Bandai Namco Is Shutting Down Another Pac-Man Battle Royale Game On Switch

Oh no... Anyway, to the other news...

Would it kill these publishers to have a single player offline mode option so you don’t feel like you tossed your money out the window?? Jeez!

Is this game playable offline or is it online only?

It's always weird to see things like this.

1.Offline singleplayer

2.Make a smaller scale one like Tetris 99 or F Zero 99, put a spin on it, make it cheap, do updates. It's really not that hard. As if Championship edition wasn't enough of a sign.

It looks it but my thought would be go further then just the other Pacman games for maze details. Go further with maze designs, AI, fruit, traps, minigames, etc.

3.Add more modes, add more things to each season that are dramatic enough.

That or target with a different IP instead of Pacman. They just need to try more.

That or have lower expectations then others and understand what is in your game, what your IP is and more. It's really not that hard.

@Liam_Doolan Thanks. That's a shame! Explains why it died so fast. At least I can still play Pac-Man 99 offline.

“What prompted you to make another battle royale just to shut it down after just a year?”

The reason why I didn't throw money for this game was cause it's a Google Stadia exclusive game done wrong on Switch (unlike Gylt which was done right and deserving of my money). Making it online only just doesn't work very well, on top of latency and lags that carry over from Stadia to Switch, you get worst graphics as well and they want money for all this? Yeah not gonna happen and this game won't be miss either.

Eh, Pac-Man was winning to hard this year. Something stupid needed to happen eventually to try and balance it out

This game never had enough players active on steam to fill a lobby.

I miss PacMan99, I never won that one before it closed down...

Loved Pacman99…bought this when it came out. It’s fun too…but a shame I won’t be able to play much longer

It wasn't good and it wasn't responsive. I bought it for around $5 on sale this year and would like a refund in that case.

Kinda ironic that a former Stadia exclusive will end in the same way as its original system.

i feel bad for small scale games that live or die having an online playerbase, that just feels like a losing battle for any game

Wasn't this game like AU$30?

Isn't "progress" wonderful?

Someone should probably have told them 'Pacman Fever' went out in the eighties.

And that's why you should never buy "Online only" games, kids! What a waste...

I just want Pac-Man Championship Edition 3. I don't care about Pac-Man World or these multiplayer spin-offs. CE games have been excellent, though.

STOP KILLING GAMES

@TryToBeHopeful : Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing this game at what seemed like a very reasonable price, but the fact that the game was online only and still required an NSO subscription instantly killed my interest. In any case, I'm glad I trusted my judgement on this one.

Why is it so hard to just port Championship Edition DX Plus?

Charging $20 out of the gate for an online-only game was a real tough sell, I'm sure that accelerated the game's death (probably a low player base due to the high cost of entry).

I saw it went on sale for $2 a few months back. I was a bit tempted at that price, but I figured it was probably gonna get shut down soon, so not worth getting invested. Unfortunately, I was right.

Online-only games like this should really be free (and they should make their money off optional cosmetics). If they wanna charge money up front, then there better be some sort of single player content to fall back on when the online shuts down. Or they should specify a minimum guaranteed time period of service so people can evaluate if they'll play the game enough in that time period to make the investment worth it.

Let's get that stop killing games going fast, EU...

I hear all the "stop killing games" complaints. And I do agree. But also, sounds like this one died of it's own accord and they're just burying it now. A battle royale with no players is a dead battle royale.

Wow, they're going to keep selling it for another whole month even though anyone who buys it between now and Nov 1st will only have until the end of December to play it in any way shape or form?

That's actually insane.

The longevity of Bamco freemiums is becoming a bit memetic...

EDIT: shows what I know/remember, it's actually a retail game. Granted, if a $20 game outright promises to become unplayable where its NSO-originating predecessor at least offered a leftover mode or two (albeit with the latter's own pricetag), then this correction may not necessarily make the news sound any nicer.😅

Digital + Online only = Bad idea

This one wasn’t even on my radar. Not sure how I never heard about it, but then again, all those Pac-Man battle royal games start to look the same

Sadly, this was dead on arrival and the core game is perhaps the weakest version of Pac-Man to exist. Shame, as I love the concept and would've been overjoyed to see this get an audience. Maybe (with the inevitable) next time.

It's a shame because it feels like PacMan 99 was closed down for this, and I rather enjoyed that. Would be great to see a Ms PacMan 99... but then Ms PacMan has never appeared on Switch at all ! sob

@kmtrain83 considering the heavy sales earlier in the year, I'm gonna say it's the former.

So they will keep selling it almost until it shuts down forever?

This sounds like the "good old" Namco.

Anyone remember Ridge Racer on VITA?

The cart only had 3 tracks and almost no cars.
Namco sold the tracks and cars as overpriced DLC instead, so the game cost 100$ or so.

...SCAMCO back in year 2012.

This is a reminder to NOT buy always online games, including the insufferable cloud games like the resident evil cloud games and the Kingdom hearts cloud games. Eventually they WILL shut down and you'll basically have just might as well flushed your money down a toilet. And tbh with big games like Hogwarts legacy and Skyrim having managed to be ported to switch there was so reason they couldn't have done the same to those other games and them being local games no cloud. This should be illegal.

@mr_benn from my understanding msPacman is a special case because they don't entirely own the rights to msPacman which is why it's rarely ported. There's still ongoing legal issues with it over the rights and namco was forced to replace her in a port renaming her pacmom I guess when she cameod in a pacman game.

@cammers1995 yes - the rights issues have been an absolute headache all stemming back to GCC and Midway. It's been released on PS5 and Xbox though so the Switch is an outlier!