CMBB on CMx2 = no more???

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

From Battlefront:

Therefore, we aren't unhappy with CMBB's overall sales, but we weren't happy with how hard we had to work for it. Hence our decision to never do that again once we got CMAK behind us. Hence our lack of sympathy for people who feel we should repeat CMBB. Hence our dismissal of uninformed individuals who think CMBB is what made us the company we are today. CMBO did that... CMBB could be argued to have almost killed us (it wasn't that bad, but I'd quit before I did another one like that, which would kill Battlefront. Especially since Charles would have quit 5 minutes before me.

Let me tell you, that i agree with you, that CMBO did you THE COMPANY you are today TOGETHER with your customers!

I don't know how others did, but i played CMBB 80% of all CMx1 play time, CMBO 19% and CMAK only 1%.

I fully understand that the frustration of CMx1 long programming has lead you to creation of this LEGO CMx2, which i fully support, it will bring us finally more and better gaming world.

I am also very happy that you created modern era simulation. I am also ready to stop US invasion to Europe at all cost

But tell me please, after Normandy and some LEGO modules what you will do??? I think your system will be fully set up and any creation of another LEGO will be not any more so long like now - as you said beginning is hard. Because of bad CMBB results you will just simple not create it again??? And this part of history has own group of supporters!

Correct me if i am wrong, but CMBB has given birth to CMx2 or not? If the selling results will be good, you will stay with CMx1

Anyway, continue your job and we will se what the future will bring us

[Sixxkiller]

I dont get what this post was about.

[Moon]

I am not sure either but if the poster thinks that we're not going to do Eastern Front anymore then he's VERY wrong. In fact, we plan to have a Russian-native team do most of the modules for that family of titles.

[costard]

I am not sure either but if the poster thinks that we're not going to do Eastern Front anymore then he's VERY wrong. In fact, we plan to have a Russian-native team do most of the modules for that family of titles.

Good news is so rare these days.

[Gurra]

Now that is good news indeed. I didn´t know they had decided on making eastern front again. Remember some thread revealing ambivalence. But yes, yes, yes!

[Apocal]

I'm pretty sure they never promised or even implied a CMBB for CMx2.

[TempV]

BFC said their plans include a CMx2 game covering Op. Bagration. That will be after the first Western front title and probably the second one, The Battle for Buldge. Well, maybe even Shock Force 2 will sqeeze into this timeline. However, it's too early to speak about the order by which CMx2-based games will be produced. We don't even know proper name of the 1st Western front title.

[Yair Iny]

Marwek: what Steve means by not doing CMBB again is that they will not make another game which covers in one go the entire eastern front with pretty much all nations involved (hungary, finland, italy...) and all equipment. For half the work they put into CMBB, for example, only germans and sovs, they could have gotten pretty much the same results in sales, and we would have gotten pretty much the same results in fun. Steve and co have stated many times that they will cover eastern front with at least one game and modules, so if you're worried, you shouldn't be

Cheers

[MeatEtr]

This guy is clearly uninformed! This has all been discussed like a year ago.

Although for the most part, we're all with you on the CMBB love.

[General_solomon]

siege of Stalingrad will finally be realized on the new engine. I think BFC is holding off announcing anything about their ww2 titles because they don't want to take the thunder of the upcoming release of "Theater of War2".

If Normandy came out today no one would purchase TOW2.

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Well the last I heard form Steve… Martin can confirm if I remember correctly…. was that after Normandy and winter months of North West Europe campaign… Bulge and such… we are off to The Destruction of Army Group Centre July/August ’44… .

Sounds very good to me… I too think the real war was the Eastern Front… all previous versions of CMX2 are just R&D for the Eastern Front versions… .

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

PS. My play of CMX1 was split in the same percentages as the poster over the three titles…

[Field Marshal Blücher]

If Normandy came out today no one would purchase TOW2.

Even if this were true, if Normandy came out today lots of people probably would end up buying TOW2 because if Normandy came out today it would be horrendously buggy and incomplete.

[panzermartin]

So a native russian team will do the east front? It would be awesome if 1C for instance gave a helping hand in graphics department. They have some pretty talented artists.

[MikeyD]

In fact, we plan to have a Russian-native team do most of the modules for that family of titles

Wow, we're going to have to start referring to the CM 'franchise'

if Normandy came out today it would be horrendously buggy and incomplete.

You do realise CM Normandy will be resting on the now-solid CMSF foundation. If it works in CMSF its going to work in CM Normandy. They're not going to be re-re-reinventing the wheel.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

You do realise CM Normandy will be resting on the now-solid CMSF foundation. If it works in CMSF its going to work in CM Normandy. They're not going to be re-re-reinventing the wheel.

