I agree completely, Hasbro hasn't had their shit together for the past 5 years, but the new game by Certain Affinity does bring hope we might get a good AAA game soon.

 

They've been quiet on it though which is worrying sometimes

 

Unity bad, UE4 good  , no wonder this game is so bad

 

Nope, never gonna happen unless Activision is in financial crisis, which we don't know yet when it happens

 

It's not really Hasbro's fault I think, its more of poor management of who they give their IP to, they probably wanted to have a game quick and gave their IP to a studio to finish the game for those Cyberverse fans to play (mostly kids). To fix this issue, Hasbro needs to make sure only good and properly managed studios are able to get their IP permission, else we will probably get way more of this.

 

Wasn’t a trailer release in august?

 

nope, at least I think not, which if there was would be pretty surprising given the fact how long I spend watching YouTube at unhealthy amounts.

 

You are not getting another big budget Transformers game due to the simple fact that they don\'t sell. War for Cybertron did OK, Fall lost a lot of money even thought it was a good game, which is why Activision then just churned up cheap movie based games to use the license. They had one last stab with Devastation, and that didn\'t do particularly well (and again, that was with good reviews) so they dropped the license. 

As one of the biggest game companies in the world couldnt make money with a TF game, no one else will touch it. It\'s not helped that the movies have been utter rubbish. There are lots of devs who want to make a big budget TF game, but no one will fund it. High Moon, the team that made the Cybertron games, were gutted by Activision with most of the staff gone and the remaining team left to help out on Call of Duty - no development team wants that to happen to them either. The High Moon guys were massive TF fans and were heartbroken when Activision culled them.

AAA games based on licensed properties are almost a thing of the past, the only big ones recently have been based on Marvel and hang off the back of the movies. Transformers - and indeed GI Joe and Zoids, both of which had games in the past few weeks - are just not popular enough.

Also to clear something up - Hasbro do not \"hire\" games companies to make the games. The publisher buys a license from Hasbro and go do what they want, Hasbro will just sign it off. It\'s got very little to do with Hasbro.

The only way now you are getting a big budget TF game is if Hasbro start a gaming division themselves and throw 60million at a TF game. There is another TF game coming for console and PC but it\'s been production for about 4 years now so I\'m not sure if it will ever see the light of day.

FYI I\'ve been writing gaming news for twelve years and spoke to both High Moon and Coatsink about their games.

 





 

 

I think with Bungie splitting from Activision made things way worse for High Moon

 

And the fact too they did barely jack to advertise those games lead to declines in sales. Like the games were great and all, but they forgot to do the key, advertising. The 2007 movie game in particular (although being very mediocre,) sold a ton because of the 2007 movie advertisements. FOC's CGI trailers were excellent well done, but they didn't advertise jack with the amount of money put into those trailers and tossed them dead onto YouTube at the time. Take that all the way to Devastation, oh boy, look how bad the YouTube views were for it at the end of the year it came out:



To put that in perspective, games like COD Advanced Warfare was churning 20M views on YT when it first hit the trailers.

 

I've been involved in the game industry for many a years and I can tell you developers want you to believe what they want you to believe. EA and many other companies think games as services are the only way to make money, or that single player games don't make money. Or, you know. a game based on a licensed property are things of the past. They will try to make you believe everything besides "we made a lackluster product." Honestly, how good were the War for Cybertron games? They were fine. I was happy to buy and play them as a Transformers fan, but what about other people? It would have just come off as a dumbed down, shorter Gears of War. And Devastation had a lot of charm but no way was it going to appeal to an audience beyond Transformers fans, and still felt a little cheap with repetitive environments. And of course all the movie titles could have been considered cash grabs. I was happy with these games and would love to see more, but if they wanted to reach a bigger audience, they actually have to push the boundaries. But, like you said, that might actually take Hasbro making a huge investment, and they just won't do that even though it could start a huge avenue of new toys for them or even a new show.

