Days Gone Director, Analyst Disagree Over Why Big Games Can Flop

I bought Days Gone at about half price after it had been patched and played it on my base PS4. I found it really enjoyable, but it is lengthy game. They should have cut down the content a bit. This would have improved the overall experience and saved on development costs as well.

Quite stupid quotes blaming on Players, one can only laugh. What I know, the game flopped as soon as the reviewers took their household frustration on Days Gone and that decided buying choice of Players. Even I didn't even care to look at the game after rating (when it came on PS+, I tried and was truly amazed, 9/10), but when a product gets flawed, a company usually takes proactive measures to make it right, they don't sit silent or dumbo. I think such Directors should grow up and take out their frustration somewhere else. Anyways sir Director, thanks for the great game. I loved it and really don't care for no sequel cuz of stupid mentality of your highness, please come with a better excuse next time for your failure.

Days gone very flop

Two guys who made 2 of the worst/most disappointing games (Days Gone and Drawn To Death) of this era talking about how everyone else is wrong.

I admit I pre-order, or more important in this case, pay premium for few games. I can complain all I want about how games aren't now what they were before and tear a new one to new and mainstream trends, the truth is I'd still pay premium for few because anyone who played lot of games is bound to have a GoTY or two a year, not fifteen.

I don't mind supporting game companies. I'm just not going to break the bank while doing it. $60-$70 per game adds up.

The game has to look FUN.

I watched plenty of Days Gone clips trying to figure out what it was... ...and the moment i saw the first long gameplay demo, it was obvious that it was built around a couple of gimmicks.

In 2021, you better have a heck of a game lined up if you want the consumer to buy it on day one. Too many free games, discounted titles, used rentals, etc. YOU guys decided to raise the bar even higher, to $70 dollars, now YOU also have to deliver an even better gaming experience. Too many options for the modern gamer, the titles that deserve a launch day purchase are extremely rare.

Funny how people thought $70 dollars was going to be an issue. They shorted our patience as consumers and it looks like it's not working out for them. Also, digital games are picking up speed, it's too hard to compete against a software download.

As a consumer and someone that is careful about which games to buy at full price and invest in, I am more than thankful we have sales and reviews to fall back on. When Days gone released, I looked into it. But, I had read that over 20 hours of the game was dedicated to watching cut scenes and very little actual gameplay was the player actually playing the game. This is a problem I have had with a lot of the games on the PS4 generation. I rented Death Stranding and after one hour of it, I stopped playing. Why? I spent maybe 5 minutes in that hour actually playing the game. The rest was watching cut scenes and movies. So, I was not willing to take that chance with Days Gone. Instead, it hit PS Plus and now I have it. I do have a backlog at this time. So, I have not fired it up. But, the Spring Sale is going on right now and I got Mortal Kombat XL for $6.00. That is what some gamers want, a deal and not to raked over the coals with overpriced DLC. Now, I also invested in Mortal Kombat 11 with the Spring Sale as well. I bought the Standard Vanilla Edition for $20.00 and got the Ultimate DLC pack for $25.00. I felt it was a good investment since I have everything the game has to offer now. This guy can stick it because not everyone wants to drop $60.00 each time a game releases. I dropped $60.00 on God Of War on release day and I regret it. Games was not the same as the old ones from the PS3 era and it was really tough on the easy difficulty. I'll stick to waiting for deals, unless I know I will like the game beyond doubt.

I'm glad this game is being discussed. I DID buy it at launch and it was definitely ahead of it's time for the PS4 hardware it was limited by. The PS4-Pro was much better, but still just reached a stable 30fps and 4k checkerboard (which I've heard was 1080p upscaled but if it was they did a fine job of it!). In any case, the game was good but not great and the load times were BRUTAL, so I set it aside without finishing it. AND THEN I GOT MY PS5 and heard this game got a 60fps full 4k bump. I tried it and it was night and day different. Now I'm much further in the game than I ever got when I first bought it and the silky smooth FPS and jaw-dropping graphics have kept me involved like this was a brand-new game.

I think what we're dealing with here is similar to the problem with Cyberpunk. Some games are just too much for the current generation hardware, and I think this was one of those times. I hope now that the PS5 is out, Sony will make more games like Days Gone. Personally, I'm kind of sick of sequels - they are overdone and I'd rather see developers make new stories and characters. Right now we're stuck in a rut like Bungie... They got sick of making Halo game after Halo game so they bought their independence from Microsoft only to now be making Destiny game after Destiny game. Publishers like that model, heck the MOVIE industry is doing the same thing, and for some things (Drake's Fortune, The Last of Us, etc.) it definitely makes sense, but in the case of Days Gone, since it received mixed reviews and none of the characters were that memorable, recasting the idea with a new generation of hardware and all new characters in the same WORLD as Days Gone but maybe a different region altogether (maybe China... I could definitely get into zombie pandas... Or Australia with zombie crocodiles and kangaroo?...)

