hell: the tip of the swordThe third-person action battle royale game from 24 Entertainment has held its place among the most popular games on Steam since its release nearly a year ago. However, as you’ve seen in non-E3 demos from Xbox and Bethesda, the game is moving away from the PC platform and towards the Xbox console.It’s ready to use on day one game passstart up.
To learn more about the decision to move to Microsoft’s city, I sat down with Marketing Manager Archer Wang. We also discussed what the studio hopes to gain by dropping Naraka: Bladepoint on Game Pass, and how the team is balancing the game as they have a whole new audience to worry about.
iGamesNews: So, Naraka: Bladepoint is coming to Xbox! Why bring it to Game Pass along with the typical Xbox version?
king: First, because Game Pass also includes PC gamers, one of the main goals is to reach a wider audience. We definitely want to expand our community! With Game Pass, players can connect to many other players. As far as we’re concerned, we’re obviously excited to bring more players into Naraka.
iGamesNews: Judging by Google Trends, Naraka appears to be primarily of interest to players in countries such as Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, and China. Are games ported to Game Pass for further penetration into Western markets?
king: I would say we want to increase the overall size [of our playerbase] – We have a very strong community in North America and Europe. But yes, one of our main goals is to use Game Pass to grow our community in countries where we already have a strong base. And we also believe — because Game Pass is a very global membership program that can get used to everyone — that it can really help us expand our reach in all regions of the world.
iGamesNews: There’s been talk lately around games being released on Game Pass hampering developer profits – one such example includes Haven from The Game Bakers. Are you worried that you might fail here?
king: Not at all! There’s a reason we want to bring games to Game Pass. We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of Naraka: Bladepoint, and we’ve done pretty well so far. So we think it’s going to be a long-term operation, and making choices in favor of that is a great decision in our opinion.
With Game Pass, we’re definitely going to get a bigger audience, and that’s the most important thing for us. We can get feedback from them, we can expand our community, and that’s all we really care about right now.
iGamesNews: And of course Naraka: Bladepoint is a live service game with microtransactions, so the money you don’t get from all of your purchases might trickle down through cosmetic and similar purchases, right?
king: Yes, it is true! But beyond that, we definitely want to have new content coming out on a regular basis. Basically what we’re doing right now is a basic update every two to three weeks, so there will be new heroes, new cosmetics, new weapons, etc. We’re also working on a new map, so there’s a lot for us and the community to look forward to.
iGamesNews: Any ideas on when the new map will be released?
king: I’d say it’s too early to tell as it’s still in production, but we’ll definitely be bringing something new soon.
iGamesNews: We’ve seen PC and console versions of games have very different metadata on different platforms. Will the team balance the two versions separately to react to this?
king: I would say that the main difference between PC and console platforms is the style of play. For the game itself, we’ll be balancing between PC and console at the same time, so there won’t be any difference in the content itself.
In fact, controller support is one of the main concerns on our side. We’ve done a lot of work to ensure that players on consoles can enjoy combat as well as they do on PC – even better!
iGamesNews: Now that Naraka will have some degree of auto-aiming and auto-locking, will there be any impact on future character and weapon designs? Surely this makes abilities or weapons with high skill requirements easier to use?
king: We did a lot of research. We study it every day and look at tons of other online games. We want to make sure there is no advantage for players on PC or consoles. Our philosophy revolves around “unfettered multiplayer combat”. Beyond that, we’re just making sure everyone can enjoy Naraka with careful attention to balance.
For example, we actually added a one-touch counter to the PC version a few weeks ago – console players can also use it. The reason we do this is to reduce the learning curve and barriers for new players. We also do a lot of testing around this – because we want to look at the big picture and not alienate our high-end players.
Those high-end players, they showed us that one-click counterattack didn’t affect them because they were already able to do it quickly and easily. The one-touch counter is only useful for new players and doesn’t take anything away from the experience.
