Don't Nod 'Disappointed' by Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Jusant Sales

Nods

Actually, I don't know that I've even heard of either of these releases, and I'm online all the time. The marketing must not have been great.

Banishers is a great game with a different approach to the ghost theme and an emotional core. Hope it finds an audience overtime. It deserves it.

I have really liked Dontnod’s games. I thought Remember Me was actually underrated. I never got around to playing Vampyr though.

But all of their games I’ve played I think I got through PS+. Perhaps I’m part of the problem.

Ha! I totally didn't know Banishers was already out since February! =P

I’ve genuinely never heard of either of these games.

@awp69 Couldn’t agree more. It wound up being one of my favorites of the year and one of those rare games that rattled around in my head even when I wasn’t playing it. It also has some of the best voice acting I can remember. Really glad I took a chance on it.

Jusant being on GamePass couldn't have helped its sales.

I've seen Banisher trailer and it doesn't like my cup of tea. I also played Vampyr from PS+ and i'm not sure what that makes me stop playing the game. But i finished Life of Strange 1 and i quite like it.

I planned on Banishers but all the reviews said the combat wasn’t great so I passed. Jusant is still in my wishlist but I have so many frigging games right now that it can just wait for the foreseeable future.

I've been waiting for a good sale on Banishers. Jusant just never looked appealing to me. Bummer their games aren't finding an audience, I really appreciate them working in this like AA space.

Banishers is on my Wish List, I’m just waiting for a sale. Didn’t look like a full price purchase type of game.

@Ralizah this is what I was going to say. You can't just put games out there and hope, especially now there's just so many games out there.

Jusant was really good, but it was also on game pass. Banishers kind of just got a small bit of coverage on hardcore gaming websites and blended into the background.

@Th3solution perhaps, perhaps not. I don't think the user is the problem, but the system itself. Subscriptions, for one, make you realise just how many god damn games there are, which probably doesn't help 😅 in some cases it will help smaller titles, but with so much choice how is anyone ever going to play them.

I think subscriptions need to go a way for a while and have a good long talk to themselves. And maybe come back as a premium product with well thought out, specially picked selections made by people who play games themselves. Titles being on for a shorter amount of time with new headliners each month that get people interested. A much more artisan approach to gaming than the netflix tv "shove a bunch of generic, broad appeal s*** at peoples faces, and 20 times as much niche sh**, but then throw a few good shows in there every so often" approach.

Not to mention the fact that people have been conditioned to only want to play games if they can play 4 AAA titles for £2... That definitely doesn't help 💀

It would probably sell better if it would ever go on sale!

I didn't even hear of Jusant but I thought I did remember seeing something about Banishers a while back. Ultimately, I forgot it existed and don't think I'll be picking up either.

I didn't know it came out, no ads or anything.

It got mostly positive reviews on steam. It has a demo, so I will give it a go and see if it's for me.

Banishers was excellent but definitely had some bugs during the initial launch. My biggest complaint is that the camps were too far from each other.

I completed Vampyr earlier this year and really enjoyed it. I have been holding off grabbing Banishers as I was hoping they would localise it for Japan.
If Dontnod release a remaster of Remember Me I will gladly buy it since it was criminally overlooked at the tail-end of the PS3’s life. I loved the concept of altering memories and the setting of Neo Paris was brilliant. I even bought the art book!

@Ravix There's so many games now.

And, frankly, so many decent to great ones. More than people could play in a lifetime.

You really have to stand out. It's hard to do that if you're not a major developer.

Hopefully they figure it out. Jusant was always gonna be a more niche game and Banishers came out at a bad time.

@Ralizah you never heard both of the games? I guess you are living in under the rock lol

I'm actually playing Banishers right now, and I'm over 60h already. I'm really enjoying my time with it. The main characters are very likeable and their relationship really solid. The haunting cases are very interesting, they're all quite different from one another, even if some of them are predictable. I like solving these cases and getting to decide at the end of each one of them if i banish or ascend the ghosts (or do worse with the living). I also like that some of these cases actually connects with the main story, and i like how every now and them (based on a choice that i made) the game points its finger at me to remind me how sh*tty i am

The exploration is pretty much God of Warlite (2018) and the combat is OK, even though it can be quite frustrating at times when you're facing tougher foes. Voice acting is top notch. Most dialogues are really well written. Performance is kinda mid, but this is one of those Unreal Engine 5 games (aka the most unstable engine ever) so i can get past the framerate drops

If the last part of the game is as good as the rest of it and if the story ends on a high note, then this can be easily a 9/10 for me and my personal GOTY contender

It's funny how i hated Life is Strange so much to the point that i consider it top 5 worst games i ever played, and yet Vampyr and this game here, especially, are very very very good

Too bad it didn't sell so well. People need to know about this game more

@TicklefistCP indeed i am (or we are haha). I'm also glad that Don't Nod released a patch to play this game at 60fps on PS5. They could've just ignore this game and move on, but they didn't and that's very nice of them

An absolutely atrocious release date for Banishers unfortunately sealed it's fate before it even came out, so they should've expected low sales for that despite it receiving positive reviews. That's on them for releasing it in February. Jusant was never going to be a big seller.

Dont nod make great games i

its a sad state of the industry that despite making good/ great games they still cant find a market

Casualties of the modern approach of "I'll wait until its on Game Pass/PS Plus", at least for me.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden looks good and is on my wishlist, and I've been playing Dontnod games since Remember Me (ironically also via PS Plus).

