No Sequel for Bulletstorm: Poor Sales, Piracy to Blame

[News Portal]

Epic Games are not planning a sequel for Bulletstorm. Some development had been made on a follow-up game, but Mike Capps, president of developers People Can Fly, has told Gamespot that they have been moved on to other projects. Capp cites several reasons for the sequel's canning, including lack of interest on the part of EA due to mediocre sales, a lacklustre PC port, as well as piracy which would have further hurt PC sales.

Source: Gamespot AU

Read full article by GON News

[Matty]

I like that they acknowledged the game was a bad PC port and then blame everything else for it doing poorly.

[PURITy Kin]

Personally I'd blame unfriendly DRM and a very poor PC interface. The game itself is great, but these two things prevent me from recommending the game. It's unfortunate that one of these problems can be easily solved by most people with a web browser and a good search engine. The other problem can only be solved by Epic... and they've made it pretty clear they're not willing to allow People Can Fly the resources to do that. Balls in your court Epic.

[InAUGral]

I played two minutes of the demo then uninstalled the demo. I would say that it being a mediocre game (and that used GFWL if I remember right) is to blame for poor sales.

[exe3]

Bulletstorm was a good fun game. But as was said the state of the port was unacceptable. They encrypted the friggin ini ffs. It's like they didn't want gamers to fix their f*ck ups. They need to stop thinking themselves as gods and passing the blame elsewhere and start accepting their very large and very avoidable screw ups that once upon a time they would never have made.

Last I heard the game made about a million sales yet was unprofitable. I don't know what is worse, that a million sales in this day and age is considered a poor result, or that a million sales in this day and age is a poor result. :/

Also didn't help how much they hyped the game up and the way in which they hyped the game up. I'd think the childish nature of a lot of their marketing turned a lot of people off. I feel that the actual game was a lot funnier and mature about the games immature jokes than what the ads were.

They also assumed success with the title I think, almost as if they felt entitled for it being successful which as we see didn't end well with their smug attitude.

What they need to do is release a patch fixing all the port issues and just leave it at that. Steam will ensure that they will make a profit on the game one day but how soon that day comes is up to them.

[Fenryrbr]

a lacklustre PC port, as well as piracy which would have further hurt PC sales.

Do they not see the correlation?

[PalZer0]

Personally, I blame it on the use of GFWL and the game beeing a terrible port.

[hellboy1975]

Can't say I noticed any issues with it being a bad port. One of the better FPS games in the last few years in my opinion.

That said it wouldn't bother me if the setting was lost, just so long as the developer keeps making good FPS games...

[Novocaine]

Bulletstorm was alright but only because I paid $5 for it. Doesn't really deserve a sequel. Make better games and get better sales. Don't blame piracy because all games get hit with piracy.

[shlaimon]

I'd blame it for being a **** game in the first place. When will they learn, you make a good game people will want to buy it. Who the hell wants to spend $60 on a POS game thats not worth $10, no one.

[jerichosainte]

I played two minutes of the demo then uninstalled the demo. I would say that it being a mediocre game (and that used GFWL if I remember right) is to blame for poor sales.

Ditto

[Makena]

I thought it was a fantastic game, and I'd really have liked to see a sequel, this is despite the flaws the interface/other parts that were really poorly ported over/not tailored to PC.

I'll be keeping an eye out for what People can fly do next.

[Syncourt]

I enjoyed it though the port was a tad on the bad side, mostly noticeable just with the menu's. My biggest gripe though was the auto-aiming with the whips and kicks constantly snapping my view to places I didn't want it to be and often targeting the wrong enemy entirely, even with the auto-aim option disabled it felt no different. I found myself fighting more against the camera-lock than against the enemies themselves.

It was a fun little game for multiple ways to kill your enemy and had some good visual sequences. But nothing that really stood out gameplay wise.

MP was completely ruined by the use of GFWL though and basing it too much on score as opposed to survival. I was completing it solo with next to no troubles. Which was sort of good being GFWL would match me to US hosts, but I could only imagine how easy and boring it would have been with more players.

It would have been good to see the upgrade system expanded a little bit, some of the upgrades in the MP mode should have been added into the campaign.

I ordered it on release for $40 and can't honestly say that I was not happy with my purchase.

I'd also have to blame GFWL for the piracy issues, as it impedes on the online playability of a lot of games, making them only worth a purchase for single player. It would also kick you out of the SP campaign back to the menu if your internet was interrupted...

[vcatkiller]

I bought the collector's edition for the super soaker that came with it. I think I've played with the water pistol more than I have the game...

[Zenskas]

People that played the demo or played only a little bit of it and dismissed it for various reasons are missing out and should have stuck with it for a bit longer. GFWL is hardly even there and I don't really understand why people hate it so much these days. It logs in automatically and that's about it, don't have any issues with it.

Overall Bulletstorm *is* a decent game with good gameplay, bang on crude humor and great graphics, but it is the devs fault for it being not so decent on PC in other ways. However this is an easy fix which took me 5 minutes to implement.
Copy/paste from a previous post of mine elsewhere:

I played about 30 seconds of it and hated the feel of the mouse, very sluggish. So I had a quick look around the net and you can "de-consolize" it by using a tool called "BulletstormINIeditor" (google this) to open the encrypted INI files which will allow you to change various settings you can't change in game.

But firstly from the in game options I turned off any aim support, maxed out the graphics quality settings and resolution, and changed the controls to how I prefer them (they are **** at default). Then I went into the INI files and turned off mouse smoothing, pushed the FOV from 85 to 100, and pushed the frame rate cap from 62fps to 120fps.
Another tip is to turn off AA in game and force it through your GPU drivers control panel instead. Otherwise it can get a little laggy for some reason, even on my GTX 570.
Once I did all of those I went back into it and played it from start to finish with no complaints about it being a console port

More info here:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... our-pc.ars
and
http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=195035

So yes it is a bad console port at default, but that shouldn't stop most people from enjoying it after a few small tweaks