Next Up In Battleborn vs Overwatch: Battleborn Drops Its Price To Compete.

[RJ 17]

Indeed, in an attempt to compete with Overwatch, Battleborn has already dropped it's price to $40 [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/retailers-discount-battleborn-as-overwatch-prepare/1100-6440074/] despite the fact that it hasn't even been out for a month yet.

Two things:

1: I still think it's ridiculous that they're putting so much effort into competing with Overwatch when the games really only have two similarities: they're both shooters and they both have classes/heroes. That's really where the similarities end, and while there's certainly audience cross-over between the two games, the fact that their gameplay is - if you ask me - so completely different from one another, I still say they're not in direct competition with each other. Battleborn is much more like a MOBA. There's minions, customizeable gear loadouts, in-game leveling up with ability specializations, etc. Overwatch is a traditional fast-paced Arena Shooter. Two teams fighting for a single objective at a time.

To be clear: I'd say Battleborn is competing against games like Smite while Overwatch is competing against games like TF2.

2: I would definitely be pissed off if I bought Battleborn for $60 only to hear that they dropped the price two weeks later. There's no word yet on if Gearbox intends to compensate those players that bought the game for full price at launch, but they'd better give out some goodies to those players otherwise they're going to have a lot of pissed off fans on their hands. I think an easy thing to do would be to toss everyone the Season Pass for free if they paid $60 for the game...but that doesn't really help the people that bought the game at full price AND already have the Season Pass.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Interestingly, this only applies only to 'traditional' retailers. Steam still has it at 60 bucks, though you can get a PC code for 40 dollars are Amazon.

As for compensation, I somehow doubt that will happen, though it seems like a no brainer. I'd be pissed if I cared about the game. That being said, I've heard that Battleborn has an abysmal player population, considering how new it is, something that doesn't surprise me since I played the beta. If Battleborn is competing with Overwatch (And I think it is, regardless of the gameplay differences), I have a feeling they'll have to do better then lower the price.

 

[meiam]

The player pop in battleborn really depend on server, some are pretty empty and other you can get games within 30 sec. But this mean that the game is doing worse than they were expecting so it doesn't bode very well for the future.

Honestly I prefer batlleborn but if someone is thinking about which to grab right now I'd go with overwatch just for server health, its very clear that overwatch has far more hype and will have a much longer life than BB.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Technically it was their own fault that they delayed themselves (wasn't it suppose to be out in Feburary or something like that?) into the same month as Overwatch.

Yes I know they are both different games but you still can't denine they both feature a rouster or unquie character with their own quirks and ability.

Granted I still don't want Battleborn to died thought.

 

[CritialGaming]

Indeed, in an attempt to compete with Overwatch, Battleborn has already dropped it's price to $40 [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/retailers-discount-battleborn-as-overwatch-prepare/1100-6440074/] despite the fact that it hasn't even been out for a month yet.

Two things:

1: I still think it's ridiculous that they're putting so much effort into competing with Overwatch when the games really only have two similarities: they're both shooters and they both have classes/heroes. That's really where the similarities end, and while there's certainly audience cross-over between the two games, the fact that their gameplay is - if you ask me - so completely different from one another, I still say they're not in direct competition with each other. Battleborn is much more like a MOBA. There's minions, customizeable gear loadouts, in-game leveling up with ability specializations, etc. Overwatch is a traditional fast-paced Arena Shooter. Two teams fighting for a single objective at a time.

To be clear: I'd say Battleborn is competing against games like Smite while Overwatch is competing against games like TF2.

2: I would definitely be pissed off if I bought Battleborn for $60 only to hear that they dropped the price two weeks later. There's no word yet on if Gearbox intends to compensate those players that bought the game for full price at launch, but they'd better give out some goodies to those players otherwise they're going to have a lot of pissed off fans on their hands. I think an easy thing to do would be to toss everyone the Season Pass for free if they paid $60 for the game...but that doesn't really help the people that bought the game at full price AND already have the Season Pass.

1. Battleborn made its own bed with the way they marketed the game. Everything about their mainstream marketing seemed like it was trying to ride on the coat-tails of OVerwatch. And that just killed it. If I were Gearbox I would have done anything to avoid releasing on top of Overwatch like they did. Or at very least, I would have marketed the gameplay over the characters to do my fucking best to stand out. Gearbox did none of these things. Every ad that ran at local Gamestops, promoted 25 chracters and chaos, which made it look and sounds like an Overwatch knock off. Which Overwatch's marketing completely overwhelmed them as well so it isn't all their fault.

2. Don't hold your breath. It really wasn't hard to see this coming. With the $60 price tag and shitty promotions, Battleborn had no choice but to knock it's price down and honestly...I don't think this is going to work either. The game is going to get crushed by the sheer mountain of Overwatch promotion, from players who don't know any better.

