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Microsoft shuts down Project Spark online services on August 12

Stare-Bear

Banned
How much of the Xbox One features and promises have been cancelled or left to die? Kinect is dead, no clouds in sight and they keep slinging Holo Lens in there but fail to mention it's not geared towards games and costs thousands of dollars.
 

Fox Mulder

Member
How much of the Xbox One features and promises have been cancelled or left to die? Kinect is dead, no clouds in sight and they keep slinging Holo Lens in there but fail to mention it's not geared towards games and costs thousands of dollars.

The Xbox has really lost a bit of identity. It's not the more powerful box and go to console for third party. It lost the bulk of indie support/love from the 360. The first party stable is shrinking, and they're releasing games on PC.
 

element

Member
Spark has been dead since Sept when they announced that they stopped all production on new content and made everything free. It was only a matter of time before they pulled the plug on the servers.

Spark had so many things wrong with it, it is hard to pin point a single thing.
Windows 8
Terrible UX and Interface Design
Terrible User Interaction
Poor content curation
Terrible investment return for designers

They didn't really make a good system to promote people to make games AND play creations. It just ended up being a small hobby community because the quality of content wasn't interesting enough to get the more casual fans to play.

One of the major issues was the sheer creative freedom that Spark allowed. Having no boundaries overwhelmed and made creators think WAY too large of scale. The success of games like Mario Maker is the limitations and focus is provides. Giving someone a pen and a paper and say write a novel is a daunting task.

The remix system was an interesting concept, but just led to terrible republished projects that flooded the already poorly design level curation system.

Project Spark was doomed from the start.
 

Rymuth

Member
MS is cancelling stuff left and right it seems. I wonder if we'll ever see Sea Of Thieves and ReCore.
Sea of Thieves will come out but I suspect it'll be Rare's last game before they get shuttered.

ReCore, otoh, I'm inclined to believe it's going to get cancelled. Inafune's at the helm plus smaller IP, Phantom Dust shown MS greenlighting these on a whim then cancel them as if they've gotten bored.
 

Alx

Member
One of the major issues was the sheer creative freedom that Spark allowed. Having no boundaries overwhelmed and made creators think WAY too large of scale. The success of games like Mario Maker is the limitations and focus is provides. Giving someone a pen and a paper and say write a novel is a daunting task.

The remix system was an interesting concept, but just led to terrible republished projects that flooded the already poorly design level curation system.

Project Spark was doomed from the start.

That's true, although I also think it's its main quality. For me Project Spark is closer to a development language than a creation game. Which is why it's probably more suited as an educational tool than entertainment software.
I find it impressive how it can let anybody do real programming with an intuitive language, even if it also means they have to discover all the difficulties of creating a full polished product. Also it raises the issue of visibility in a crowded marketplace, which is the same indie developers have to face on "real" marketplaces.

Everything considered it was a very interesting insight into software development for people unfamiliar to it. I think gamers who tried it probably gained more respect for devs, realizing how hard it is to translate cool ideas into functional games even with a toolbox that does all the technical stuff for you. Maybe they should have called it "indie dev simulator" or something like that, rather than have people expect getting a continuous stream of professional creations from it.
 

Novocaine

Member
But people told me MS will never ever shutdown an online game, they have Azure and its infinite power of the cloud.

People have told me I'm going to hell if I don't peldge my soul to an invisible man too. Don't always believe what other people have to say.

In any case this is a shame but not surprising, it's not very good.

Although it would be cool to have a list of the best content for it to download before it goes down. Might as well put that 3TB external to use.
 
The 'game' was a great idea but I felt like the huge tutorial you can't skip just to play others creations got in the way, I had to sit through that twice without a choice to skip it.

I also managed to fall out if the map in the first conker episode and it broke my checkpoint to where I was unable to progress so I gave up.
 
The only reason I ever booted up the Windows Store is getting shut down. I'd say I am surprised, but I'd be lying.

I had hoped that the community would blow up like other games that have user made content, but the community was tiny. The single afternoon that I spent in Project Spark consisted of going through ~5 user made games that were worth checking out, everything else was crap.
Such a shame too, there was a lot of potential,

I get the feeling MS starts projects thinking: "We're MicroSoft, anything we do will succeed by default, because we're MicroSoft!"
When they fail, instead of putting in effort and improve things, the whole thing is swept under the rug.
 

