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Homefront losing the battle at launch
by Garnett Lee, Mar 15, 2011 6:00pm PDTIt's been a tough release day for Homefront, the near-future shooter in which players take up arms as American freedom fighters fending off occupation of the heartland by a unified Korea. After a massive marketing campaign, the early reviews indicate the game may struggle living up to the hype. Metacritic currently shows it with a 72 "Metascore" (for Xbox 360) based on 31 review ranging from a high of 93 to a low of 50. This puts it in the "mixed or average" category on the site--a score range almost certainly below publisher THQ's expectations.
Investors wasted no time showing their displeasure with the results. Reuters reports that shares of THQ (THQI) fell more than 20 percent during trading today on the Nasdaq. Volume also spiked to several times its daily average during the steep decline.
The game is also experiencing trouble handling the online load of players trying to get into games. In a post on the official forums, 'KAOS CHEFS' gave this update on the status of the game's dedicated servers.
Homefront’s dedicated servers are currently at capacity, and this is causing some matchmaking issues for players attempting to join an online match.
The demand for the servers has outstripped our expectations – so although we’re thrilled that Homefront is proving to be so popular, we’re doing all we can to bring more servers online to cope with this demand ASAP.
Please bear with us – as more servers come online, you should find you’re able to join matches easily and play Homefront the way it’s meant to be played – with 32 players on dedicated servers.
Even the competition took notice of the situation. Battlefield 3 senior gameplay designer Alan Kertz said on his twitter (as spotted by 'sk3tch' on NeoGAF), "I don't expect KAOS studio to last...THQ was already talking up moving them away from New York." This came after an earlier tweet where Kertz joked about the forum comment of the day being "KAOS should've stuck to making complete mods for DICE games" (KAOS formed from the team behind the popular Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942). He also added that DICE is hiring, directly addressing KAOS.
From my experience playing the single-player campaign over the weekend and a number of multiplayer matches, I can't say I'm surprised by the tough reception the game is getting. It would have been tough to live up to the expectations with a perfectly executed game and Homefront misses that mark, particularly in the single-player campaign. I'll have my review in the coming days. In the meantime, if you're playing the game share your experiences in the comments.
Comments
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If you expected Homefront to sell like Call of Duty (and I'm sure THQ thought it would), then of course that was impossible. The game's graphics are by far very plain and not at all state of the art, but aside from that, the reviews I've read suggest the game has a different (if completely implausible to me) story, a short SP campaign, an extensive (if apparently nonfunctional currently) MP, dated graphics, and average sound.
Slap the Call of Duty name on that and the reviews would go up to the 9-ish range and they'd call it yet another incredible Call of Duty destined for awesomeness whose only flaw is that it is beginning to look dated. Without the Call of Duty name (like Medal of Honor before it), it suffers from reviewers who secretly despise Call of Duty and take it out on The Other Guys because they're too afraid to review Call of Duty for what it really is.
I do think THQ should have listened to its own rhetoric and lowered the price on this game to $40 MSRP, reduced the ad campaign, and made a case for why games with a short SP should not be costing the consumer $60. I think that argument would have won over a lot more sales (and money in turn) than trying to go with a full MSRP on an unknown franchise with dated graphics.
It's already $40 on Amazon.com's digital offering. It'll be $20 by August, if not sooner, on PC. That's when I'll probably buy it. It has nothing to do with the game not being compelling SP-wise. It's to do with the fact that I have like a dozen shooters still on my log of games to play and by the time I get to it, I'm sure it'll be cheaper.
I expect the Summer of Perils sale on Steam to knock this game down to $24.99, if not all the way down to $10-15.
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