Bandai Namco subsidiary Reflector Leisure has introduced that not solely was their debut title Unknown 9: Awakening a industrial “failure”, but additionally that its poor efficiency has led the developer to each lower its workforce and cancel their subsequent challenge.
In case you didn’t play and even hear about Unknown 9: Awakening, we don’t blame you.
Regardless of having ‘wowed’ Bandai Namco executives sufficient to have them outright purchase the Canada-based Reflector Leisure, when the sport launched in October 2024, the third-person action-adventure title did so to an all-time peak Steam concurrent participant depend of simply 285 – an abysmal end result by any metric.
So as to add insult to harm, these numbers don’t symbolize the sport’s gross sales on the platform, as copies of Unknown 9 got away free of charge to anybody who purchased an AMD X870 or X870E motherboard.
The explanations behind this lack of curiosity in Unknown 9: Awakening are aplenty, starting from efficiency points, to protagonist Haroona sporting a very androgynous (which was thought of much more egregious on condition that she was being portrayed by The Witcher star Anya Chalotra), to the heavy-involvement of notorious narrative consultancy firm Candy Child Inc.
And it was in mild of the sport’s failure that, on January twentieth, Reflector Leisure issued an announcement confirming that not solely had the sport underperformed, however that because of this, the studio would now not be shifting ahead with their subsequent challenge, which apparently was already in growth.
In a submit on Linkedin, Reflector CEO and Bandai Namco Leisure Europe COO Herve Hoerdt knowledgeable the general public, “At this time, I knowledgeable our groups that I made the choice to not greenlight additional work on a future challenge that was in conceptualization section and thus terminating this growth line. Persevering with this challenge wouldn’t have been sustainable for the way forward for the studio.”
“This resolution correlates straight with the failure of the studio’s formidable and brave first challenge, a brand new IP with a wealthy transmedia universe,” he continued. “The efficiency of the discharge didn’t come close to the corporate expectations, after quite a few timeline changes and investments, each financially and different, and didn’t warrant any additional exploration on this universe.”
As detailed on the official Unknown 9 web site, the plans to construct such a “transmedia universe” across the IP encompassed the sport, a comic book e-book tie-in, a novel trilogy (as written by famous Dominic Gray novel sequence scribe Layton Inexperienced), a comic book e-book run, and two separate net sequence, all of which had been surprisingly accomplished previous to this announcement.
“Sadly, this additionally impacts back-office employees, bringing the assist groups consistent with the one challenge strategy the studio will undertake for the upcoming future,” added Hoerdt. “The place doable, employees will likely be assigned to this challenge, primarily based on an present Bandai Namco IP, which is shaping up very effectively.”
“Reflector Leisure will likely be offering enough severance packages, prolonged well being advantages for affected employees and their households, continued entry to emotional, psychological well being and counselling companies and at last, proactive profession planning assist to set them up for future success,” he concluded his assertion. “Bandai Namco Leisure Europe will proceed investing on creating Western content material for world audiences, consistent with the Group’s imaginative and prescient.”
Notably, that is however the second spherical of layoffs undertaken by Reflector Leisure since Unknown 9‘s launch.
In November 2024, the studio introduced that in an service of “refocusing our efforts as we enter a brand new section of growth”, they might be reducing “:roughly 18%” of their whole workforce, with these affected being devs “who aren’t assigned to roles that our energetic tasks require”.
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