The obvious answer is to abandon GaaS as a concept and focus making more great single player games like the ones that put Playstation into a clear lead in this generation of the console wars.
However, we’ve seen that a massive failure in the space isn’t enough to deter the truly greedy coughWBcough, so who knows?
WB doubled down, after Suicide Squad failed horribly and Hogwarts Legacy sold fantastically they decided they needed to stop making games like Hogwarts to focus on more live service games.
The nature of needing a community is definitely something that impedes purchases, too. People recognizing that something has a bad reputation are less likely to buy/try it.
All games have some financial reliance on the hype cycle, but if I buy a single player game and no one else does, I still have my game. If I buy Concord and no one else does, I’m going to be holding the bag when it gets abandoned.
If you’re going to do GaaS, shit needs to be free. Nobody wants to pay money for the ability to pay even more money.
Hopefully, in the trash bin.
Some other article said it simpler. If the game launched for free and they focused on microtransactions for skins, they’d be one of the live service games that brings in the money.
I doubt it. When you make a game free to play, only about 5% of your players will ever pay any amount of money, which means your total audience needs to be enormous. I think when they revealed it and looked at metrics like social media and wishlists, they saw the writing on the wall and were just trying to lose less money by charging for it up front.
If someone would buy the rights to Anthem and finish it, they could have a goldmine.