The complexity is in ownership of the rights. IOI can’t make another Bond game without Amazon’s say-so (obviously). But, on the flip side, I don’t think Amazon can proceed with a First Light sequel without IOI’s involvement/permission as IOI now have some degree of ownership over the First Light IP.
Depends on what the original deal was when IOI got the Bond IP. It could stipulate they can develop as many games as they want, as long as they are released before a specific date, or they can produce x number of sequels within a specific timeframe.
Amazon potentially might have no choice but to let IOI develop it.
That article is very poorly written and is very fuzzy on the difference between publishing and developing.
Future James Bond games will come from Amazon Games, confirms boss
While IO Interactive self-published that game, the head of Amazon Games says that won’t be the case going forward. In an interview with Polygon, Jeff Gattis, GM of gaming at Amazon, says that while the tech giant “didn’t have the full rights to this First Light James Bond game,” sequels will be “done by MGM and, theoretically, by Amazon Game Studios.”
„Come from“ and „done by“ sound like developing, but I assume they just mean publishing, especially with this sentence towards the end:
If it can keep IO Interactive involved, Amazon might finally find a foothold in the AAA games space.
Besides, after reading this article I‘m not even sure, if sequels are actually confirmed. As a journalist, that is definitely a question you should ask during an interview like this.
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Well, gaming/entertainment journalists are not the most reliable/competent in the space anyway.
I agree they probably refer to publishing. It would be stupid to get rid of IO given not only the massive success of First Light, but also the fact that they own the engine and the foundational work has already been done, making producing sequels much easier and faster. Comercialy, keeping them would be the smart choice, it’s essentially free money.
Although, then again, this is the same company that thought King of Meat was a good idea, and even sponsored a full god damn Mr. Beast video about it, so there is groundworks for stupidity.
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I’m no expert, but I’m sure the Amazon guy giving the interview about Amazon studios potentially making the next game barely a week after First Light’s release has a clear meaning: Internally, he knows the game is a bit of a flop, and is already shaping the narrative that IO won’t be touching the Bond IP again.
It seems to me that First Light’s ridiculous $200,000,000 budget means that the game will barely break even, or may even be a financial loss. The 1,500,000 sales figures in the first 24 hours were great, but when the initial praise died down and more people realised that First Light is bit of a restrictive, linear damp squib with no replayability, that will surely harm sales in the long run.
If this is true, it may simply be too expensive for IO to pay Amazon to have the publishing rights and have to split the profits for future titles.
So, potentially, it means that Amazon will churn out their own Bond games and IO can return to Hitman. Everyone’s a winner! Er, maybe…
But what do I know? This is just my uninformed analysis!
This potentially sheds more light on the matter, making it a bit more explicit that IO self-publishing future games is what they’re referring to.
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I guess Amazon want a bigger slice of the pie.
I think that’s kind of harsh and off base, First Light is all over youtube right now and people don’t seem to have any illusions about what the game is. People seem to get that it’s a fun, cinematic action game about James Bond and they like what they see.
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I don’t understand this talk about lack of replay value to the game. Did you enjoy playing it? Yes? Play it again. Still fun. Oh, you already know how the story goes? So? You ever watch a movie more than once? Or read a book more than once? You ever play Hitman more than once? That argument falls through. Is the issue that you know the story and the gameplay is linear? Again, I don’t see the issue. People are still playing Mario, Sonic and Pac-Man today, can’t get much more linear than that, and you know the exact story.
You play the game again because it was fun the first time and you want to do it again. It doesn’t have to have some brand new twist or style of play in order to still be fun. I don’t understand these comments at all, that the lack of replay value will affect it in the long term.
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There are games that simply don’t lend themselves to replaying them. A game like Pac-Man or Sonic or Mario is replayable because it is A) scored in a “higher score means something” way and B) is entirely predictable in the same way that playing a musical instrument is predictable. The more often you play/practice those games, the better you get and the higher your score goes (to some theoretical maximum). You can memorize the layouts of the levels, the monsters, where coin/rings/fruit are and when they appear, and every time you play you get better and better and better. These games are not built on a mystery or puzzle (for the most part…even platformers do tend to have at least some puzzle elements).
