Ultimately, Babylon’s Fall went about as badly as a live-service game could conceivably go. It launched to poor reviews and reception, never convinced a critical mass of players that it was worth sticking around to play, and has already been announced as shutting down in the near future. Platinum Games CEO Atsushi Inaba finally spoke up about the general reception to the game and Platinum’s role in same, and perhaps not surprisingly his main focus appear to be blaming Square-Enix about how things fell apart:
Firstly, the important thing that I want to note is that we’re not able to comment on certain areas of games developed with our partners And that’s one of the reasons we’re not fond of our current situation that only limits us to game development, to be honest with you… in terms of any concrete reasons or the process that led to this conclusion of the title, you’d have to go ahead and ask Square Enix about the details, unfortunately.
The only thing we can comment on here in terms of the closure of the Babylon’s Fall service itself, is that this unfortunate conclusion might have been something that had triggered some disappointment, perhaps maybe even anger, to our dedicated fans and players. And any disappointment that we might have caused for our fan base is something we feel extremely sorry about, the fact that we led our dedicated fans to feel that way as a developer. Providing any sentiment other than enjoyment and fun in our creations to players is something that we’re not very happy about at all as a developer.
Inaba is also clear that Platinum Games is still going to pursue live service games, so while Babylon’s Fall was a thorough flop, this appears to have not altered the studio’s overall course in any meaningful fashion. It’s not a tremendously illustrative interview if you’re hoping to what led to the sort of design decisions that made Babylon’s Fall something of a disappointment, but it does give an insight about how the developing studio saw the title.
