be negative, why feed a machine that bites you.

If you don't market, nobody knows the game is there.

So that aint going to work.

Interesting take, I can see this as a sound strategy to avoid toxic gaming community that has nothing nice to say about anything.

Yeah, seeing how many games failed cause of release dates and times, cause they showed something ahead of time, or cause people online were toxic.

Now, if you did what Respawn is doing, I'd say for sure 50% of those cases could have been avoided.

Of course, that game is digital only and so easy to do. When you do retail, you don't have luxury, like Sony says, they have that retailer event to sell copies to distributors etc. But they can take the step away from E3, and play it smart. Like if they showed more of their games as PSX, people would just complained they didn't show anything new.

I personally want more studios to do this and curb the toxicity. There are countless examples, even the whole "not putting loot boxes at launch" but doing them later so journalists don't shit on their game for having them.

So you're excusing game companies to bypass scrutiny just so they can release shit to the public? That's not a sound strategy in the long run. Apex is a free to play game anyway. If it's shit (it's not), then it's on the customer for paying into it. It's not like it's a loss on an initial purchase.

Anyway, this is the most corporate slave post I've seen from you yet. There's too much of that going around anyway. Too many people looking out for their favorite pubs instead of making sure you get quality content for your money.

Honestly, I don't blame them.

Angry Joe will save us.

With his mentally stunted brother, who lifts. And sometimes mumbles.

Just make a good fucking game and this will be avoided. See Breath of the wild, Witcher 3, Red Dead 2 etc. We're human and make mistakes. If Devs/publishers do screw up, be transparent and communicate to lessen the damage. Devs and Pubs are just as guilty when they talk down about their fans or insult their fans intelligence with lies and predatory bull crap.

Everybody knew Crackdown 3 was going to be shit. Don't need journalists to tell you that.

Gaming journalist are the worst. ESPECIALLY with competitive multiplayer games. Jeff G. from Giant Bomb always talks about how incredibly easy the games are at press events because gaming journalist are so bad at competitive games. Going straight to the Twitch streamers while putting the journalist under strict NDA is the smartest thing Respawn could have done with Apex.

It works on Apex 'cos it's free to play. And it worked tremendously because it's a F2P game that's fun and not shoving/requiring things to be bought.

Yeah what Respawn did was genius they went str8 to the source and around media and EA heat. Sony being afraid of E3 because they don't have anything new to show is a different matter. I don't get what Sean Layden is doing will reserve judgement till the end of the year.

Well, Crackdown 3 was considered vaporware for a few years and never looked impressive, and I shouldn't even have to explain the Battlefront 2 fiasco... But the easiest way to avoid journalist and fan cynicism is don't peddle shit to them. Apex sounds like a generally good game (and being F2P helps) so honestly, I think they would have been OK talking about it before its release.

This OP Lem who is trying to say crackdown 3 should have came out like apex legends and LMAO no dude it wouldn't work crackdown 3 sucks man

apex legends got 9/10 on GS and IGN that means its a good game basically not my cup of tea but crackdown 3 looks like 4-6 /10 its screwed man.

Typical, 99% of what I write is ignored, and people focus on the 1 thing that isn't even the point. Apex Legends literally said they did what they did to avoid the toxic fans, I'm not pulling at straws here. I used Crackdown 3 cause its the biggest disaster this year, and chose Battlefront 2 cause it was a huge EA disaster. Just pretend I didn't give examples, just assumed people would need some cause not like any toxic people here.......if you don't get it, Respawn did what it did to avoid all the people here, you're the shitbags they want to avoid.

Considering I can't even mention Crackdown 3 without a ton of hateraide, just proves my point that Respawn is onto something, and shouldn't feed you fucking haters who gonna overract, complain, whine and bitch about anything. There will always be something. Oh, and how dare anyone mention Xbox, cause its all about Sony, Sony Sony.

The surprise strategy only works if you know you have something thats fun and will be popular, respawn won this one.