I think you missed what I feel was the posters intended point. If CM Normandy came out today it would indeed be very buggy and in complete indeed. Because it isn't finished yet! Don't think he meant to imply a CMx2 title would be inherently buggy or incomplete upon release.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

I think you missed what I feel was the posters intended point. If CM Normandy came out today it would indeed be very buggy and in complete indeed. Because it isn't finished yet! Don't think he meant to imply a CMx2 title would be inherently buggy or incomplete upon release.

This is precisely what I meant. I assume that if it could be released today without being buggy and incomplete, it would be released today or at least soon.

[Sixxkiller]

I think that TOW2 has plenty of customers and isnt dependent on BFC not releasing a WWII game. I think there is room for 2 war games still

And them not saying anything is most likely because there isnt enough to talk about as we are working on first things first. Also Steve may just not be saying anything so you guys will torture yourselves with speculation like you always do. (and drag me into it too)

siege of Stalingrad will finally be realized on the new engine. I think BFC is holding off announcing anything about their ww2 titles because they don't want to take the thunder of the upcoming release of "Theater of War2".

If Normandy came out today no one would purchase TOW2.

[Redwolf]

I think CMBB, although a better game overall, made some mistakes, and those mistakes might have made it less fun for a whole range of gamers.

There are a lot of "slowdown" factor in CMBB, most of them to an unrealistic degree (next to the ones that were real fixes).

I wouldn't know how much this affects actual sales as most of the time people discover these things after buying. But maybe the demo or friend's reports were enough.

These issues have been made worse by using the Yelnyia Stare scenario for a demo, a scenario which could feel like wading through half-molten rubber. Sure, it did a great job showing CMBO people that the MG problem was addressed. But for casual gamers?

[Sequoia]

I am not sure either but if the poster thinks that we're not going to do Eastern Front anymore then he's VERY wrong. In fact, we plan to have a Russian-native team do most of the modules for that family of titles.

That will be interesting and perhaps refreshing in the scenarios we'll get. Too many scenario designers in CMBB were German-centric.

[Battlefront.com]

OK, most issues cleared up... but not "officially" in all cases

1. Of course we're going to do Eastern Front stuff. It's nuts not to. But we're not going to do the whole front, 7 nation thing we did for CMBB. That wouldn't be nuts, that would be frick'n insane. Commercial suicide to please a small number of gamers (including myself ) is just not a good idea.

2. Absolutely no thought has been given to interaction between CMx2 and TOW sales activity. The two games are aimed at different markets and whatever overlap exists doesn't fall into the category of "either or". If someone is interested in both they will purchase both, even if they come right out on top of each other. Remember, we don't care when someone buys one of our games. So I can say for sure that whatever CM does has no affect on TOW, whatever TOW does has no effect on what CM does.

3. Of course we can't release Normandy now. It wouldn't be buggy at all, though, it would be incomplete. For example, we have the code in for AT Guns, but we haven't put in any AT Gun models and animations. One can't even check for bugs when the feature in question isn't even implemented yet

4. Yes, I have heard all the arguments as to why CMBB supposedly didn't sell as well as CMBO due to the demo. It holds no traction. Our experience, and the experience of other game developers over the years, has shown quite consistently that the Eastern Front doesn't sell as well as the Western Front. If anything, CMBB exceeded what it should have sold compared to what other 2nd releases have achieved for other wargame companies. As I said, the problem with CMBB was that the development effort was too much for the sales, not that sales were bad.

To put it another way, if we could go back in time and change anything about CMBB it wouldn't have been to yank the Yelnyia scenario out of the demo. Nope, it would have been to yank the Hungarians, Romanians, and Italians out of the game. We would probably also have limited the timeframe and/or offered the Finns as a separate addon. Why? Because swapping out Yelnyia wouldn't have significantly changed our sales figures (as I said, sales data shows we probably did better than most), but cutting out months worth of development cost would have dramatically changed the return on investment equation in a favorable way.

Which is the lesson we keep telling you guys we've learned... we'll never again put in content that the vast majority of customers aren't interested in paying for. Instead, we'll offer that content separately if we think there is a demand for it. Using CMBB as an example, I don't think we could have even broke even on a Romanian Module, but we could have done very, very well with a Finnish Module. Why? Major market for the Finns, no market worth mentioning or the Romanian stuff. And I'm not speaking for myself personally, here, because the Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian stuff went in largely because I wanted to play with it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Redwolf,

I wouldn't know how much this affects actual sales as most of the time people discover these things after buying. But maybe the demo or friend's reports were enough.

There's absolutely no empirical evidence to support the demo negatively affecting sales, but there is empirical evidence to suggest such a position is not relevant. As stated above, the sales of CMBB were probably higher than for other 2nd release games in a series. Considering that CMAK was lower than CMBB, it's clear the demo scenarios didn't have anything significant to do with reducing sales.

