After a lukewarm reception to the Saints Row reboot, Embracer Group has introduced that it will be plucking Volition from Plaion (previously Koch Media) and handing it to Gearbox as a substitute.
As a part of its quarterly monetary report (opens in new tab), Embracer seemed again at how Saints Row carried out and the way forward for its developer. Whereas the dad or mum firm stated that “financially, Saints Row has carried out effectively in keeping with administration expectations,” crucial reception was a special story. “The reception of Saints Row didn’t meet full expectations and left the fanbase partially polarized,” Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors stated. “The sport improvement studio, Volition, has been working arduous to enhance the participant expertise.”
Consequently, Embracer is internally transferring Volition from one in every of its working teams to a different. “Going ahead, Volition will transition to turn into a part of Gearbox which has all of the instruments, together with an skilled administration group within the US, to create future success at Volition. That is the primary inner group switch the place we switch a significant studio between operative teams, however it isn’t essentially the final.”
It is a slightly obscure rationalization behind the transfer, however maybe Gearbox might be a greater match for the Volition group than Plaion. As Wingefors stated, Saints Row did not precisely have the very best comeback. Jody discovered it was slightly too restrained, awarding it a 60 in his Saints Row assessment (opens in new tab). “Saints Row is at all times at its greatest when it cuts unfastened, when it goes full dubstep-gun silly, and the reboot forgets that for lengthy stretches. When it remembers, you get issues like a storyline wherein you participate in a citywide LARP, combating Mad Max roleplayers with foam weapons whereas wearing cardboard armour, and that is the sort of daftness it may do with extra of.”
Wingefors himself acknowledged that participant reception was disappointing (opens in new tab) shortly after launch. “Clearly, personally I had hoped for a larger reception of the sport,” he stated.”It has been a really polarised view, and there’s a lot of issues that might be stated and entails round it, however I’m completely happy to see loads of players and followers completely happy. On the similar time, I am a bit unhappy to see additionally followers not completely happy. It is troublesome.” A November Saints Row replace (opens in new tab) guarantees to be “a beast,” coming with over 200 fixes and quality-of-life updates.
The studio switcheroo is not the one information to return from the quarterly monetary report—Useless Island 2 has additionally been delayed. Sure, once more.
