Official announcement: Hot off the presses. Next Civ game in development!!!!!!!

[Naokaukodem]

Tomorrow is 11th of May, that date was when Civ VI was announced in 2016.

Greenhouse.io has Firaxis jobs for offer, some even mention title Civilization, but are pretty vague.
Example:
https://boards.greenhouse.io/firaxis/jobs/5584125003

According to the content of that offer, I would say, if this concerns Civ7 (at least some parts, like "find the fun"), that Civ 7 is at least one year away from its release. Again, if some parts concern Civ7, we can guess that the game is well advanced but needs a complete oversee.

I would certainly postulate for this if I had experience and if I lived there, although the notion of "fun" is quite anglo-saxon and I don't think I'm familiar with it, especially in a Civ game... I would say the word "interest" fits more the genre, or even Firaxis production. It always put a smile on my face when I hear Marbozir (a youtuber) say : "well, that was fun" after a game of X or Y or a part of a game, I'm like "oh really bruh ? I didn't see any fun here, lol"

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

So, the Take Two report.

One of the first things they mentioned was that several high profile titles are having lengthened development times. They also canceled some titles in February.

for FY24 there will be 16 titles expected to release. 3 titles will be new iterations of existing series. One of these is releasing this month, so we can scratch it down to two.

They also listed a bunch of titles that they expected to be their top earners for FY24. Civ was not one of them.

for FY25/26, 36 new titles in development. 4 of them will be iterations of existing series.

Also, interesting: expected revenue for FY24 is $5 billion. For FY25, $8 billion. Combined with the "lengthened dev times", it sounds like they are shooting for FY25 for some big titles (they even said something to that effect in the report). One of these is expected to be GTA6.

Some homework: What are the 3 titles that are iterations of existing series that will be released in FY24 (not including mobile games)?

Depending on what we can find, I'm semi-leaning towards Civ coming out in FY25

PS: Also, these guys are very skeptical of relying on AI to design and program games, so that's nice to hear.

This article focuses on interpreting the numbers for GTA6, but it quotes them pretty well:

Take-Two Interactive Hints At A GTA 6 Release during 2024-2025 In Its Earnings Release

Take-Two Interactive suggests that the next chapter in the company's growth will begin fiscal year 2025, hinting at the upcoming GTA6.

exputer.com

 

[pokiehl]

Some homework: What are the 3 titles that are iterations of existing series that will be released in FY24 (not including mobile games)?

Nice deductive work! Just additional food for thought: other possibilities are NBA 2K, Bioshock, and their WWE games.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Nice deductive work! Just additional food for thought: other possibilities are NBA 2K, Bioshock, and their WWE games.

Yeah, They could be sports titles. I got a little mixed up on some of the categorizations. I'd love to find a transcript. I read better than I listen.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Take-Two (TTWO) Q4 2023 earnings results beat revenue estimates, miss EPS expectations

Take-Two Interactive's Q4 2023 earnings results showed a solid revenue beat, but its adjusted earnings-per-share came up short against expectations.

www.shacknews.com

There's a link to the written report in the second paragraph.

It looks like the "3 iterations of existing games", two are NBA2K and WWE2K.

I misunderstood that "After Us" was one of the three, but it's a new IP.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Here's the slide show from the presentation:

https://ir.take2games.com/static-files/f04c0f81-91d9-4792-a05f-c11d244c96c3

I need to revise my thoughts.

It seems that "New iterations" is for ports and remasters, not sequels.

Civ would fall under Immersive Core category, which has 17 titles coming out in the next three fiscal years.

There's still 16 games coming out across all categories in FY24. 3 are the "New Iterations". 2 are New IPs (includes After Us). One is Lego2k Drive, which is Mid Core. Two are NBA2K and WWE2K.

transcript:

https://ir.take2games.com/static-files/3e623551-c92e-44bb-81fe-9bb38ac83559

For FY24:
The largest contributors to Net Bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, our hyper-casual mobile portfolio, Empires & Puzzles, Toon Blast, Words With Friends, Merge Dragons, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online, and Zynga Poker

notice, no Civ

For Fiscal 2024, our pipeline includes 16 planned releases
We expect to deliver 3 immersive core offerings. This includes NBA 2K24 and WWE 2K24, our genre-defining sports titles developed by Visual Concepts. Additionally, we expect to release an eagerly-anticipated new IP from one of our premier studios later this Fiscal Year.

So, as Civ is Immersive Core, and the three Immersive Core games are NBA2k24, WWE2k24, and a highly-anticipated new IP, we can conclude that Civ is not coming out this fiscal year.

 

[Yorke]

Oh boy

I feel that to expect another Leader/Wonder/Civilizations Pass isn't that kinda of crazy anymore, right? Right?!

 

[Haig]

Thanks for all the work Eagle Pursuit!

Damn I am so disappointed that Civ 7 is like Minimun 1,5 years away!
I thought too heavily that Murray saying "we cant talk about it yet" meant that announcement was close.

