From our other sites
The story
Overseas outlet noisypixel.net reports that Armed Fantasia, which had been raising development funds on Kickstarter as a spiritual successor to Wild Arms, has been cancelled. 505 Games had come aboard as publisher, with the game planned for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC, but the project was quietly shelved after updates dried up. On the thread, comments piled up arguing that “trying to make a full-fledged 3D RPG without corporate backing was doomed from the start,” while discussion spread to comparisons with other crowdfunded titles like Eiyuden Chronicle, Ratatan, and Bakeru, as well as industry-wide issues like ballooning development costs and the risks of platform-exclusivity deals.
Raised all that cash on Kickstarter and it ends like this
Source: noisypixel.net / Original article here
What people said
The dumbest part of this project is that they thought a '3D RPG' could be made without corporate backing.
3D games are a struggle to develop even for big companies.
They should've just played it safe with HD-2D.
One less thing to look forward to now.
Re: #4
That whole chained-stake weapon gimmick gets old fast — nowadays you even see it in amateur freeware games.
They should've just gotten picked up by a publisher like Furyu and made it there.
Being a WA fan, this really stings.
Shadow Hearts' successor might end up cancelled too.
Development costs are just way too high.
These 'spiritual successor' Kickstarters are rough, honestly — like Kenji Eno's project, or the spiritual successor to Suikoden.
Eiyuden Chronicle, Ratatan, and Bakeru were all fun though.
I wonder what'll happen with Shenmue 4.
If it goes to Xbox, they'd get that fancy mocap studio thrown in as a bonus.
There are tons of indie games that became smash hits.
But there's an even bigger pile of corpses behind those hits.
Game development itself is insanely risky.
The only realistic shot at profit is slapping something together in two months, hoping it goes viral, and getting lucky — it's a razor-thin door that runs on shortcuts, guesswork, and pure luck.
For every 10 hits, there are 10,000 games quietly dying off in the background.
Maybe showing off in-development screenshots early on, thinking 'we can probably pull this off,' was where their luck ran out.
They should've waited until the funds were in and they had a real plan before starting.
a lot of game developers are just plain dumb.
Even as a Nintendo fan, if I were making a game I'd suck up to Microsoft first.
I'd get it on Game Pass Day One and use that money to get by.
Then once it sells, I'd betray them and jump to PlayStation or Switch.
Seriously, people who go all-in on PlayStation exclusives are idiots.
Says the unemployed guy.
In that respect, he's actually being pretty level-headed about it.
And then he ends up clashing with the company over their pick of actor versus his original concept — so much for that.
He's been dragging development out for four years now, so it's not level-headed at all.
The company apparently judged that cutting it loose would hurt less than pouring in more investment to get it to release.
In game development, where every extra month just bleeds more money, that kind of planning is way too naive.
For this kind of spiritual successor, it's a way to gauge ahead of time how many fans are actually willing to pay.
Kaneko was only involved as a writer — it's not like he's pocketing all the anime's profits or anything.
There's no way they're refunding it piece by piece.
Gotta eat, buy clothes, hit the hot springs.
If it's good and would sell, why not just release it under the original IP?
Sure, if the same dev team could stay at the same company for decades…
Right here! One backer present and accounted for!
Well, if it was only around 10,000 yen…
I thought the same thing —
I used to complain about nothing but remasters coming out,
but I guess companies can't survive any other way these days.
Like Tales of… yeah, Tales of, for one.
Honestly the cost-to-value ratio isn't great, but that's what meeting real demand looks like.
It's not like we're all dying to see something expensive-looking anyway.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Known informally as “Armed Wyrms” — that is, Armed Fantasia — the game was developed by Media.Vision as a spiritual successor to the Wild Arms series. It raised funds on Kickstarter, and 505 Games (Digital Bros) later joined as publisher, with the title announced for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. In recent years, some crowdfunded projects — like Eiyuden Chronicle Rising and Shenmue III — have gone on to secure major-publisher backing and reach completion, but it’s rare for a project to be cancelled after a publisher has already signed on, as happened here. Opinions on the thread split into two camps over the cause of the failure: one blames the creators’ overly optimistic planning — a development scope too large for the funds actually raised from backers — while the other points to the industry’s underlying structure, where 3D RPG development racks up costs so high that even major studios struggle with it. It’s worth noting that how the funds raised from backers will actually be handled remains pure speculation on the thread, with no official explanation given.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Wild Arms Successor ‘Armed Fantasia’ Development Cancelled wwwwwwww.”
Leave a Reply