But that doesn't mean that Battleborn isn't going to have it's own audience of players that took the time to look into the game. A quick look at Steamspy shows that Battleborn on PC sold 118K copies and as I write this has 94K concurrent players. That's like an 80% retention rate during Overwatch release week. I'd say that's a pretty good player hold.

That being said, I don't imagine Battleborn is going to get a huge influx of players anytime soon. But for now, at least the player base seems to be steady.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Indeed, in an attempt to compete with Overwatch, Battleborn has already dropped it's price to $40 [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/retailers-discount-battleborn-as-overwatch-prepare/1100-6440074/] despite the fact that it hasn't even been out for a month yet.

Two things:

1: I still think it's ridiculous that they're putting so much effort into competing with Overwatch when the games really only have two similarities: they're both shooters and they both have classes/heroes. That's really where the similarities end, and while there's certainly audience cross-over between the two games, the fact that their gameplay is - if you ask me - so completely different from one another, I still say they're not in direct competition with each other. Battleborn is much more like a MOBA. There's minions, customizeable gear loadouts, in-game leveling up with ability specializations, etc. Overwatch is a traditional fast-paced Arena Shooter. Two teams fighting for a single objective at a time.

To be clear: I'd say Battleborn is competing against games like Smite while Overwatch is competing against games like TF2.

2: I would definitely be pissed off if I bought Battleborn for $60 only to hear that they dropped the price two weeks later. There's no word yet on if Gearbox intends to compensate those players that bought the game for full price at launch, but they'd better give out some goodies to those players otherwise they're going to have a lot of pissed off fans on their hands. I think an easy thing to do would be to toss everyone the Season Pass for free if they paid $60 for the game...but that doesn't really help the people that bought the game at full price AND already have the Season Pass.

That's not really how compitition works. Most people don't have the time or the money to buy two full priced games at the same time. Overwatch and battleborn are in competition, they both want gamers money. Think about when a big buget movie blockbuster comes out. Usually smaller films regardless of genre will avoid the weekend ( or even months) the big blockbuster movies comes out because that is what most people will go to see. And that blockbuster more often than not blows every other movie out of the water

They are also similar, I don't know why people say they aren't. We got two Multiplayer Hero FPS coming out close to each other. Yes, Battleborn has a " campaign" but i would say multiplayer is it's main focus since even the items you get in single player can be used in multiplayer. I would argue that the differences between the two games are smaller than the similarities.

Also i dont believe the early adopters deserve anyy compensation. We have witnessed time and time again, many reasons to never buy a game on day one. Ever. From early price drops, to shotty ports, to unplayable online...etc. There is no reason in 2016 for people to have not learned their leason from buying a game on day or even week one. Those people thought the game was worth 60$ on release and bought it, the price drop shouldn't change that.

 

[Nedoras]

1. Battleborn made its own bed with the way they marketed the game. Everything about their mainstream marketing seemed like it was trying to ride on the coat-tails of OVerwatch. And that just killed it. If I were Gearbox I would have done anything to avoid releasing on top of Overwatch like they did. Or at very least, I would have marketed the gameplay over the characters to do my fucking best to stand out. Gearbox did none of these things. Every ad that ran at local Gamestops, promoted 25 chracters and chaos, which made it look and sounds like an Overwatch knock off. Which Overwatch's marketing completely overwhelmed them as well so it isn't all their fault.

2. Don't hold your breath. It really wasn't hard to see this coming. With the $60 price tag and shitty promotions, Battleborn had no choice but to knock it's price down and honestly...I don't think this is going to work either. The game is going to get crushed by the sheer mountain of Overwatch promotion, from players who don't know any better.

But that doesn't mean that Battleborn isn't going to have it's own audience of players that took the time to look into the game. A quick look at Steamspy shows that Battleborn on PC sold 118K copies and as I write this has 94K concurrent players. That's like an 80% retention rate during Overwatch release week. I'd say that's a pretty good player hold.

That being said, I don't imagine Battleborn is going to get a huge influx of players anytime soon. But for now, at least the player base seems to be steady.

Only the game is basically already dying. It has never had 94k concurrent players or anything close to that, I think you read the numbers wrong. It had just over 12k concurrent players at launch and it's dropped to about 3k players on average recently...and it's still dropping. The game was dead on arrival which is a damn shame. They not only marketed the game wrong, but people also just always assumed it was some Overwatch clone, even before the crappy marketing happened in the few months before launch. If I remember correctly, Overwatch had an open beta happening on Battleborn's release day as well. They just couldn't win...and it really is their own fault...they had to prove they weren't just an Overwatch clone like everyone seemed to assume for some damn reason, and they instead marketed themselves as competing with it...damn shame.

 

[CritialGaming]

snip.

