The Tomorrow Children has to be one of the most colossal flops this generation. And not just for Sony, but for the industry in general.
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Once mildly-anticipated, it crawled to the development finish line, to zero attention, zero anticipation, zero excitement, and it quickly was forgotten.
Announced back at Gamescom 2014 during Sony’s presser, the game garnered quite a deal of buzz for its unique premise and slick presentation. However, after its initial announcement, the game went silent, which is often not a good sign. And in this case, it wasn’t.
Out of nowhere, following a change in payment structure to free-to-play, the game released in October 2016. Nobody seemed to notice. There was very little marketing or promotional material for the game. Nobody was talking about it. And very few people played it as a result.
In July 2017, roughly nine months after its launch, it was revealed the game would shut down and be removed from the PlayStation Store in November later that year. And just like that The Tomorrow Children was gone as quick as it arrived.
The mystery of the game’s development has largely remained a mystery, including how it went from a title with buzz and promise behind it, to a game that couldn’t even survive a year.
Today, this mystery still shrouds the game and its development. However, its developer Q-Games recently provided a bit of more insight into behind-the-scenes.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Q-Games Dylan Cuthbert had the following to say about the game and its development:
“I wouldn’t say it’s been turbulent. It’s certainly been busy. Making The Tomorrow Children involved quite a big team. We made that, and at the end it was a small team maintaining it – so it was fine from our point of view. In general, I don’t think Sony was ready to do a free-to-play game. It wasn’t our idea to do a free-to-play game – around halfway through development, they said we want to make it free-to-play, and I said, well, do you know what that takes? It takes a lot of marketing, data, research, analysis – and, for me, I felt that they didn’t really do that. It always felt they hadn’t quite got the grasp of that, and I think Sony is much more efficient at making a game and selling it. It’s not a big shock – their whole engine isn’t geared for that.”
The most interesting tidbit spilled by Cuthbert is the fact that it was Sony — who was publishing the game — who wanted the PS4 exclusive to be free-to-play, not Q-Games. What could have been the life of The Tomorrow Children if it didn’t release free-to-play will never be known. It may have fared better. It may have fared worse. Or maybe it would have met the same fate. Who’s to say.