Apex Legends has already passed 25 million users. When Elder Scrolls Blades comes out, whenever its coming out, I'm going to play that for as long as I want. Bethesda is looking like an old man on his deathbed right now but who cares I was always looking to playing Elder Scrolls Blades and I still am.

Op never whines. Thats one thing I really love about Saltslasher. He never whines.

Apex Legends still sucks though.

By not marketing they got free marketing. Good move.

I don't like fake outrage and gamer entitlement myself but this thread honestly looks like a Crackdown 3 damage control thread. Crackdown 3 looks terrible and a total downgrade from what was shown years back, gamers have a right to be outraged over it if they choose. It's so downgraded that it makes a typical Ubisoft downgrade look like an upgrade.

The surprise release of a game like Apex Legends only works if you have a great compelling product that you know will be well received. MS stealth releasing Crackdown 3 with little hype and fanfare is because they know it's terrible and are trying not to draw too much attention to it.

Gaming journalism to me sounds like an endless stream of Destiny, Call of Duty, Fortnite, RDR 2, Apex Legends, or whatever the hyped game is at the time.

Avoid.

Yup, the Fake News industry is out of control but the good news is many are catching on and they are having less and less influence as more people wise up to their deceitful agenda driven false narrative practices. :P

So companies sneaking in anti-consumer practices and mechanics are now "doing the right thing"...by gamers.

Thats retarded. I take "toxic" communities anyday. Why? I can just avoid them. Apparently being critical of games is now toxic. Up next, having a damn opinion at all.

Developers need to go back to shareware/demos if they want to bypass pro reviews.

@saltslasher:

1-The game does look like shit.

2-This apply to all games and companies.

3-Seeing you downplay scores is a joke,people on this site and outside it have compare scores before you were probably a gamer dynamitecop.

4-I find extremely hypocrite of some lemmings,the constant downplay of scores simply because they don't go their way,but never the less keep hyping Forza Horizon great scores all the damn time which show really the problem is not scores is more blind fanboysm crap.

While i agree some reviewers do score games to get clicks not all do.

All games are summit to this is not like MS games are and sony ones aren't,the problem here is you make shitty games you get shitty score.

There are tons of free to play games that suck.

The only one here creating drama and over reacting to damage control a possible shitty crackdown score is you.

Also nice meltdown..lol

I mean it can be smart I guess, but the game had a huge marketing budget once it released, I've been seeing it every where.

But secret/surprise launches can bite you in the ass too. Look at the Sega Saturn for example.

Say if the game had a physical release and was only offered at Walmart for a while, other retailers could retaliate by not carrying the game ever. AKA Sega Saturn.

I do think it can be wise to avoid journalism because of their hit pieces/clickbait routine. In that sense nobody needs journalists. What we need is people we can somewhat trust.

But to avoid the end user? Hmm. Maybe. There are definitely groupings of end users, especially moderators that can misbehave like on Resetera with their mob mentality. Maybe it's better to not build up hype for months before release, but that's mostly because what you show won't be the final game. I don't know that the voices of those user groups carry that much weight, because outside of their echo-chambers and safe-spaces they are not going to find agreement among more rational gamers.

In that sense it would be smart if game companies at least take the time to use a non-extremist forum like GameSpot/Steam to communicate to fans.

The only reason to sneak a game onto the market like this is because you know it sucks and the backlash from reviewers and customers will kill it.

The apex release was a brilliant move, that probably won’t work for every game though. I do find the constant bashing of games and developers/publishers to be tiresome. I just want to get neutral info on a game at this point. I should point out that post here are incredibly biased but I expect that here so SW gets a pass.

Why did I become “toxic” towards games and developers?

Because I learned it from game journalists and agenda pushing developers who spew constant hate, clickbate and censorship on their websites/social media.

You want me to stop being less hateful? Look in the mirror and understand YOU are the problem.

I don’t ask for much in my video games or the websites I visit. Make great games and don’t agenda push. It’s not my fault the industry won’t listen to reasonable requests.