Honestly, I was really looking forward for Days Gone when it was first revealed but when I finally played it I was kind of disappointed. Not surprised the sales weren't good enough and the game isn't getting a sequel

The game just didn't look interesting. If I want open world, there's an endless number of games that appeal more to me out there. If I want zombies, I can boot up any of the fifty zombie games I own. And Sony's narrative-driven exclusives very rarely pull me in like they seem to do for other people. Plus apparently it was pretty buggy on launch and I'm not normally the type willing to gamble on a buggy game in the hopes that maybe patches will fix it later on.

Days gone is a perfect example of not buying a game at lauch as the game was a buggy mess.

David Jaffe is mostly right. The big and varied premium game is dead, except for a handful of extremly big and established series build around the least common denominator. The same happend within the movie-industry 30 years ago. The only big video-game company, which managed to defy these developments at least somewhat so far is Nintendo.

Most "gamers" are so trapped in their greedyness, naive expectations and low-brow self-righteousness, they cannot see the tragic logic behind this "evolution". They are going to lose big time, as companies will find new business models, which are way more profitable and cynical in their explotation of the consumer, than the relativily transparent and consumer-friendly premium model ever was.

If you think, selling a big ass premium game, which came at $100 million+ in production and marketing, for $20 in some dirty-cheap sale six months after its release, is a sustainable business model for the developer, then you're are delusional.

Who would thought that people just don't want to buy average games (or games that they don't care about), especially at full price.

So no, thank you. We don't need a sequel to every average game.

He's an idiot.

He’s right. Always pay full price for games that you love (even if you don’t know if you love it).

While you’re at it, you should also let your realtor know that you love a house, so that they can make sure you pay the full asking price.

You should also never pay a penny less than sticker price for a car.

Ok. Enough joking. This guy needs to get his head out of his ass. What a ******* moron.

I'll probably never pay full price for a video game. There's enough games I want to play, that my backlog is long enough that a game has normally dropped in price by the time I would get around to playing it. Except Nintendo games that never drop in price.

The only game I even debated buying day one, before ultimately deciding not to in the last 5 years or so....was Cyberpunk 2077. Looks like that was a good call.

Honestly if they'd release finished products on day one I would be way more inclined to buy. But when games normally are a buggy mess at release and heavily dlc invested I just don't see the reason to pay more for less.

I buy very few games full price at launch, especially where I live where we don't get regional pricing, so games are really expensive.

In Days Gone's case, I didn't buy at launch because reviews said it ran bad. But mostly it didn't tickle my fancy at that time.

Last year it was on sale I think for 20$, during lockdown, and I was like: you know what? I fancy riding a bike through a forest lol So I bought it and ended up really loving it!

Should a sequel come out, I'll probably buy it day one. I think publishers need to give new IPs a chance, if they don't fail big time ofc. And I don't think Days Gone did that bad, did it? I mean it got a PS5 upgrade and a PC release. Gravity Rush 2 got neither.

My poor beloved Gravity Rush :< I pre-ordered that btw.

I've heard a few bad things about the condition Days Gone was in when it launched. I picked it up a year later during a PSN sale and I guess they must have ironed out the bugs... because as far as narrative, action games like this go, such as The Last of Us the Tomb Raider reboots, Quantum Break, and Uncharted.... it's one of the best titles out there.
So I can understand this guy sounding a little resentful as, for whatever reason, this game has been criminally under-appreciated.
... kinda like Quantum Break.

These comments are reminding me exactly why I hate gamers.

"If you think games cost too much? More power to you. Just don't buy [a game] on sale a year later, discover you love it, then wonder why a sequel never got made,"

This resonates with me. Unfortunately I'm guilty as charged, I play the "sales" game, it's how I'm able to buy a hundred games a year. The amount of times I've been mad that the general consensus about a game was so off...

I do support certain games with day one purchases but it has become increasingly rare. I wish the age of the Demo would come back. In some ways, Game Pass is like a "Demo Pass", that's how I've always viewed it. Though Game Pass users still find the time to moan and complain in user reviews and those are another issue that play a part in this. User reviews are a minefield of misleading and/or dumb takes. Researching a game through those is not the way to go in my opinion.

Even Sony couldn't trust Bend Studios on making their own ideas into games as it took Sony 20 years to trust them since the acquisition.....and they still couldn't deliver.

And somehow he still pins the issue on "people not paying full price" for mediocrity.

Amongst all the comments below, let's celebrate Day's Gone demonstrated significant technical expertise with threatening animated zombie hordes and its motorcycle sim. My recall is both were done here as well as any other game released that year or the year before.