New World

So New World is having a console launch and a bit of a rebranding effort along side it. I think the overview story of this situation is pretty infamous at this point and I wont go into the full details of the situation. I think most understand it at this point.

But I wanted to have a discussion about potential reasons to do this and my views on this. So this update is in due in about a month. They're doing an open beta of the first 30 levels this weekend with PC and console players on the same server. I played for a little bit of it. This console launch will include an update to the PC version of the game. Some of the update is free for all, but the "new content" aspects will require purchase of the latest expansion. You can see the feature list here:

The beta is really just that bottom right square I believe. At least from what I saw. I believe the new pvp zone, raid, and soul trials (which are semi not new) will require the latest expansion.

So first, its obvious that this entire situation is a marketing play to try to increase revenue. But the question becomes what their actual plan is beyond that. What are they envisioning? Here's my theory on the two most infamous parts of this situation.

1. Console Focus - They're doing a full court press on the console launch. Their marketing, talks, everything; its treating the game as if its a new game. With all of its features being presented as if you were presenting a new game. Even though the game and its features have existed for years now. To the point where it seems like they're ignoring the PC players. To give an idea the extent of this, there was a lot of confusion among the PC community (and still is) on if this is a new game they will have to purchase or not. This is not the case. But its not uncommon to see the occasional comment being confused on thinking they will have to spend money to play the game again. So the main question is why? Why are they going so hard on this aspect. My guess here is that the revenue they're getting from the PC playerbase is not great. Its clear they made this decision prior to the announcement, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was made late 2023 to go this route. And the playernumbers were looking pretty good at the time. Still decreasing, but good (peaking at ~30k in 2024). But even with those numbers, they weren't happy with the revenue. So a lot of those players must have not been spending money in a frequency that they were hoping for. I know in my personal circle, there were quite a few friends of mine who only bought the game at launch and played 100-300 hours of the game without spending another dime. This situation must have been common place as the game doesn't have any subscription fees. I'm also going to estimate that their angry earth expansion did not meet sales expectations, further pushing this drive to, for lack of a better term, put new PC content development on the backburner while they focus on the foundational game changes and console support. From my personal standpoint, I did spend money on the cash shop occasionally. But I would say this game had some of the worse looking cash shop offerings I've seen. I'm not sure who their target audience is, but they're going for this renaissance masquerade ball aesthetic in so many parts of the game. And that appeal just doesn't land for me, and I suspect it doesn't land for many others. It was that + pirate aesthetics mainly it seemed like. With these crazy looking weird helmets in a lot of their skins and strange furniture to match. Overall I just wasn't a fan and they really need a new direction there. From what I've seen in the past year or so, they seem to be getting much better at this. But you'll still occasionally see things pop into the cash shop that just look horrible. Seemed like they didn't want players to take their own world seriously at times, but I digress. Another huge flag, for me, that this is the case is that they've stopped making new armor skins for the cash shop, I believe. I think the last time they released a new armor skin set for the store was back in either the first few months of 2024 or final months of 2023. You know its bad when a game like this stops investing into their MTX store. They must be getting horrible sales if its not providing value and they're just re-releasing old skins. The in game skins actually look really good for the most part. But they seem to be struggling to delivery quality skins in the store haha.

So TLDR; revenue was way below expectations (both MTX sales and expansions) on PC, despite strong population numbers.

2. ARPG Rebranding - The next part is them going for this rebranding of their game's genre. Focusing more on RPG and ARPG appeals than MMO. Almost as if they're trying to distance themselves from the MMORPG tag. My theory with this direction is that they're looking to not only distance themselves from the previous feedback/negativity around the PC game; but they're also trying to change expectations around their game. The MMORPG tag comes with it a set of unique expectations and competition. Players, and understandably so, will compare your game to others on the market. Games like WoW, Gw2, ESO, FF14. Games that have had 10+ years of polish and content development. Along with this, expectations on how long the game will keep players entertained (usually on the longer side) and post launch content development (good content updates every 3-4 months typically). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the devs may be trying to make it so those expectations and competition will not be applied by their audiences to their game. Especially on a new platform release, consoles. Basically going the route of "Don't compare us to MMORPGs on the consoles and don't expect update cadences similar to them".

Again this is all just theories and nobody will truly know whats going on unless they're high up at AGS.

Overall, I think it could work for them. Now what kind of support this game will get in the future is anybodies guess and will determine heavily by how successful console launch is. But based on the ~5-10 hours I played of the open beta, the reception seems to be what most are expecting. PC players are upset and in general negative in chat. While the console players who are fresh to the game are being positive and showing interest. I think this represents the overall opinion of new world where that first playthrough, exploration, leveling, etc; those are all very strong. But its that long term engagement around the endgame loop starts to rub players the wrong way.

The new pvp zone looks interesting to me, same with the souls trials. I already owned the expansion so I'll redownload and try the game again because why not. But just from an observation perspective, its going to be really interesting to see how this whole situation goes down.

Update from Insider Gaming on the leaked New World for Consoles (Previous Post)

https://insider-gaming.com/amazons-new-world-aeternum-coming-to-consoles-in-october-2024/

Insider Gaming understands that the game will be releasing in mid-October on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.