Games based off licenses can still do great, BUT they actually have to be a great product. The Arkham games did great. Shadows or Mordor did great but the sequel wasn't as good so it didn't do as good. The Witcher 3 is one of the most celebrated titles of the last generation. Cyberpunk 2077 probably has millions pre-ordered. Jedi Fallen Order did well. Lots of Lego games, and of course the Marvel stuff like Sony's Spider Man and Square Enix's Avengers. The thing that really gave them bad names was all the damned rushed games that had to make a movie release deadline and of course they barely had a story since they couldn't spoil anything of the actual movie they were based on.

Anyways, Transformers Battlegrounds shouldn't get anyone's hopes up to be an amazing game. And I am sure Hasbro knows it's not going to break any sales records.

 

I didn't have high expectations for the game to begin with. But I do not regret picking it up. I'm only a couple missions in but it’s a fun game. If you enjoy titles like this then I'd definitely say give it a shot. I was one of those ten people who actually played Rise of the Dark Spark on 3DS so if you liked that you’ll like this. No masterpiece but definitely not a bad game at all.

 

40 dollars?  For this?  When Cyberpunk is only a little bit more?

Lol.

Easy pass.

 

More reviews:

Transformers Battlegrounds Review – TheSixthAxis


Transformers: Battlegrounds Review - Decepticon XCOM


Transformers: Battlegrounds

 

I'll probably pick it up on a sale, or whenever I have enough coins on Switch to get a decent discount.

 

Doesn't have to be High Moon. Could be any company really, one with the passion and the talent for making good games. I'll always be optimistic about the idea because it's been done before but with the state of most devs these days, not sure if its possible for the moment.

 

I got mine today, but haven't played it yet. Seems to be slightly better than I had pegged it as judging by this thread, honestly. So once I beat Crash 4 (which might be a while, that game has so much to get) I'll get into it.

 

Yeah, you are right about the gameplay for the War of Cybertron games. It was nothing mind-blowing, though it was obviously made with a lot of passion with everything around the gameplay, and they were overall very polished games (the non-movie based ones by High Moon Studios). Really though, Transformers isn't really a type of IP that can be just released without adequate marketing like Marvel or Star Wars, so even mind-blowing gameplay would not have done much for the War For Cybertron games. Social Media wasn't really as prominent like it is today, so word of mouth wasn't as strong as it could have been. Looking at Lego games, they are very shallow experiences (they are fun, but they aren't generally purchased by the casual market because of the gameplay), but sell like hot-cakes based on the combo of two very popular licenses that are significant cultural institutions worldwide, Lego and whatever franchise is popular, be it Star Wars, Marvel, DC Comics, whatever. Shadow of War did as well as Shadow of Mordor sales-wise, but because WB expected bigger sales and had a higher development budget compared to the first game, the consensus was that Shadow of War didn't actually do as well as Mordor.

That being said, the video game market is very fickle. The casual consumer is generally under-informed and will only stick to the games that the mainstream media positively mentions (i.e. Call of Duty, Halo, Mario, Zelda) and rarely explores much underneath the surface. If the mainstream media barely acknowledges the existence of your huge, AAA game, then you will be lucky if casual consumers even bother purchasing the title. It's more important to push the boundaries in terms of marketing than gameplay to get the ridiculous success desired. If companies aren't willing to either spend the money on marketing or be creative with how they market the game, then they need to set their expectations realistically. Unique gameplay only really helps increase sales to the mid to hardcore gaming audiences who actually go to online forums or less mainstream websites to get gaming information. Sadly, the core gaming audience is a significantly smaller percentage of the revenue that these large game publishers crave. They don't want 1 to 2 million copies sold, they want 5 to 12 million copies sold. They don't want some of the money, they want ALL of the money. The market these days is all about getting the casual consumers to spend all of their "fun money" on one game through predatory microtransactions or lootboxes, even if it cannibalizes the sales of other titles a company may release in a single year.

 

Oh I'm not going to argue about needing marketing. While I think the games could have been better- pushing the boundaries instead of playing it safe- marketing could have ensured that it was played by a more than just fans.

 

The guys from Cinemmassacre have a review up.