If you were a fan of the spooky Cursed Mountain, we have some bad news for you. Developer Deep Silver Vienna has closed its doors after only one game, due to financial issues. Probably because they developed an interesting Wii game, meaning nobody bought it.
Parent company Koch Media stated that the decision to axe Deep Silver Vienna was not an easy one to make, and has promised to pay the studio's twenty staff until March. It's rumored that co-founder Hannes Seifert has managed to land a gig with Square Enix.
Another new studio bites the dust. This is what happens when people refuse to buy videogames.
Cursed Mountain developer goes under [Aussie Nintendo]
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Contest:
6:00 PM on 01.31.2010
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Lack of marketing is what is endangering the Mature Wii market--combined with the awful US distribution system that does not support long tail sales. I wish Nintendo would share the info and spotlight of their successes with titles that still sell for original MSRP 3 and 4 years later.
The title is in flat red Times? Really? That's how you ruin some otherwise stellar artwork. You have Brenda the receptionist put in the title in Word.
http://www.destructoid.com/review-cursed-mountain-148035.phtml
Here's to you, Mr Hardcore Wii Owner.
Leave Wii to die, or it will kill you.
Its pretty easy for Nintendo when the games they're selling are from the same franchises they've been milking since NES days. I mean, here comes another Zelda, Metroid, Mario game or some sort of spinoff from those games. Not hard to see how they're managing to sell. Everyone already KNOWS these series.
Wow, you weren't kidding about the horrible font choice. Let's get some Comic Sans, stat!
I agree with the box art argument. In fact, the box art was what pushed this game aside for me. I noticed the game, I knew of it's existence, but the box art never made me give it a second look.
It was just another shovelware title from the eyes of a passing consumer. Box art is supposed to make you say 'Oh wow that game looks awesome,' not 'wow, a 10 year old could have Photoshopped that.' It's strange how box art for good games is so often terrible. Mass Effect 2 can speak for that.
It really makes me sad to see people let go. It's really crushing.
Get down and give me 20.
"I wish Nintendo would share the info and spotlight of their successes with titles that still sell for original MSRP 3 and 4 years later."
Here's the secret of the long tail. People like you, being a fucking idiot, will pay $50 for Mario Kart Wii three years later while many other games hit the clearance racks sending the retail partners a clear message, "Don't buy more copies." Ironically enough, the only way a company can create a "long tail" pricing structure like Nintendo enjoys on one out of five of their games (where is Elite Beat Agents long tail?), is either having a megahit or switching to digital distribution. A move which, ironically, could also bypass publishers and empower developers but gamers cry foul everytime a company attempts this while shelling out $.99 on their iPhones for a fucking fart machine.
I bought it day 1 anyhow. And I bought Dead Space Extraction on day 1. And I would buy Project Zero 4 if they would port the damn thing (yes I know about the fan translation and I have no intention of modding my Wii). And with all these games I wish they were on PS3.
The fan translation of Project Zero 4 does not require you to mod your Wii. All that is needed is a copy of the game and a 1GB SD card. The translation patch will take care of the region lockout.
WRONG! IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH BEING A WII GAME!
And by the way I'm totally being serious. Like totally.
/rolleyes
Amen to that.
The Wii has absolutely NOT done good by the games industry and will be the death of many, many things. If you don’t believe Cowboy TTop and myself just watch how many Game Crazy’s, GameStops and Mom and Pop’s close up this year and then let’s talk about who’s to blame.
If there was a problem it would be ether the design team's fault or Koch Media for being ok with the game concept.
this game really lacked potential and was . . . sort of weird.
I feel sorry that people did loose their jobs over this, but its a learning experience and I'm sure that they would be able to get job pretty easy somewhere else.
If anything it's services like psn,games on demand and the app store driving brick and morter stores out of buisness, not nintendo and it's multitude of peripherals.
It's worth mentioning however that Cursed Mouintain was developed by two studios in tandem: Deep Silver Vienna and Sproing (which is still somewhat slouching forward)
I'm saddened by this now
I didn't buy it because it wasn't that good of a game.
i blame the rap music.
Its the boxart
Its lack of advertsising
Its the moon falling to the earth
Some still can't see the harsh truth, which is that Wii terrible spec system, (it has ahell of a lot to do with devs hating to work with it) and is not enough for hardcore games any more, while its on shaky legs. The very fact few of you with Wii's, didn't buy CM is testament to that, such games are made but don't sell or sell well enough on Wii. And these same people want Sega to do Shen Mue on Wii. Please, that would be another Sega suicide waiting to happen, and would indeed ensure, that they never touch the series again. Nintendo are in the money boat and prepared to watch others drown, which is why many devs do not like to work with them (laced with some natural envy, for they are talented bastards, Nintendo), but won't say so openly, because you gotta keep the industry pot sweet, full and serving. So much for keeping up appearances.
