hopefully, i do however thing the big tf reveal for sdcc will be the 86 studio series figs

 

This game needs to hurry up and come out

 

Sony Weighs Bid for Hong Kong-Listed Gaming Firm Leyou

It could mean that, if successful, Sony could potentially have some control or influence on Leyou, which might included the Transformers project, especially since Leyou has a 20% stake in Certain Affinity.

Other potential buyers of Leyou includes iDreamsky and Century Huatong.

 

That’s some pretty bad news given their love of platform exclusivity and how their most recent release went.

 

PS4 exclusive transformers game? Count me in. And the last of us 2 isn't bad at all. Sure the story's controversial but that has more to do with naughty dog's decision rather than sony.

 

I doubt this means they'll make the Transformers a PlayStation exclusive.

If Sony gets Leyou, they'll probably treat them the same way Microsoft owns Mojang, especially since this deal includes Warframe; allow them to make third party games, but allow PlayStation to get better marketing deals.

 

Yes and since this game is very likely going to be free to play, that would be a very bad business decision to release it on just one platform. I don’t think Hasbro would want that. This is a different situation from that of the Transformers Armada game on PS2.

 

At the same time, do we know who has a majority stake in CA if anyone? Compared to that, while 20% is not a small amount by any stretch, definitely makes a bit of a difference if you ask me.

 

Apart from that 20% stake (and $10 million investment for an original game) from Leyou (which occurred in 2017), Certain Affinity are mostly independent, and no other company has ownership of them:

https://www.zoominfo.com/c/certain-affinity-inc/47813092

 

So at that point, I personally think that we're gonna be fine. Not 100% certain of course.

 

I will never support cutting off 2/3rds of the gaming market from a TF game. All platforms or don’t bother.

 

I'm not saying that platform exclusivity is a good thing. I support games that get distributed to all major gaming platforms. When I said "count me in" it was more sarcastic than it was serious excitement. But for an online game, it doesn't seem logical to limit it to a single platform. I can see why campaign-focused games thrive within a single platform but I don't see the same thing happening for a free-to-play, online-only game. That's why I said what I said   I just don't see it actually happening.

 

I would be 100% on-board with a console exclusive if it meant the best (or one of the best) single-player transformers game of all time. Wanting a great game to not exist because of exclusivity is ridiculous. I don’t see any third party publisher investing into a AAA transformers game these days. It would be nice, but transformers battlegrounds kind of proves how dire the situation is.

 

I really want to be proven wrong, but I’m thinking that this game is completely dead in the water. Nothing has been shown on their original IP “Last Expedition.”

 

I don’t know why people continue to assume because we have little to no information that they think the game has been cancelled. It doesn’t make sense if you look at the facts.

This is Certain Affinity’s biggest project, they can’t afford to let go if they wanted to because they need to lay a good foundation and demonstrate that they can develop their own games. They already shown themselves to be a competent studio, now it’s time to step up and prove themselves to the fullest. It would be detrimental for them to screw up.

Leyou Technologies has invested $10 million into Certain Affinity’s game. And additional $30 million to help with development. Leyou’s contract with Hasbro is also until 2024. Why would they want to leave a bad first impression on by cancelling Certain Affinity’s game?

And yes, we also know that Certain Affinity is developing another game besides Transformers. They can be differentiated by looking at the job listings on their website. Listings for Transformers usually include “robots” while Last Expedition includes “creatures”. So, they’re actively looking for more people to join their teams in Toronto or Austin to help on either game.

In a recent earnings report that came out a few months ago, Leyou said specifically that the Transformers game by Certain Affinity is “progressing well”.

As a side note to further prove the game’s existence, Leyou announced the game themselves at an event called ChinaJoy last year. Although development has been just over 2 years long.

 

I’m not concerned about the lack of transformers info, I’m concerned about the lack of “Last Expedition” info. Last Expedition has been in development for several years, with a polygon article published in 2017 that talks about the concept of the game, yet there has been no new info on that game at all. I want to believe that everything is sunshine and rainbows at certain affinity, but I just can’t escape the feeling that Last Expedition is stuck in development hell and dragging their transformers project down with it. I don’t take earnings reports at face value either. Companies are very disingenuous when communicating with stakeholders, so they won’t say that a project is in shambles until the project is suddenly canceled out of seemingly nowhere.

 

Regardless, I don’t think the development of one game should effect the other. Although, with the pandemic, it will definitely slow things down.

Best to give benefit of the doubt I suppose, because we know that Certain Affinity is still working. Again, giving up would be the last thing they want to do.

 

I’m very familiar with the games industry. You would be surprised at how often companies overstretch themselves and have teams fighting over resources.
Blind Squirrel Games for example, they work on multiple games at a time, but (at least back in 2015/2016), they only had one senior engineer who could capably lead the development of a game’s online connectivity component. Blind Squirrel worked on multiple games at a time with different teams, and so the teams were constantly fighting over this one engineer. This was (is) a company of at least 130 people, and they were still unable to be appropriately staffed for more than one game. Of course that is just one example of a company with such staffing issues, but Blind Squirrel Games and Certain Affinity share a very similar background as contractor studios.

 

It’s fine to draw comparisons but we can’t base our expectations on the mistakes of others. Certain Affinity isn’t Blind Squirrel and vice versa. You can argue that their situations are practically the same but that won’t mean they will yield the same results, regardless of how sure you are.

 

It doesn’t need to be an exclusive to be a good game. Same with how sports games don’t need to be a literal casino despite fans saying they would somehow be worse games without the gambling. Also remember that recently there is a movement to shorten video games to 10-15 hour experiences because the others take too long to make. Just give it to a good company that knows what it’s doing and it would be great.