Why did UT3 "fail"?

[Mysterio3]

yeah, i suppose i do at times miss the good old days where my character can run at like 80km/h and still shoot accurately..... i think the reduction in movement speed is more because most modern games have the sprint function, forcing you to choose between movement speed and accuracy since generally sprinting leaves your crosshairs swaying like crazy....

[Reoh]

I couldn't tell you Snott, haven't played it. Not even sure what its model is at this point. Would be a good source to hit up for an interview though I suppose.

[Drac]

If UT3 was still considered "fun" and "the shit" or whatever there would be heaps of people playing it.

I don't think this has anything at all to do with cosnoles. Everyone loves to play that card but 90% of the time they misunderstand it. There's a much more diverse range of games out there now and UT did not evolve at all. People don't play it because it didn't change, they've already played it and newer games are much more approachable.

Why were Quake and UT so popular back then? I think because there were 2 well hyped games from a very very short list of shooters and were the only 2 that had dedicated servers in an age of dialup - that meant they were the only games that were actually playable online (from their early versions) and thus maintained a community and a certain level of popularity, but once the shooter genre diversified and more and more types of games starting using dedicated servers and MMOs sprung up ect the players scattered across the inter webs.

There're so many new and interesting games around now I see no reason to go back to UT or Quake. I played those games 12 years ago, not keen to revisit it, just like I've moved on from Counter Strike and other games.

Even if VALVe released Counter Strike 2 tomorrow I probably wouldn't go back to it for long. I'd have a short fling, long enough to realize they really haven't changed the gameplay, because they can't, it's CS, everyone would kill them if they did even if they're sick of it already. Play it for one or two days then get bored because I've done it all before.

Counter Strike 2 would feel as bad as the latest Rambo movie, interesting but a dinosaur in makeup isn't really as cool as it sounds, just like the UT3 really.

Some people can play the same game endlessly, but I can't. Too much other stuff around to try out.

[wytefang]

I think Drac's hit upon the main reason, though I'd say that a secondary reason hurt its sales as well. Mainly the issue is that people have done the whole basic run-n-gun, DM stuff to death and that's what most people perceive the UT series as being. I'm not saying that it's not a really fun game mode or mindset, by any means, but rather that people have now gotten a good taste of games like the Call of Duty series, the Battlefield series, Halo, and others - and they're looking for a bit more involved gameplay, specifically more team-based or something that also offers vehicles and such. And while UT3 and 2004 offered a game mode with vehicles, the vehicles still feel and offer as much twitch-based fragging as if you were running around with a rail-gun, whereas other games' vehicles don't offer that same style of running-and-gunning.

I'd also blame the fact that UT3 was the first game created for both the PC and the PS3 and perhaps gamers shied away from what they perceived might be a crappy consolized port of their beloved series. I recall the outcry when the UT3 Demo hit the web and it had an awful, consolized UI. Epic made a lot of changes but I suspect that the damage was already done at that point.

If I had to pick a third reason, it'd probably be the constant changes made to specific, favorite gamer modes like Assault being dropped, then re-added and imagined and things of that nature.

But if I had to settle on just one reason, I'd go with the fact that this genre (FPS) simply out-grew this particular game-series and Epic didn't keep up with the times.

For the record, it IS a very good game, with great graphics, smooth gameplay, wonderful maps and weapons and a variety of fun MP modes.