Celine

Member
conker_THUMB-1429725827497.jpg


Ah ah ah

Poor Conker
 

W.S.

Member
Sea of Thieves will come out but I suspect it'll be Rare's last game before they get shuttered.

ReCore, otoh, I'm inclined to believe it's going to get cancelled. Inafune's at the helm plus smaller IP, Phantom Dust shown MS greenlighting these on a whim then cancel them as if they've gotten bored.

Yes, and the Xbox division will also cease operations by the end of 2017.

Anyway, this is sad to hear. I actually bought a few items/packs including the Void Storm/Conker stuff which I hope can still be played. I used to play it more frequently before all the packs and tools became free because the grinding/leveling actually gave me some incentive to try out more stuff but as soon as they took that out I lost interest.

Project Spark was a cool concept and it had a lot of tools to make a huge variety of games but unfortunately it did have big issues in the areas of UI and ease of use.
 

Juanfp

Member
Sea of Thieves will come out but I suspect it'll be Rare's last game before they get shuttered.

ReCore, otoh, I'm inclined to believe it's going to get cancelled. Inafune's at the helm plus smaller IP, Phantom Dust shown MS greenlighting these on a whim then cancel them as if they've gotten bored.

Yeah sure, ok, and they will leave gaming.
 
I tried it for a while, I was supposed but the ro robust AI options. Also its interesting that the game is also a development toll to teach kids game development.
 

Angel_DvA

Member
The Xbox has really lost a bit of identity. It's not the more powerful box and go to console for third party. It lost the bulk of indie support/love from the 360. The first party stable is shrinking, and they're releasing games on PC.

So much this !! The Xbox has no identity, I don't think people can see how much those kind of stuff hurt the brand...
 

charsace

Member
Tried it a little bit and it was a great visual programing tool.

I think they will take the base and release it on PC as a visual game engine. Trapping this in a game was a stupid idea.
 

Rymuth

Member
Yeah sure, ok, and they will leave gaming.
Yeah, sure, and they'll walk back on their always-online after spending 100s of millions on a digital future.

Yeah, sure, and they'll have the weaker console despite their assurances by Penello on Gaf and their infinite warchest

Yeah, sure, and they'll disconnect Kinect after promising us they'll support it.

Yeah, sure, and they'll cancel Phantom Dust and Fable Legends after Phil promised us games, games, games.


Sorry, what were you saying? I'm having a the most awful case of deja vu here (ツ)
 

Juanfp

Member
Yeah, sure, and they'll walk back on their always-online after spending 100s of millions on a digital future.

Yeah, sure, and they'll disconnect Kinect after promising us they'll support it.

Yeah, sure, and they'll cancel Phantom Dust and Fable Legends after Phil promised us games, games, games.


Sorry, what were you saying? I'm having a the most awful case of deja vu here (ツ)

.
 
Yeah, sure, and they'll walk back on their always-online after spending 100s of millions on a digital future.

Yeah, sure, and they'll have the weaker console despite their assurances by Penello on Gaf and their infinite warchest

Yeah, sure, and they'll disconnect Kinect after promising us they'll support it.

Yeah, sure, and they'll cancel Phantom Dust and Fable Legends after Phil promised us games, games, games.


Sorry, what were you saying? I'm having a the most awful case of deja vu here (ツ)

Don't worry they will quit the gaming business soon.
 

Kneefoil

Member
Oh, they're shutting it down already? I knew it probably wasn't very popular, but geez...

Truth be told, I didn't even know it was on Windows; I thought it was Xbox One only. Well then, I guess I might play around with it a bit before the servers shut down - at least because it's apparently free, which I also didn't know about.
 

Bgamer90

Banned
Yeah, sure, and they'll walk back on their always-online after spending 100s of millions on a digital future.

Yeah, sure, and they'll have the weaker console despite their assurances by Penello on Gaf and their infinite warchest

Yeah, sure, and they'll disconnect Kinect after promising us they'll support it.

Yeah, sure, and they'll cancel Phantom Dust and Fable Legends after Phil promised us games, games, games.


Sorry, what were you saying? I'm having a the most awful case of deja vu here (ツ)

Not sure what those situations have to do with Recore and Sea of Thieves; Huge stretching to try and prove why people should believe your predictions.
 
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