One of the wildcard games this year was Capcom’s reboot/relaunch or whatever the hell you want to call it of Bionic Commando. After releasing a remake of the original Bionic Commando last year that not only was a good game but hit all the right notes when it came to fan nostalgia it was unclear if the “proper” next-gen version of Bionic Commando would be solid as well. Based on various reviews from the press and the SG review from Casey White it seems like Bionic Commando fell short of what we had hoped from the game from a game perspective but that’s only the start of where the disappointment begins.
Prior to release everyone knew that the game wouldn’t exactly light the world on fire when it came to sales as relaunching an old series amidst existing franchises can be a bit of a struggle. That being said no one expected Bionic Commando to perform as badly as it did as the game only sold a total of 27,000 units from its release on May 19 to May 30th. For a major Capcom release it seems like Bionic Commando is their biggest bomb this gen and could be one of the bigger disappointments in general this gen so far.
Now the poor sales of Bionic Commando aren’t necessarily due to it being an unfamiliar property as Bionic Commando Rearmed sold over 200,000 units when it was released last year on the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and Steam which is an extremely solid number considering the fact that it was a download only HD remix of an old NES game.
So it seems like the poor sales of BC are simply because the game wasn’t that good and consumers listened to reviews for once. One could also factor in the lack of proper promotion as a key factor of the poor sales and perhaps this was in part due to Capcom knowing they had a stinker on their hands. Others, myself included, believe the fact that the only demo released for the game was a poorly executed multi-player demo that failed to allow players to get a grasp of the complex swing mechanics really lowered the buzz surrounding the game. Previous Capcom demos for games like Lost Planet and Dead Rising sold people on the games so it’s odd that Capcoms approach for Bionic Commando was to release a MP demo a few weeks before release.
But perhaps the greater questions around this news are what does this mean for Grin, the developer of both Bionic Commando games, and Capcoms approach to having Western developers handle their existing properties or taking on new IP? Recently Grin has been rumored to have fired between 100 and 160 employees and perhaps that number could sadly grow with the poor sales of Bionic Commando and their other recently developed game Terminator: Salvation which only sold 43,000 units in the month of May. Grin seems to have been dealt a killing blow as their games have all been less than stellar critically and commercially and I wouldn’t be surprised if Grin soon goes the way of Factor 5 at some point.
I think everyone is interested to see how Bionic Commando’s failure changes, if it does at all, Capcom’s strategy of having Western developers handle their games. At this point it seems like the Bionic Commando franchise could be dead so will Capcom chalk this up to it being Grin’s fault, which I think it is partly, thinking the game would’ve been better if it was developed internally or will Capcom keep a close eye on their other Western developed games.
Dark Void is Capcoms other big Western developed game this year and I think everyone will be paying close attention to how that performs not only since it’s a new IP but because if it performs poorly then that could be Capcoms bailout on the Western developed games experiment. There’s always Dead Rising 2 from Blue Castle Games to inspire confidence in Capcom that Western devs can get the job done but I don’t even want to imagine the meltdowns that will happen if that game has major issues or underperforms.
It’s somewhat sad to see Bionic Commando perform poorly as I would’ve liked to see another game like Rearmed but at least it seems that consumers are wising up and aren't buying crap or mediocre games.
[Via Gamasutra]
Yeah man, I played it for the better part of 20 minutes and was thoroughly underwhelmed. What’s funny is this game has individual components that one looks for in an awesome game. Robotic appendage enhancements, swinging (from cables.. not the other kind of swinger), ‘commando’ in the title. It’s all there but not a lot of synergy was a happnin’. =/
Bomb indeed. There are more people in my town than the game sold lol.
Such a shame. Many of the videos for this game looked fantastic. The graphics were impressing me in everything they released to promote it. I did get a chance to play the demo a while back at Casey White's house, and I found it to be very clunky. But I didn't play long enough to totally write it off. Looks like the single player doesn't really get much better
It is such a shame to see, because I loved the original NES game, it was one of my fav NES titles. I was really hoping that this one would be excellent and as you said a lot of the videos and early teasers looked very promising, but somewhere they failed on the execution, which I was worried would end up happening. I also tried the demo and was so so on it, although I never expected the MP for the game to be that great, I was hoping the single player would make up for it. Ah well, at least if nothing else this game prompted Capcom to do an HD remake of the original which was awesome :D
this game killed my dog!
Given their recent offerings, I wouldn't be too distraught if I learned of Grin's closure.
because the game stinks. I dont think it help that people hated the demo even thought they say the demo was broken whatever that means.