Justant looked great and I look forward to getting to it 1 day; Banishers sounded like it didn't hit the mark so I was waiting for it to join PS Plus at some point.

I didn't get on with vampyr. I thought the graphics and stilted animations were very ps3 era. The story and acting was quite mediocre and WTF was up with the soundtrack? That demented,screeching violin whilst nerve jangling (I'm guessing that was the desired effect) was annoying as hell. I can see that people in the comments section enjoyed it a lot but it just wasn't for me sorry.

I made sure to buy Banishers at release. I could tell it wasn't going to sell great, and given it got really strong reviews I wanted to support it. It's a shame more people don't (or can't) vote with their wallets

I’ve never even heard of this game, and I’m on gaming sites every day. Maybe I just wasn’t interested and forgot about it, but I don’t get the impression it was advertised that much.

It is unfortunate but there are simply too many games out there these days (despite people on here constantly complaining this gen has no games). I have both of these games on my wishlist, but I'm so far behind there's no point in buying them in the first year.

I've actually played and enjoyed quite a few of their games: Remember Me, Life is Strange 1 & 2 and Vampyr, so I will get around to these as well. Makes me sad to read they're considering changing their approach to reach wider audiences.

@Ralizah there was plenty of previews and the game is great

Many people haven't even heard of Banishers: GoNE.
Valid for me also, I didn't even know it existed until I saw a "best story driven games" type of video on YT, totally by random chance, and at some time after the game's release...

It's not the fault of the IP, its a really good game... But they should invest more in marketing if they want their creations to be known and sales to reach desired numbers...

I really enjoyed Remember Me and Vampyr, but Banishers characters didn't appeal to me.

Jusant was excellent. Shame

I’m surprised at those who say they’ve never heard of the game, I’ve seen Banishers a lot. I want to play it, but I can’t justify paying full price.

Not really my cup of tea

Vampyr is a great mid budget title and didn't find the audience at the time.

So wonder if Banishers will be propping up their profits as it finds an audience in 5 years time as their new game bombs

Jusant was fantastic, but most probably played it on gamepass and Banishers came out at a really busy period for me

Banishers is one of best games to come out this year. I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition of the game, and played it straight away when it released. Really surprised to see so many comments by people saying that they had not heard of the game. It was on my radar for a long time prior to release after I saw it at some showcase or another when it was first revealed.

Very disappointed to see that it has not met with sales expectations as this will likely mean we will see no sequel, which is something the game very much deserves...

Banishers is a great game. I bought it at release after wishlisting it as soon as I could.

Jusant landed on Gamepass so that was never going to show them much of a return.

Banishers is on my buy list when it reduces to 19.99 ,I played jusant and it bored me to death

Banishers was good (I rented it from GameFly) but I ended up returning it before I finished it...it's decent, but after a while it just felt like I was doing the same thing over again, and the story wasn't engaging enough and the gameplay loop not fun enough to get me to carry on...it's a quality game, but definitely wait for sale type.

Sad to see so much moaning about "nothing to play" and too many remasters while new, unique games like these get lost in the shuffle.

I heard Banishers was solid, but I haven't gotten to it. It's a competitive market. If they can't break through with advertising, they need to do better with things like pricing. The booming PC market proves there's plenty of space for A-AA titles, but they have to be rpiced appropriately. I feel like their games aren't and it costs them (literally).

I haven't played Jusant, but Banishers is an absolutely fantastic game and was well worth the full price I paid at release. It deserved FAR more marketing and respect that it received.

There's just too much competition right now. Interesting games released almost daily and many of them failing, unfortunately.

I guess the market will adjust eventually but with how big gaming was during the pandemic and how long games take to make its going to take a while.

I keep meaning to buy banishers but my back log of games is crazy long at the moment

Jusant was great. Banishers had some really good things going for it, but I didn't enjoy the combat, and it dragged on quite a bit. Great for the first 10 hours, then got a bit dull for the next 10. Also was very disappointed with the ending I got - don't think they explained it well enough in terms of banishing/ redeeming people and I ended up with the crap ending. Not bad though.

@Ralizah The game looks really solid though I have seen several trailers. But sometimes there are so many releases even the better ones get buried sometimes.

Both games are so damned good, wish I could say I'm surprised they didn't sell well though

@PuppetMaster if anything like my experience, Vampyr crashed every 20 minutes during the final third. Took exceptional willpower for me to see it through but glad I did.

Jusant was on game pass ultimate day one. A pleasant mountaineering game but no real hook. If you give your games away on subscription services from day one, don’t be surprised if people don’t buy them.

Banishers is on my wish list but it's really long.

@jamiestogden I don't remember if i had crashed every 20 minutes. But i remembered i experienced some nasty frame drop and it made me stop playing the game.

I still have to pick it up but Nintendo has been beating the daylights out of my bank account the past two years. I can’t even touch the twins except for super huge games.

From what I know, Banishers is a 20 hour game put in a 50 hour length. Simply put, there are way too many good games vying for the general audience's time. You can't waste the audience's time by forcing an epic 'semi-open world game' which is also a new IP so it doesn't even have a starting audience base. A new IP made by a company not well known for that type of game, needs a solid moment to moment gameplay to quickly hook the starting playerbase.

There 'life is strange' this new 'record' game are all more targeted to a specific audience, one that has a built in audience, that enjoys the moment to moment gameplay so they'll likely hit expectations but then you can't keep relying on the same type of game forever I suppose.