gPotato closing Prius Online, compensating players through April 10th

@(Unverified)

Ya that's just it. If they released it in the west within a year or so of the original release then things may have been different, but for all its charm the game is just too dated to take root now.

@(Unverified)

Even worse is that C9 is going to end up going this way, since Nexon staked their claim in the Action RPG ring with Dragon Nest and Vindictus. It's amazing that these companies sit here with their thumbs up their butt, then they come back years and years later. "Oh, we've had this forever over here, but maybe now you pay us cash shop money for fun we've been having for several years?

@ShivanSwordsman

And it ate half my post. Ahem.

Some games have the staying power to make the trip several years later. It's originality vs the product quality. Some of the newest MMOs and games have little to no "umf" behind them. This is why I ditched Forsaken World. Some games try and innovate and try to be fun. Even with all it's short comings, I kept coming back to LOTRO and DDO, and I spent $60 between them.

Look at Dungeon Fighter Online. It survived the trip, and it was SEVERAL years old. Whilst we might not be having championships hosted on ESPN, like in Korea, there are SEVERAL people playing day and night. Nexon isn't known for it's stellar customer service, yet people still keep coming back. Sadly, GPotato has NONE of these bases covered whatsoever, so everything they make slips under the radar, and those that do play for them suffer because of it.

@ShivanSwordsman
DFO has a lot of charm though. The gameplay is top notch and the graphics fit ever so perfectly into the genre it is trying (and succeeding) to emulate. Prius is trying to be the hot new thing, which it was in NK, but not so much in the US. It isn't a bad game, but compared to what is out not it just doesn't match up. Frankly, I am surprised a lot of GPotato's games are still going.

@Squidsnthings

This is because DFO is a side scrolling beat 'em up. Sprites have a certain set limit, and the game is lovingly coded to make your eyes explode into the vastness of space while you're the evil demon from Hell is throating your fist, and admiring your daringly styled mustache. 3D graphics, however, do not have a very long shelf life. Even the greatest, craziest graphics right now will eventually look like crud. 2D just looks like much nicer crud.

@PhoenixII

Cause they don't care about 'going with style' but they do care about few more bucks they can get.

You know with 1% some guys can go on shopping spree, etc


Anyway some f2p game dead.
There will be more dying ones in close future.

Competition in f2p area is fierce , alot of f2p / freemium titles so some will have to die. Some will propably have to raise prices and / or make game more cash shop dependant as well.

@PhoenixII

Because if 10,000 people give $1, that's still $10,000.

It's cheap to those people spending that dollar but when you add it up to the company, it's a chunk.

You don't see anyone telling a furniture store or a car dealer going out of business to go 'out in style' and give all the stuff away, do you lol?

@real65rcncom

No, but a furniture store is selling real furniture - a physical item the purchase will have beyond the closure of the store. A physical item that cost the company something to make or purchase prior to being available as stock.

Digital stuff by contrast has no such value. A copy simply gets made, at no cost at the point of purchase. So I wouldn't say it's a similar thing at all. More a naked last minute cash grab rather than the respectful shut down and attempt to allay the dissapointment of the games few players I would have hoped for.

@Budukahn "More a naked last minute cash grab rather than the respectful shut down"

Pretty much this.

Probably just trying to recoup development and localization costs.

It's unfortunate, but this kind of move just looks really bad.

@darzin
Well lets at least wait for few more before proclaiming the end of f2p. After all, everything has to end eventually and just before one or two games fail doesn't mean the entire concept is a failure.

@(Unverified) Please reread what I wrote, never said it was dead, I said it is being killed by oversaturation, and it is.

@darzin
Yeah, it used to be somewhat expected that a F2P game would be lower quality because, hey, what do you expect, it's free! But with the number of games out now that use that model, just being free isn't enough to set one apart from being a good alternative to a sub-based game. It's not a magic wand. As much as it sucks for players of these games to see some of them shut down, in the end I think it'll turn out to be a good thing for the industry. Churning out a bunch of mediocre titles and counting on a punishing cash shop to make money might have been viable when there weren't companies dedicated to working on one game and making it good, with decent item shop offerings.

@Irem Exactly. If you want to make an MMO, making a hundred of them that are slightly different than each other and with each requiring different cash shop items, and making some punishing and some easy is going to quickly kill your revenue stream. People will either be too confused, simply not buy things, or simply not play. Then you have separate teams to keep each updated which costs money. You have server space in the mix. So, instead of focusing on one or two games that you can make stand out from the crowd, and with two decent sized teams. You just shoot yourself in the foot. When a company like gPotato, Perfect World, or Aeria stops mass producing the same games over and over and decides hey, maybe if we take the Blizzard approach of making a single game, with mass appeal in all markets, and focus on making it as great as we can we will see more success!

Stop flooding the market with halfassed mmorpgs and you will see that people will respond. Also, it is hard to get into a f2p game when 1) You don't if it will be around long. 2) The grind leads to no real end game. 3) There is no one to play with. It makes it impossible to want to stay with a game.

@darzin

They can't do that cause their strategy with cash shops does not allow that.

They usually start with light-cash shop and then pump more and more adcantage into it thus slowly driving playerbase away and / or ruining game economy ,etc - so after a while they have to 'throw game away' and repeat the process.