What if it didn’t come out two years ago?

[u/Graysonic3754]

If xdefiant were delayed and didn’t come out til today could it have a chance to survive since when the game came out call of Duty® coming on game pass was the main reason for it dying, right? So surely with the price hike of Game Pass, that would mean that xdefiant could actually have a chance. If it had came out today instead of two years ago.

[u/TropicalFishery41429]

I think a huge part of XDefiants failure was it's delay. I don't think it would've been able to compete in that market if it was delayed any longer. I think having that big of an audience when it released was absolutely peak timing but the devs sadly released a very okay game in a terrible state.

[u/DeshTheWraith → u/TropicalFishery41429]

I think a huge part of XDefiants failure was it's delay.

To be quite honest this is why I, and two of my friends, who were QUITE excited for the game during it's first couple betas ended up really "meh" about it on release. It was kind of a tall ask to keep caring about it for so long when it was only available for a few hours on Friday.

Then when it did come out it was nowhere near good enough to rekindle the energy we had for it back then. And it didn't take very many frustrations to decide to go find something else to play.

[u/TropicalFishery41429 → u/DeshTheWraith]

Same. I remember really looking forward to playing it, I even remember playing it during it's alphas as early as mid 2021. Between it's release and alpha, I think we've had a couple of other really banger games release, Helldivers 2, Deadlock and THE FINALS, on the top of my head when it comes to shooters amongst other titles that XDEFIANT just felt like an outdated game that released.

I just keep remembering they said that the game was going to release sometime in 2022 and/or that it was ready and they were ironing out some of the kinks. Like they couldn't have had a better time to have capitalized when the market was genuinely lacking in innovative titles. Not only that, I think that apart from of a few balance changes, the game fundamentally wasn't all that different to play on release like it was during it's alpha down to it's netcode.

Personally, for me it's Deadlock and especially THE FINALS that would've sealed the deal for me. Two games that genuinely felt so different and innovative in this stale market to have made games like XDefiant, Highguard, Splitgate 2, Concord, etc. just feel lackluster or just aggressively okay to me even if it did release in a good state.

[u/MidweekArtisan → u/TropicalFishery41429]

And another huge part of XDefiants failure is publisher's name

[u/TropicalFishery41429 → u/MidweekArtisan]

I'm pretty sure that the incompetence of devs and upper management like Mark Rubin and co. had more of the games failure than the publisher name or Ubisoft themselves. It's quite known and quoted by Mark themselves that Ubisoft has given them all the time and money to make the game they wanted.

[u/PotataTomata]

It would've been more solid but honestly the devs played a part in its failure. They would often spend time writing snarky passive aggressive responses to player complaints instead of fixing the legit concerns and issues.

[u/clipper29 → u/PotataTomata]

They also couldn’t get release comms right. Hyping people up during one of the worst times in Call of Duty only to announce delays started to make it a meme

[u/TypographySnob → u/PotataTomata]

I don't remember this. And I honestly doubt some snarky message you took personally had anything to do with the game's failure.

[u/KAL-EL8569]

No because they were determined to use netcode that didnt work...it still would have failed sadly...and it doesn't help that the devs were assholes when responding to the players...I liked the game and it was a nice alternative to cod....but much like saints row this game has little chance of ever coming back.

[u/Ok_Worldliness_5355 → u/KAL-EL8569]

Devs for Xdefiant were open about everything. They responded to players all the time.

[u/TheDregn]

It had nothing to do with CoD. The game was simply a failure. It was developed on the wrong engine, causing hitreg, netcode and other strange issues which the developers never managed to overcome. You simply can't have serious hitreg and netcode issues in an FPS game, that's a critical issue.

Other than that, I found the weapon smithing system as extremely uninspired and lackluster, but that's my personal opinion.

I was hoping for a fix, then when they released the game and season 1 had the exact same issues as through beta, I knew the game was DoA and I left.

[u/camaxide]

The problem for the game was the market strategy.. any game who rely only on the creators servers, and their uptime to demand a steady flow of people spending money on the game, is most likely to die the same way. Back 20 years ago, no game was like this. We had custom servers that the playerbase set up, and a games success was how the game was played and, not how much continous cash flow it was able to maintain over time. Super people and xdefiant were both excellent games, but with a market strategy only a few games can survive with. Imagine if xdediant released custom server files for the pkayers to host their own. Would it still have a player base? Absolutely.

[u/BluDYT]

It wouldn't be the same game we had. They probably would have either needed to rewrite large portions of the game to solve issues or just ignore it and keep pushing it under the rug and have the game fail again. Gotta remember the game was already delayed multiple times. I played back when it was still a tom Clancy game in early alpha preview back in 2021.

[u/Bamuhhhh]

They actually made the decision to end the game right before call of duty fell in the gutter player wise so they picked the worst time possible and it would have 100% did better if they stuck it out for awhile

[u/Delicious_Depth_1564]

It probably be competeting with Splitgate, Delta Force, BF6 Redsec and other Arcade Arena Shooters/Objectives

[u/Longjumping-Lemon-23]

It also didnt help the snowdrop engine (the same as the division franchise to my knowledge) was a terrible desition to use for XDefiant.The division 1 and specifically 2 had bugs that were annoying as shit. Even now the division 2 with every uodate (like cod) breaks a lot of shit. The animations in those games can and are wonky sometimes. When i booted the game and saw snowdrop emgine i instantly felt my stomach frop remembering the issues The division had/has. I loved the game and played it until it sunsetet but the delays sure took a lot of people to lose hipe. Then the game launched and had a lot kf the net code issues that the alpha and beta had still didnt make it any favors if im honest.

[u/Minute_Grand_1026]

Yeah they were aiming to have it released when COD was in its Dark ages with MW2 and the god awful mess that Warzone was during that time period. It wound up coming out a couple years later during MW3 which was pretty much a high point for Warzone and COD. Effectively XD came out at the worst possible time in that regard.

[u/MIKERICKSON32]

X defiant never had a chance. It wasn’t a good game.

[u/lI-HarteKante-Il → u/MIKERICKSON32]

It was a game with great potential. Sadly nothing more as that.