 

[Kwami]

I think you're all reading way too much into an earnings call. All other signs point to a release this autumn. I suppose that maybe development was extra delayed because of Covid-19, but that was already kind of forever ago.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Thanks for all the work Eagle Pursuit!

Damn I am so disappointed that Civ 7 is like Minimun 1,5 years away!
I thought too heavily that Murray saying "we cant talk about it yet" meant that announcement was close.

Honestly not surprised that GTA and sports titles are taking priority, given the landscape of mainstream media the past decades, i.e. cancel/postpone anything that isn't making Literally All The Money; focus attention and resources towards the few properties that do

 

[pokiehl]

Honestly not surprised that GTA and sports titles are taking priority, given the landscape of mainstream media the past decades, i.e. cancel/postpone anything that isn't making Literally All The Money; focus attention and resources towards the few properties that do

I don’t think there’s any reason to say these games “are taking priority” over Civ. Based on what, that 2K is making a lot of money off of them?

 

[Nikolai II]

We've got to remember a big game released today often has been in development for 6-8 years. Game dev takes more time nowadays.

 

[Krajzen]

Unfortunately, the calculation of 8 years needed for civ7 is quite sensible, as much as I hate to type that

Civ5 needed 5 years of development, while Civ6 needed 6 years. However it was before the pandemic, which disrupted the industry a lot, and could reasonably cause many months of delay in productivity.
And there is one more thing: civ6 was quite conservative iteration - it was much more conservative transition than massive jumps between previous civ games. Put final versions of civ3, civ4, civ5 and civ6 next to each other, look at the screenshots, and see how much civ6 looks like "civ5,5" both at the first look and in terms of the fundamental mechanics. And we all know many of those mechanics are really old and need more depth - religion, trade routes, the way production and gold and tiles and pops work, 1upt combat, the way map works, and so on.
If we assume civ7 is going to shake up the fundamentals much more than civ6, more like civ5 did with civ4, to solve some fundamental problems of the game and introduce a lot of fresh air and brave experimental solutions, it needs more time in the oven.

To sum up, 6 years of civ6 development + disruptions caused by the pandemic + newer games generally needing more time to develop + civ7 needing to be more 'experimental' and risky than civ7 while delivering quality = 8 years of dev time don't sound that crazy.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Unfortunately, the calculation of 8 years needed for civ7 is quite sensible, as much as I hate to type that

Civ5 needed 5 years of development, while Civ6 needed 6 years. However it was before the pandemic, which disrupted the industry a lot, and could reasonably cause many months of delay in productivity.
And there is one more thing: civ6 was quite conservative iteration - it was much more conservative transition than massive jumps between previous civ games. Put final versions of civ3, civ4, civ5 and civ6 next to each other, look at the screenshots, and see how much civ6 looks like "civ5,5" both at the first look and in terms of the fundamental mechanics. And we all know many of those mechanics are really old and need more depth - religion, trade routes, the way production and gold and tiles and pops work, 1upt combat, the way map works, and so on.
If we assume civ7 is going to shake up the fundamentals much more than civ6, more like civ5 did with civ4, to solve some fundamental problems of the game and introduce a lot of fresh air and brave experimental solutions, it needs more time in the oven.

To sum up, 6 years of civ6 development + disruptions caused by the pandemic + newer games generally needing more time to develop + civ7 needing to be more 'experimental' and risky than civ7 while delivering quality = 8 years of dev time don't sound that crazy.

I think that's a fair perspective.

It also opens the topic of whether they will release another LP type content pass for Civ 6 to fill another year of gap.

 

[UWHabs]

Their FY23 ended in March. So even if Civ is FY25, that could be as early as next April or May (FY24 ends next March), if my dates are correct. In theory they could be announcing something as early as like September/October with a 6 month lead time.

I think we all sort of hoped that things would be quicker, and we'd get a fall release this year. Hopefully they can take their time and come back with a stronger offering.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I think that's a fair perspective.

It also opens the topic of whether they will release another LP type content pass for Civ 6 to fill another year of gap.

I think there could be district/building expansion packs with the existing game.

 

[Xandinho]

If the gap for Civ7 is still that long, then more content is a real possibility. I just hope we don't have a ton of new alt-leaders and personas again. I would prefer a mix of 5 new civs + 5 new alt-leaders + some wonders with maybe some new elements like districts and units.

 

[Haig]

Can someone elaborate when Take Two Games FY25 starts and ends, thank you.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Can someone elaborate when Take Two Games FY25 starts and ends, thank you.

We are in FY24 at the moment. FY25 starts on April 1, 2024 and ends March 31, 2025

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I think FY25 is probably most realistic - on the topic of an additional LP - if it’s going to be the quality of the one we just got - no thanks.

If they take the time to actually program in new modifiers and maybe touch up the AI - sure.