You're EA. Given that you might well be the most reviled publisher in the industry right now, maybe you should lower your commercial expectations. (You might want to start by cutting that number of expected sales for Anthem.)
Even if I wanted to play it - which I don't, because I'm just not a fan of the whole battle royale thing - I wouldn't, because it forces me to play as part of a squad. If I'm going to be terrible at a game, I'd rather be terrible solo where 1) I don't have to feel bad about letting down my team and 2) I don't have abusive asshats sending me nasty messages about how f***ing bad I am, how I need to get the f*** off their squad, and how I should go play something else. You'd think the folks at Respawn, the people who created the game that spawned that sort of toxic community, would understand better than anyone why forced competitive co-op will only alienate a player base that doesn't already have a group of friends with similar tastes with whom they already play competitive games.
I'm glad there are people who are enjoying it, but it ain't for me.
I give Microsoft credit for having bundles available - unlike Sony, which only seems to release limited run bundles - but you can't pay me $100 to take a copy of Fallout 76 off your hands. Now, if they do a similarly priced bundle for, say, The Division 2 or Metro Exodus - taking advantage of the those games, on PC, not being available on Steam - then I might actually buy an Xbox this generation.
@JDFS: Actually, we don't know that. We don't know how much Epic paid Deep Silver to get the game as an exclusive - and they had to pay something, because the game was slated to be on Steam right up until the this last minute and that sort of change wouldn't happen on a whim - but I have to imagine it was a sizable sum to compensate for a hefty portion of sales they'd lose by not being on the larger/preferred marketplace of Steam. And, as we've seen in this comments section, there are plenty of people who either don't mind Epic's store or dislike Steam (or just the concept of monopolies) enough to support Epic. Plus, how many millions of people already use Epic's client for Fortnite? At least some percentage of those millions have to enjoy playing good games when they aren't playing Fortnite. So, it could very easily pay off for Deep Silver, between the money they got upfront from Epic, the sales they're going to get regardless of where the game launches, and the larger chunk of profits they'll keep from those sales. I imagine someone at the company crunched the numbers and did a risk versus reward analysis before they abandoned Steam, and that the people in charge are keenly aware of what they're risking. Because I don't think they're stupid, or that grossly irresponsible.
@santinegrete: It was a prerelease ad campaign - designed, I assume, to get "the kids" hyped for Haze - that was gloriously terrible. Given what Haze turned out to be...yeah, that marketing was actually kind of perfect.
First of all, don't do that. Don't talk like that. I immediately had Haze flashbacks of Korn's "Gaming, for me, is a religion, and Haze is the sh*t!" (Anyone who isn't familiar with that, do yourself a favor and YouTube search "The Hotspot Gaming For Me Is A Religion.")
@UserX03: Understandable. Everyone on the internet talks big about taking a stand against things they hate, boycotts and protests and petitions, but the majority lack the determination and willpower to follow through on their convictions, opting to sell out rather than miss out.
Make no mistake, I want to play Metro Exodus. And I'll buy Metro Exodus when it comes to Steam - though, if I'm forced to wait a year for that to happen, I'm far less likely to pay full price because, by that point, the game is already old news and there's no reason I shouldn't wait another year or so until it's on sale for $10-15 - or I might buy it on a console, if a physical copy is fairly cheap during this year's Black Friday sales. But I'm not buying games on the Epic store. Hell, I'm not even downloading the games they're giving away - and Subnautica, one of the games that was free, is a game I actually want to play and haven't yet bought it on Steam. That's how little I think of Epic's store. If I didn't cave on my principles when they were offering me something I actually want, free of charge, it seems unlikely I'll let them strong-arm me into using their garbage client because they've ensured they're the only place to play certain games on the PC.
Might I use the Epic's client someday? It's entirely possible; Steam was pretty trash when it first launched. I'm fully in favor of there being competition to Steam, if for no other reason than it might pressure Steam to up their game, and I'm not even necessarily opposed to exclusives, because the heart of competition is offering something you can't get from the other guys. If you don't have superior services, or you can't get it done with better prices, you need to have exclusive products. But Epic has a long way to go and a lot of work to do before I'll be sold on even using the their store for the odd exclusive, much less choosing them over Steam. Maybe in a few years when they've implemented some basic features and refined policies that aren't just friendly to developers but to consumers as well. Until then, where the PC is concerned, games that are exclusive to Epic's store might as well not even exist for me.
I'm way more interested in Metro Exodus than I was The Division 2, but I'm still not switching to Epic's blazing dumpster fire of a store. So, much as I was looking forward to the game, I'm going to have to pass. No hard feelings, though. I wish the developers all the success their hard work warrants and I genuinely hope the decision pays off for them.
While the dream is a massive open world on the scale of, say, Skyrim or Far Cry or the PUBG map times 20, packed with all manner of encounters, both scripted and random, as NPCs and animals follow their AI routines, and seemingly endless opportunities for exploration and discovery, I'll take what I can get if it gives me even just a tiny taste of what that could be like.
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