@Tomasz
Dude, these are difficult financial times at best, and besides that, devs open and close ever year in the industry, for various reasons. Sure, other studios have closed but for different reasons. Pandemic didn't close because of HD games, they closed because their last few games weren't good enough, so they were cut loose by the suited ones, in charge of the money bags. That's totally different, as they had far better financial backing but just didn't deliver good product (Mercs 2). Other devs shot too high with expensive PS3 development, which in a similar way to Wii, is a dangerous, expensive place to be, if you don't get it right on your game.
@AdrianWerner
Had Deep Silver been also developing this game for 360/PS3 or PC too, like someone said, sales might have been better. However, it was their choice, and perhaps a poor one at that, to target the Wii alone, looking for the big break. Then, that might have been hit by piracy anyway, such is the nature of PC games.
Unless a game can meet that 70-80% (in other words the silent majority) of casuals on Wii, as well as the 20-30% hard core crowd, its nothing but heartache waiting to happen. And sure, its always sad to see a dev/pub die, but they are like a phoenix from ashes, and their talent will go on to feed the industry circle of life.
Oh come on, how many developers that made 360/PS3 only games shut down last year? Many of which were PS3 exclusives that bombed hard I might add! Factor 5, Free Radical, and Grin just to name a few all worked on 360/PS3 games that bombed before they shut down. So one studio shutting down after doing a Wii game isn't cause for you to blame for whole platform on their financial mistakes. It was said that the team who worked on Cursed Mountain was over 200 people. That seems like mismanagement to me. Why would you need over 200 people to work on a Wii game that they just shoved out the door, with absolutely no advertisement what-so-ever.
Not to mention, they put it out in August right up against Madden, Batman, and Metroid Prime Trilogy. The game was good, but not what you'd think a over 200 person team would develop. It should of been a AAA title and had some good marketing behind it, but if they were in that much financial trouble, than they probably didn't have any money left over to advertise the game. Which goes back to the whole mismanagement thing!
"Cursed Mountain was created by 236 people in 16 companies across 17 unique locations in 14 different countries. That's a lot to manage, but it worked, according to the respective collaborative heads."
http://wii.ign.com/articles/101/1014390p1.html
I guess it didn't work as well as they thought it did!
Actually, Midway, towards the end, got a huge boost from MK vs DC and their party games on Wii/DS were among the first to feel the shovelware backlash. Of course Midway's closing had absolutely nothing to do with game sales considering the only game Midway released in the past six years at a loss Area 51. While it's true none set the world on fire, they were still operating in the black. It was their massive debt and Sega-like tendacy to spend more than they made that lead to their eventual downfall. Of course you KNEW all this, right? After all, what kind of person talks so matter of factly with a single sentence if they didn't know what they were talking about?
@PEICanada7
Do you REALLY think all those people were in house? You DO know there are entire studios who's sole existance is to handle outsourced requests, right? For example, why should Infinity Ward pay a 3D artist $55K a year for two years modeling barrels, crates, parking cones, tvs, etc when they can pay another studio $100 per model or less for the exact same thing. Do you really think a small time developer wouldn't take advantage of outsourcing when all the major players do?
No I don't think those people were all in-house. In fact if you read the story in the link I gave, it says they weren't, but those people still had to be payed for outsourcing either way. The development time frame they gave was 10 months of per-production and 18 months of actual development. So developing a game for almost 3 years is expensive no matter how big, or small the team was from in-house to out-sourcing.
If you ask me, I think Deep Silver just bit off more they could chew. They shouldn't of started off with such a ambitious project for this new development team to handle. Like the article from IGN says, managing all those people would be hard on any studio, at alone a start up one. Either way its a shame that they closed down, but blaming it on the platform was only a part of the problem, not the full story!
Was in a forum discussing possible improvements in a sequence of Velvet Assassin. And BAN! Replay was rick rolled!
On a more serious note, the game probably would have sold more if it got good reviews. And the Wii isn't going to kill gaming :P
http://www.destructoid.com/review-cursed-mountain-148035.phtml]incredible new and well crafted experience[/url] deserving of nothing but praise.
@Sterling: Well do us a favor then and please provide a full article of the awesomeness we are missing when we don't buy this game.
@Drakengard: The Last Story, Xenoblade, Punch Out (almost 15 years old), Pikmin (released last gen for the first time) when the first 2 become successes like the last 2 or other polished well made IPs (rehashed or not) will you stop talking like you can't think?.
Cheap development for a smaller crowd = small but potentially successful return.