X-Rebirth: The story of the failed console game

[Chips]

Still, as I said before, this is mostly speculation, I don't know the whole story, only the devs know that.

Which bits are mostly speculation?

For instance, all the "research" may be about the dates about when it starts, it's ended, when it was first announced, original release date, actual release date.

I'm more interested in how your research discovered how it was developed and what decisions were made.

Or is that the speculation part?

[ragod]

Well that sure would explain a lot. Completely believable and very likely exactly what happened. Bravo sir, for the well written hypothesis, it is a shame we will never know for sure.

Hell, it is fairly close to my thought, that X: Rebirth was meant to be a next gen launch game, but they ran out of money or couldnt get certification done properly or some such and had to rush it out to us.

[Cronos988]

(...)

Try setting your resolution to 720p or lower. As it would be set to run on a console. The fonts are now readable

Ah okay sorry I didn't realize this Thread was just about mindelss console bashing.

He gave you a reasoned and completely sensible argument. If you don't want to hear that, that's you problem.

[Noimageavaiable]

Didn't the whole "OMG PCs are dying!!1!" thing start only a good bit after the PS3 and 360 came out?

[MrReynolds101]

Surely they can please both markets.
One phase release an arcade shooter, then the following releases a "proper" space sim............?
Repeat and rinse.

[PromX]

What about we make one big topic for rants, one for crazy theories, one for apologist, so actually useful topics are not buried in spam.

do it, see if it catches on.

Im realist, it woudn't. This was just a pointless outcry of mine, people's ego could not handle that.

[realsyntech]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... -of-Legacy


read last 2 sections of text.

"bring the same enthusiasm we had for the space simulation genre, and create a game that we wanted to play ourselves."

Orly? This piece of crap is what they wanted to play? Sounds like a plain lie to me!

[Urschleim]

@ Playbahnosh : very good post, exactly my thougts!

[RWolf]

It is indeed a sound theory, there is one problem though i see and thats the claim that PC gaming was dying. Not even close to doing so, 2004 you had Half Life 2 shattering all expectations, same with World of Warcraft in 2005 I believe.

If anything, the publisher was probably focused on consoles, many of them are. At the time it represented a wider target audience. Many publishers are realizing that there is a problem with consoles though... used games.

Then you have the high cost of dev kits and licensing as well as uncertainty as to the future of either console.

Fact is, space sims are not a console genre, no more so than RTS. If we assume Egosoft is stupid, then its quite likely they thought the genre would do well on a console with their target audience, but assuming they are not that stupid, the PC market is still ideal.


Really though, I dont know what Egosoft is thinking, but having some tie to console development or a focus on it and the target audience associated with it was more than likely.

[dubnium]

It is indeed a sound theory, there is one problem though i see and thats the claim that PC gaming was dying. Not even close to doing so, 2004 you had Half Life 2 shattering all expectations, same with World of Warcraft in 2005 I believe.

If anything, the publisher was probably focused on consoles, many of them are. At the time it represented a wider target audience. Many publishers are realizing that there is a problem with consoles though... used games.

Then you have the high cost of dev kits and licensing as well as uncertainty as to the future of either console.

Fact is, space sims are not a console genre, no more so than RTS. If we assume Egosoft is stupid, then its quite likely they thought the genre would do well on a console with their target audience, but assuming they are not that stupid, the PC market is still ideal.


Really though, I dont know what Egosoft is thinking, but having some tie to console development or a focus on it and the target audience associated with it was more than likely.

can you seriously reconcile X Rebirth and egosoft not being stupid?

[KAHR-Alpha]

Orly? This piece of crap is what they wanted to play? Sounds like a plain lie to me!

Well, if you look at Bernd's Steam account, he's played the game around 30 hours.

[shinai24]

Best review so far...
http://youtu.be/LxUx96-6-dw

[RWolf]

can you seriously reconcile X Rebirth and egosoft not being stupid?

Not sure what to believe on that one. It was however stupid to release an unfinished game, and its full of stupid design choices...Stupid or not though, they dont come across as being honest right now.

The point earlier being one of two possibilities that could lead to where this game was intended for release or not.

[AL'42]

Best review so far...
http://youtu.be/LxUx96-6-dw

Says it all. Not even good enough for consoles….

I’d be surprised if Egosoft survive this shitstorm.

[Playbahnosh]

Thank you for that link!

See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxUx96-6-dw#t=692

I haven't seen this review until now, but the guy came to the exact same conclusion I did! And his thought process is quite similar.

Obviously, the biggest giveaway was the Xbox controller and how the whole game is designed around it. In the earliest dev videos many months ago we could already see, when they presented some gameplay they always used the xbox controller. Not a third party gamepad, not a joystick, not keyboard+mouse, but specifically an Xbox controller. Coincidence? I don't think so. But there are all the other clues: low res graphics (text on screen is only readable at 720p or lower), botched joystick and other controller support, restricted FOV (around 60, perfect for TV), unbindable and missing hotkeys, drastically simplified gameplay, etc. These are not even speculations, everyone who played the can see it for themselves.

Again, as damning all this sounds I still cannot draw a straight conclusion on what exactly happened, so all this remains mostly a mystery... unless some dev wants to step in and clear the air...

[Krogort]

Not so failed

[ external image ]


Releasing well marketed garbage seems much more profitable than finelly polished piece of art !

[messiahua]

Releasing well marketed garbage seems much more profitable than finelly polished piece of art !

That's how it always worked, not only for games. That's why major titles spend half of the budget ONLY on marketing. Now it's all about sales.

[Baler]

Game does feel like a bad console game, that was then badly ported to PC.

This fact will never leave the lips of the dev or producer but it's not hard for the community of loyal X fans to see what they've been shoveled and come to an inevitable conclusion.


Let's hope our cries of pain will keep them on their toes in future patches.

Edit: It is a SIN to make a PC space game with bad joystick support.

[Lorderan]

I think they canceled Xbox development because they ran out of RAM. Thats why you have a modified 32-bit exe that can run more than 4gb (hence the 64-bit requirement even though it is 32-bit). God they really think we're chumps don't they?

[cybersabre]

lmao this game was designed to be like Mass Effect?

The one ship, the attempted role play, the god awful dialogue. It all makes sense now.

The devs knew this full well and were in damage control mode before it even released.

"Obviously we can't please everyone and include every feature requested. The one ship simply reflects the limitations blah blah blah!"

What a load of crap. It suckered me in. I feel like I have just been stabbed in the side and mugged for £40. They should have taken my kidneys as well.

"Our English speaking consumers are disposable"

Yeah, they actually did say that.