Immortals of Aveum director blames poor sales on busy release calendar and says "no one anticipated" Baldur's Gate 3 to be so successful
Nov. 20, 2023Ascendant Studios CEO Bret Robbins says “trying to create awareness for us was really, really difficult”
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When Immortals of Aveum, the EA Original FPS from Ascendant Studios, launched back in August, I wondered if it would be buried under the weight of higher-profile releases like Starfield, and apparently I was right to.
Ascendant CEO and Immortals of Aveum game director Bret Robbins toldWindows Centralthat the extraordinarily busy release calendar this year made it hard for the studio’s debut title to find an audience.
“We were not in a position where we could delay or push out of our launch window,” Robbins said. “You set those windows quite a bit ahead of time because you’re spending marketing dollars, you have commitments to a particular date.”
Robbins added that “no one anticipated"Baldur’s Gate 3to become the phenomenon that it has, further complicating Immortals of Aveum’s path to success. In fairness,Larian’s Golden Joystick-winning RPGreleased just a few weeks before Immortals of Aveum and utterly dominated the conversation, crushing expectations and garnering universal acclaim from critics and players alike.
“I’ve never seen a year like this,” he said. “It’s always hard to break through the noise when you’re a new IP or a studio people haven’t heard of before. Trying to create awareness for us was really, really difficult. It’s always hard for a new IP and this year made it 10 times harder.”
It’s worth pointing out that, whileI very much enjoyed the gameand think its refreshingly old-school approach to single-player shooters deserves more credit, ourImmortals of Aveum reviewechoes many others in saying, essentially, it really ain’t perfect.
The shooter’s first big update, Echollector, recently added new endgame content, a bunch of performance improvements, some quality-of-life tweaks, a New Game Plus mode, and more.
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Immortals of Aveum didn’t quite make the cut for our list of thebest FPS gamesof all time.
After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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