Kingdom Come Dev:Most Publishers Have Nothing In 2015
We have talked a lot in the last week about Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the CryEngine powered RPG based on medieval history. It is very likely that we’ll talk a lot more about it in the next couple of years or so (the tentative release date is set for late 2015), but today we intend to inform you about an interesting and yet worrying prospect shared by Creative Director Dan Vàvra: he fears that most publishers have nothing prepared for 2015, because they were just too scared about the next generation and mobile gaming taking over to finance proper projects such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Our meeting with the investor took place 13 days before the launch of PS4. What has that got to do with us? A lot, because I had deduced one interesting, almost shocking revelation from our negotiations: one of the main reasons why nobody had signed for our game was the fear, I would say almost horror, of the established big publishers that the new consoles would be a washout, that they weren’t powerful enough and that people today wanted nothing but free-to-play MMOs for iPad. So they were all preparing a few guaranteed mega-titles and waiting to see what happened with regard to everything else, which sent a few studios to the wall and might also result in a big drought for good console games in 2015, because I get the feeling from behind-the-scenes talk and indications that most publishers have nothing prepared for that year, because they didn’t want to plan that far ahead in such an uncertain climate and now they can hardly come up with something epic in less than two years.
If that was true, then our worst fears on the gaming industry could be closer to reality than we previously thought. Of course, Vàvra concludes that he could be wrong, but at the very least this report is perplexing.
For starters, many publishers were simply too blind to understand the potential of this promising game, and I’m pretty sure they are ready to eat crows after the resounding success of the Kickstarter campaign launched by Warhorse, almost at £500K in just five days and pretty much guaranteed to hit the million by its conclusion. Moreover, it seems like publishers aren’t afraid at all to abandon core gaming in favor of mobile if it comes to that - as a lifelong gamer, I really hope this day never arrives, because it may be the only thing capable of dwindling my passion for this form of entertainment.
Even the possible drought of solid titles in 2015 hinted by Vàvra pales in comparison to that. Are you alarmed yet, and what’s your opinion?