You are probably right. I've never looked at Steamspy before this. However I do think that the 94K number isn't concurrent players but actually "recently active" players. It is measured by how many players have Launched the game in the last two weeks. And with an average playtime of 17 minutes. Which probably means not many actually play the game once they launched it, because aren't the matches 30 minutes long, or longer?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Battleborn was likely in development for quite some time, and this was its release window, so it's hard to blame them overmuch for the way things turned out. Their aesthetic and marketing sure put them directly in Blizzard's crosshairs, though. I'm also not sure releasing a MOBA-like into the current market is a particularly good idea. Much like the MMO market of late last decade, you've got a couple of 800 pound gorillas squatting on top of the player population like malignant toads. Much like MMOs, MOBAs have tremendous sunk cost mentality due to buy in cost (in the case of LOL) and sweat equity. They're games that take many tens and hundreds of hours to learn...to say nothing of master. People don't have TIME for more than one. And that one is likely going to be the one they've already sunk years of their life and/or hundreds of dollars into.

Battleborn would have been up against it even without Overwatch and Blizzard to worry about.

 

[hermes]

Indeed, in an attempt to compete with Overwatch, Battleborn has already dropped it's price to $40 [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/retailers-discount-battleborn-as-overwatch-prepare/1100-6440074/] despite the fact that it hasn't even been out for a month yet.

Two things:

1: I still think it's ridiculous that they're putting so much effort into competing with Overwatch when the games really only have two similarities: they're both shooters and they both have classes/heroes. That's really where the similarities end, and while there's certainly audience cross-over between the two games, the fact that their gameplay is - if you ask me - so completely different from one another, I still say they're not in direct competition with each other. Battleborn is much more like a MOBA. There's minions, customizeable gear loadouts, in-game leveling up with ability specializations, etc. Overwatch is a traditional fast-paced Arena Shooter. Two teams fighting for a single objective at a time.

To be clear: I'd say Battleborn is competing against games like Smite while Overwatch is competing against games like TF2.

2: I would definitely be pissed off if I bought Battleborn for $60 only to hear that they dropped the price two weeks later. There's no word yet on if Gearbox intends to compensate those players that bought the game for full price at launch, but they'd better give out some goodies to those players otherwise they're going to have a lot of pissed off fans on their hands. I think an easy thing to do would be to toss everyone the Season Pass for free if they paid $60 for the game...but that doesn't really help the people that bought the game at full price AND already have the Season Pass.

That is pretty much fault of Pitchford.

Since the first moment he and his marketing team has been under the claim that they and Overwatch are in direct competition, not in the "they are released close to one another, so they are competing" (like Assassins Creed and Call of Duty) kind of competition, but in the "they are part of the same genre, and are after the same crowd" way (like CoD and Battlefield). It would have served him better to try to sell on the differences, and why he thinks it is better; instead he tried to get into this dicks competition that created brand confusion and hurt them to no end.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Battleborn was likely in development for quite some time, and this was its release window, so it's hard to blame them overmuch for the way things turned out. Their aesthetic and marketing sure put them directly in Blizzard's crosshairs, though. I'm also not sure releasing a MOBA-like into the current market is a particularly good idea. Much like the MMO market of late last decade, you've got a couple of 800 pound gorillas squatting on top of the player population like malignant toads. Much like MMOs, MOBAs have tremendous sunk cost mentality due to buy in cost (in the case of LOL) and sweat equity. They're games that take many tens and hundreds of hours to learn...to say nothing of master. People don't have TIME for more than one. And that one is likely going to be the one they've already sunk years of their life and/or hundreds of dollars into.

Battleborn would have been up against it even without Overwatch and Blizzard to worry about.

Pretty much agree. Even Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm has struggled to gain traction in the crowded MOBA market, seemingly surviving mostly on the sheer pulling power of the Blizzard brand. It seems that once a dominant market player (or two) scoops up an audience, shifting them is tremendously difficult; Blizz couldn't do it with MOBAs, and Gearbox don't look like it with Battleborn

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Battleborn's main problem is being the only MOBA made by people dumb enough to charge full price, plus seasons pass, PLUS microtransacions, AND have heroes locked behind gameplay grinding. Its a good game mucked up by greed and the fear of it not taking off.

 

[kilenem]

Interestingly, this only applies only to 'traditional' retailers. Steam still has it at 60 bucks, though you can get a PC code for 40 dollars are Amazon.

As for compensation, I somehow doubt that will happen, though it seems like a no brainer. I'd be pissed if I cared about the game. That being said, I've heard that Battleborn has an abysmal player population, considering how new it is, something that doesn't surprise me since I played the beta. If Battleborn is competing with Overwatch (And I think it is, regardless of the gameplay differences), I have a feeling they'll have to do better then lower the price.

