The death of Societies?

[baertooth 330]

Tilted Mills opened up another forum on their message boards called Hinterland.  It's a new game TM is working on that is not a sequeal to Societies or is it in conjunction with EA.

http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17000

[JanYpe 17]

Why is it the death of Societies though? The game is there, as well as an expansion. The sales figures suggest that it's not going to be a never ending add-on saga like 'The Sims'.

Hinterland sounds cool so far. I think own products like this, and Children Of The Nile, are much more up TM's alley than churning out stuff for EA is.

[baertooth 330]

It would be the death of Societies because it means the ones who would carry the game forward are no longer carrying the game forward.  It sounds like Hinterland is TM's next project rather than another epansion pack or sequeal.  That probably means EA has given up on Societies. 

I wish I could find it again, but I read there was less than 200k units sold.  I have also read that EA mandates that their titles sell at least 1 million units.  If the 200k thing is true, then Societies fell way short of the goal.  To bolster that, the store I get my games from recieved 22 copies of Societies back in November of last year.  He said his store sold five copies including mine and eventually sent all but two of the units back.

[mrbombit 1]

Agreed. Looks like resources are being put elsewhere. Thank God.

[Robstersfive 0]

question is now will this be the death of simcity as well or will it make Nuclear cooling Rod Ham Burger rethink the simcity franchise and release a true sequel to simcity 4!!

[baertooth 330]

I have been bouncing around the TM and the official forums and I noticed that there are no more responses from either the TM guys or the simleaders at all in any Societies related thread for the last little while.  They don't seem to be reading the forums anymore.

[Mellophonius 9]

Not to mention SCS's rapid price drop from $50 to $40 to $30 to $20. No game that I've ever paid attention to has ever had its price fall so quickly. Games that have been around a lot longer than SCS are still up in the $40-$50 zone. That goes to show you how badly EA needed to sell SCS.

[Patricius Maximus 236]

I am aware of the price drop. I've seen it go from $60 to $20 in my local stores in less than a year.

Contrast that with SC4, which started at $50 and went down to $20 in 3 years. I wouldn't be surprised if SCS went down to $10 in a year or so. Games that are 15 years old are selling at at least that much.

Also, the nearest Target to me had more copies of SCS than SC4, which indicates that SCS's five-year-old predecessor is still outselling it.

Pathetic.

- Patricius Maximus

[doodlea21 31]

This is interesting. EA is now releasing a 'Simcity Box' - game pack with SC:S and SC4.

Here is the page about it. On the right there should be a scrollable box with information about the games.

Notice that Simcity 4 is called: "The most detailed, realistic city simulation in existence." and "City building at its best." It looks like the person who wrote the descriptions didn't think much of Societies, since they didn't describe it with the same reverence.

[Wizard of ID 1]

Originally posted by: Robstersfive question is now will this be the death of simcity as wellquote>

I hope not, and the fact that SC4 is still selling even though it's ancient should give us hope.  But I really don't see where they'd go from here.  How, exactly, could they build on it significantly?

Personally, I'd like to see a change in camera angles, so you could actually walk through your city at ground level, which was certainly the coolest thing about SCS.  But I doubt that alone is going to be worth developing a whole new game.  Another good thing would be to combine the Sims with SimCity, but EA isn't going to do that until sales of the Sims also decline, and it still seems very popular at present.

[Sky Guy 163]

I kind of feel bad for EA becausew harly anyone likes SCS- lol. I personally am going to be swithching over to CitiesXL.

Off topic- Wizard of ID: Your user name is the title of a comic section in my newspaper-