A game like Bond or a point and click adventure game or a role playing game has less replay-ability because, for most players, the maximum score is set to a fairly low bar to begin with and mastering the “level” won’t improve that. In Hitman, for example, the maximum possible rank you can get on a given mission is “Silent Assassin”. Once you get that 5-star finish, you cannot ever get any higher than that. Yes, there is also a point value that you could get higher, but you’ll never get a sixth star or an “even Silent-er Assassin” rank. For most players, this is all they will ever do and playing the game over and over and over gives them no further enjoyment because they’ve already accomplished whatever goal the game set for them.
Even players who do play these levels over and over again have to set artificial goals for themselves because the game won’t do it. How many times have we seen a player post a video of a Hitman Elusive Target with the caption “SASOKNOABCDEFG” to highlight just how good they are? The game doesn’t care that you did it suit only or didn’t knock anyone out (you get more points for changing outfits than not, in fact) but the perception among the player base is that suit only is the pinnacle of play styles so they highlight that (there are even people on this very forum with the “SASO” initialism in their usernames.
If a game like Bond is linear and the maximum score (I’m only guessing here from other comments on the forum) is set to a minimum bar, most players won’t bother to keep replaying over and over and over because, to them, that’s boring.
If you’ve ever watched a speed runner play on Twitch (like Frote and others), most of the game play is them endlessly reloading the map, doing the same exact thing they just did, and then starting over again as they practice and memorize the exact route of guards, figure out just where to place an explosive to the millimeter, or do some other seemingly mundane action just to decrease the final run time by a few seconds. That’s boring to a casual player but exhilarating to a speed runner. It’s also somewhat similar, in concept, to people not wanting to hear spoilers for a game or movie. Knowing the ending lessens the enjoyment. People like you or I may be able to watch a movie over and over and still enjoy it just as much as the first time but I personally know people, and I bet you do too, that would never even consider watching a movie twice because knowing the ending completely ruins the experience for them.
For a game like Bond, the more times you play it, the less fun it is. Today, I can play Full Throttle from start to finish in about an hour and a half and I barely pay attention to any of it…it’s that rote. It’s not that fun anymore and the replay-ability of Bond may be the same thing. Some players may want to play it over and over again, but I feel that most will not. Most players just don’t care to play the same map over and over and over until they’ve memorized it.
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Most players really need to consider their priorities then. Games like this one, and really most games these days, are essentially interactive movies. You play them over and over for the same reason you watch a movie over and over.
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Maybe my point then is that many people don’t watch movies over and over (for various reasons).
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It should be fixed with the new-new hotfix, 1.03, released today.
The hotfix is specifically to resolve this issue.
In addition, a full-on patch is in the pipeline.
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Oh, thanks for letting me know!
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You mean being tested in Q-Lab?
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I actually agree with you on this one. I’ve played the game exclusively on Steam Deck, via Xbox Cloud Streaming, on Intended difficulty. In a couple of months when I’m set up a bit better, I intend to play it through again on Hard, on a proper TV. I liked the story, writing, and characters. I also like the melee and firearm combat. And on my second playthrough I won’t be running along every wall looking for secrets and collectibles, or waiting through every NPC conversation, or reading all the lore.
To @schatenjager ‘s point… I don’t actually replay games often. There are too many great games and the backlog is big. But The Secret of Monkey Island is my most replayed game, followed by Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle. There’s a comfort in replaying these. It’s like rewatching a favorite movie. Just sayin.
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They should. You can get a lot of insights out of a movie rewatch.
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For some reason, if you are in offline mode one of the Coca-Cola skins (One More) will show up as unlocked.
I am doing my first replay too. For me, the first time I dive in to a new art piece (film, music, videogame), is not really the most important, just the start of a relationship.
I had to buy a PS5 to play the game, I’ve been on PC all my life, but my current system can’t really do First Light justice. So that meant that my first playthrough was good in terms of story, but I never really flowed during hand-to-hand or shootouts, and it was really hard at times.
But now with the second run through, muscle memory is starting to set in, and shootouts and close combat encounters are becoming easier and more engaging. It’s so good.
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