Iron Galaxy, Rumbleverse and Killer Instinct

General Discussion
1

I kinda hate asking about this because it feels like propositioning the widow at her husband’s funeral, but with news that Rumbleverse’s servers are closing down at the end of February, this makes two somewhat unfortunate results for the last two Iron Galaxy IPs.

The first one of course was Extinction. The PS4 version currently sits at a 47 on Metacritic, with 87 user reviews having it at a 1.4 out of 10. The PC version is slightly higher at 51 and 2.2 respectively while Xbox One is at 52 and 1.9 (only 29 user reviews).

I’d love to say that Rumbleverse did better in this regard and I guess it kind of did, but it never got enough reviews on the industry side to get a score (5 or less reviews for PC, PS5, PS4, SX and XB1) and very few user reviews, but what’s there seems to average out to about a 6.7 so I guess that’s okay…ish?

Either way, with two games in a row that maybe didn’t hit the way IG wanted, I wonder if it begs the question as to how well they might be doing financially as an independent developer. I’m not saying MS should sweep in and buy them because obviously Xbox has it’s own issues right now with the ABK purchase and more importantly, I think IG has made it relatively clear that they’re not looking to be purchased (or at least that was the case when I asked Dave Lang about it a few years ago).

So while we have no idea how well they’re doing financially, I still wonder whether or not they might be more open to getting a more steady gig in working with Xbox on a new Killer Instinct? Maybe a partnership could help them financially to the point where they can continue working on outside projects and new IPs while Xbox finally “gets” the right developer for KI.

Maybe they could even enter in to some sort of long-term partnership where Iron Galaxy becomes a sort of second party team, but with more autonomy, like Sony and Bungie, but maybe not as official. IG would make Killer Instinct for Xbox, but then they get to make anything else that they want for Xbox or for PS or PC or Switch or whoever.

Anyone think there’s a chance Iron Galaxy and Xbox could form up again in this fashion or any other on a KI sequel?

3 Likes
2

Ideally speaking, I would want a different developer, if not one that is better with art and animation. I think IG is competent, don’t get me wrong, but nothing in their previous projects have ever wowed me or made me go “Yeah, this is great!” or “I would LOVE to try that!”, with the exception of KI, but even then, there were still issues. In all fairness to IG, I loved some of the mechanics and characters that they have done like Aganos and Hisako (wonderful addition, that one!), and their take on Eyedol? Brilliant! But their take on KI overall is very, VERY inconsistent, especially when compared to the work done by Double Helix. With DH, there was a sense of ambition, that their game was a continuation of the first game, if not a certain extent 2 but without the time travel, and that this was a passion project limited by both time and budget, whereas with IG, I didn’t get that sense of either. Now, to be fair, I have no idea if the staff at IG are KI fans or not, but if they were, I never got the sense that they were on the spectrum as the staff that had worked at DH. I think they were just glad to be working on a fighting game that is not a port.

1 Like
3

Poor Iron Galaxy :frowning:

2 Likes
4

I hope there’s a chance but I have no idea at this point. They’ve tried to do there own things on there own and nothing has done very well for them outside of KI.

1 Like
5

Apparently Iron Galaxy is partially responsible for the recent Last of Us PC port, which is reportedly going under bad reviews due to some serious performance issues by most users.

20230401_214940
20230401_2149401080×1405 212 KB

20230401_220714
20230401_2207141080×932 180 KB

Sourced from “Game Revolution”

Starting to get the impression they keep biting off more than they can chew.

1 Like
6

Interesting. So IG were the ones that did the hatchet job on the PC port? Can’t say that I’m surprised. Man, what a mess.

2 Likes