Reflecting on the launch of Homefront: The Revolution, Deep Silver Marketing Director Paul Nicholls conceded that the sequel was “less of a success” than the publisher had anticipated, and attributes much of that to a poorly timed release.
Homefront: The Revolution emerged from a tortured four-year development back in May, during which time the open-world sequel was heavily criticized for its drab environments and forgettable story, not to mention the scores of technical issues that reared their head soon after launch. Developer Dambuster, who inherited The Revolution from Crytek UK following financial woes, addressed those glitches and bugs head-on but for many, the damage was already done.
It’s for this reason that Nicholls believes Deep Silver has “learnt some big lessons” from Homefront: The Revolution, not just in terms of quality but also how timing can impact a game’s staying power, for better or worse.
“We have learnt some big lessons from Homefront. You can see in the market at the moment, quality is absolutely king and some big IPs have struggling figures at the moment. We learnt a lot of lessons about what to do going forward. Not just the quality of the product, but when we launch as well.”
Dambuster’s efforts to rectify The Revolution haven’t gone unnoticed, after Nicholls admitted that the team “did a fantastic job” bringing the sequel in line with the original vision. It’s even swayed opinion, according to the executive, who revealed that Deep Silver is “getting a lot of positive feedback compared to when we launched, so timing was probably the biggest lesson we have learnt there.”
Despite early signs of potential, Homefront: The Revolution fared poorly in our review, and will no doubt go down as one of the most disappointing releases of 2016.