At green Man gaming you can get a steam ket for 26.99and a digital deluxe for 33.74
http://slickdeals.net/f/8776155-battleborn-pc-digital-download-26-99-via-green-man-gaming

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

Interestingly, this only applies only to 'traditional' retailers. Steam still has it at 60 bucks, though you can get a PC code for 40 dollars are Amazon.

As for compensation, I somehow doubt that will happen, though it seems like a no brainer. I'd be pissed if I cared about the game. That being said, I've heard that Battleborn has an abysmal player population, considering how new it is, something that doesn't surprise me since I played the beta. If Battleborn is competing with Overwatch (And I think it is, regardless of the gameplay differences), I have a feeling they'll have to do better then lower the price.

At green Man gaming you can get a steam ket for 26.99and a digital deluxe for 33.74
http://slickdeals.net/f/8776155-battleborn-pc-digital-download-26-99-via-green-man-gaming

So it's everyone but Steam. Weird. And stupid.

No wonder their making Borderlands 3, despite saying they didn't really want to. They're probably going broke from all this dumbness.

 

[Zhukov]

1: I still think it's ridiculous that they're putting so much effort into competing with Overwatch when the games really only have two similarities: they're both shooters and they both have classes/heroes. That's really where the similarities end, and while there's certainly audience cross-over between the two games, the fact that their gameplay is - if you ask me - so completely different from one another, I still say they're not in direct competition with each other.

I think this is incorrect.

First off, you're understating the similarities. They're both cartoonish team-based shooters with characters instead of classes. They both have MOBA influences (yes, Battleborn a lot more so.)

That's enough to put them in competition. Not everyone is going to take the time to learn the differences.

Then there's the fact that they launched right next to each other. How many people have not only the spare cash to buy both games but also the time for two multiplayer team shooters? I don't, and I have a job with accommodating hours and no kids. God knows how a 9-to-5 family man would manage it.

I was aware of the differences in gameplay (I watched a ton of Overwatch gameplay and I played the Battleborn beta) and they were still competing for my money. If Overwatch didn't exist I would almost certainly have bought Battleborn.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Battleborn's main problem is being the only MOBA made by people dumb enough to charge full price, plus seasons pass, PLUS microtransacions, AND have heroes locked behind gameplay grinding. Its a good game mucked up by greed and the fear of it not taking off.

Honestly, that last point is why I went Overwatch instead of Battleborn. There's this really cool hero with dual shotgun revolvers, who I really wanted to play - ************ is like, one of the last heroes you can unlock. Meanwhile in Overwatch I can just pick any of the bastards and I'm good.

Battleborn was definitely fun and I wish I had both the time and money to play it alongside the... 5 other Multiplayer games I've got going on, buuuuut... yeah. I don't have to unlock Bastion.

 

[Lennac]

There's this really cool hero with dual shotgun revolvers, who I really wanted to play - ************ is like, one of the last heroes you can unlock.

Thought you were talking about Reaper from Overwatch for a second. Guess the games are even more similar than I initially thought!

 

[Lennac]

Yeah, I never quite understood why people try to claim Battleborn is worth it's cost while Overwatch is overpriced.

In terms of base content that includes a full single player campaign, I think you could argue that you get "more" at purchase with Battleborn than Overwatch (just playing devil's advocate here). Aside from "grinding" to unlock the champions in Battleborn, there's still more content readily available from the beginning. And it's not like unlocks are a new thing (guns in pretty much every modern FPS have followed this formula).

That being said, I definitely agree with you that, in the long run, Overwatch will be worth it's price tag a hell of a lot more than Battleborn. The continual updates (free) that Overwatch will be getting will entirely outdo the season pass bullshit that Gearbox is going to employ.

Grinding to me isn't always an issue. If you enjoy the game, it shouldn't be a "grind" - that's where the debate comes in I suppose.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Battleborn was likely in development for quite some time, and this was its release window, so it's hard to blame them overmuch for the way things turned out. Their aesthetic and marketing sure put them directly in Blizzard's crosshairs, though. I'm also not sure releasing a MOBA-like into the current market is a particularly good idea. Much like the MMO market of late last decade, you've got a couple of 800 pound gorillas squatting on top of the player population like malignant toads. Much like MMOs, MOBAs have tremendous sunk cost mentality due to buy in cost (in the case of LOL) and sweat equity. They're games that take many tens and hundreds of hours to learn...to say nothing of master. People don't have TIME for more than one. And that one is likely going to be the one they've already sunk years of their life and/or hundreds of dollars into.

Battleborn would have been up against it even without Overwatch and Blizzard to worry about.

MOBAs are rather new to the console market. I'm pretty sure Gearbox is more concerned with the console market than PC since Battleborn doesn't have to compete with say LoL in that regard.