This whole thing about the CMBB demo hurting sales is myth designed to deflect reality from a discussion about the relative strength and appeal of the Eastern Front. I have repeatedly put forward a very well supported, factual case that the Western Front is far more popular game topic. I also freely admit that as a wargamer I don't personally agree that it should be this way because the Eastern Front is (to me) so much richer than the Western Front. So how does someone who is Eastern Front biased challenge this? I mean, not only am I saying the facts support our position but that as a wargamer I personally don't like what the facts tell us. That means the old standby argument that we're biased in favor of US stuff is automatically not available to swing at us. So something else has to be pulled out of various rear ends if the argument is going to continue

What I've seen pulled out, time and time again, is that we botched the marketing of CMBB. But the people saying this can't point to a smaller marketing campaign because CMBB's marketing campaign was vastly larger and further reaching than our very small CMBO campaign. They can't argue that we don't know how to market wargames (like other publishers) because that clearly isn't the case. They can't argue that we didn't put our full heart into it because that too is nonsense. It also can't be that we underwhelmed customers with the treatment of the Eastern Front since just about everybody agrees CMBB is the most comprehensive, realistic, and engaging Eastern Front game ever made. And of course, CMBB had a huge established customer base available to it while CMBO had none. (and CMAK had an even bigger base, and yet it sold even less).

So what does that leave people with? That one of the demo scenarios was so bad that it undermined everything I just listed. And what evidence is there to support this position? None at all. Just some personal opinion backed by nothing. As I've said, it's a theory that doesn't pass the sniff test at all.

As for the possible ingame turn offs... there was far more potential for CMBO to have turned people off than CMBB in that regard. CMBO's graphics were far worse than CMBB and, like it or not, graphics are what sells the majority of our games. In fact, my feeling is that CMBB did better proportional to CMBO than other 2nd releases because of the graphics and other elements we added into CMBB. The game just felt more solid, more polished, and better executed than CMBO. Sure the issue with MGs was a big turn off for "gamey" people that didn't like having their cherry picked SMG Squads chewed to pieces... but I think those types were a very small number. They were probably also not all that thrilled about the Eastern Front too, so I think the actual number of people who liked the Eastern Front and disliked MGs who didn't buy CMBB could be counted on perhaps one hand.

Anyway, it is definitely an interesting topic for me to discuss. Understanding the psychology of what makes a game sell is critically important to us for obvious reasons The thing is the only people that need to be satisfied with the analysis are us at Battlefront. It's our asses on the line, so we have the biggest incentive to get it as right as possible. The fact that we'll never ever do another CMBB game again for the rest of our lives is actually in the benefit of our customers since another CMBB would likely kill off our interest in doing wargames at all. And again, that's coming from a guy who thinks that playing 1941 Romanian forces against the Soviets was one of the best ways to play CMBB. So the lack of interest in making another CMBB obviously has nothing to do with a lack of personal interest in the subject matter.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, I forgot one other thing. Although CMBB's graphics were much better than CMBO, the entire graphical environment was getting long in the tooth by 2002 when it was released. I'm sure that we lost some sales to that fact, however I think that the improvements over CMBO keep it fairly small. Since those improvements couldn't be duplicated for CMAK, or any other game, without rewriting a huge section of the game code, sales were definitely going to be affected by the graphics going forward. Therefore, CMBB probably could have sold better with a better graphics engine, but then at that point it would be selling more units due to the graphics and not because it was Eastern Front.

Steve

[Mord]

I was one of those guys who had no interest in the Eastern Front before the game came out...then found it VASTLY interesting and engaging. I was lucky though, I'd only just started delving into WWII so hadn't developed any real biases/favorites for any one theater at that point.

I've come to learn though, when it comes to war, I think almost any time period and era will grab me...hence why I wasn't too upset when CMSF was announced. I knew by the time it was released I'd be juiced.

But I am probably the exception not the rule. For example; my brother LOVED CMBO but didn't like CMBB because he had no desire to play any of the the nationalities it portrayed, they were to alien to him.

I am pumped about all the titles that have been talked about...except stupid Space Lobsters...I hate sea food!

Mord.

[Pvt. Ryan]

I am pumped about all the titles that have been talked about...except stupid Space Lobsters...I hate sea food!

Mord.

Will there be an Italian and Romanian sea food module? I'm not particularly interested in a Finnish sea food module. The Finnish crabs will be too uber.

[Battlefront.com]

Mord,

But I am probably the exception not the rule. For example; my brother LOVED CMBO but didn't like CMBB because he had no desire to play any of the the nationalities it portrayed, they were to alien to him.

I've seen others say they bought CMBB just to support us, not because of interest in the Eastern Front. After that some say they enjoyed it, others said they rarely played it. However, I've also seen people who bought CMBB say they have never played either CMAK and/or CMBO. We even have some CMAK guys who said that is all they own and have interest in.

What this proves is that our customer base is not monolithic. No kidding, eh? What we have to pay attention to is overall sales and the expense of development. As long as the two are in balance then everything is OK. CMBB was out of balance and therefore serves as a model of what not to do ever again.

Steve