If you have yet to hear of Babylon’s Fall, well you aren’t alone. The marketing for the game was mostly non-existent minus the odd bit of news out of Square Enix, though it does have the capable hands of PlatinumGames behind it. If you haven’t heard of them, now that’s a surprise. The team since its inception has gone on to create such industry greats as Bayonetta 1 and 2, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, NieR: Automata, and many more! Though despite the incredibly talented team at PlatinumGames, it seems many symptoms point to Babylon’s Fall, their new co-op action RPG, not having a successful launch thus far.
Now part of this is easily due to the marketing as mentioned, with not many having heard of the game excluding those of us who watch developer events. Though with that being said, it’s not entirely at the fault of marketing. For one thing, heading over to the game’s Steam page shows most users echoing many of the same sentiments that lead to the game’s current Mixed review rating. These sentiments include the game’s hefty price tag, subpar visuals in some instances, and everyone’s absolute favorite, micro-transactions. At least going by these Steam reviews, namely the game features an extensive cosmetics shop combined with a battle pass of all things.
Now regardless of your thoughts on battle passes as a whole, I think anyone could easily find it rather odd to find these things laden throughout an $80 co-operative action RPG. Typically these prices are indicative of a game that is complete in its form, though given the state of games today, maybe it could be seen as more mainstream. Either way, players aren’t very fond of the concept, as evident by the player counts as well. According to steamcharts.com, the game peaked today at around 650 players. Mind you that isn’t counting the PlayStation player numbers, but even just for PC that’s fairly abysmal for a AAA launch from Square Enix.
We’ll need to wait until the next investor call from Square Enix before we’re certain on how its performed, though it’s easy to say that Babylon’s Fall’s launch may not be PlatinumGames’ finest hour.
