Blue Protocol, an action MMO meant to rival Hoyoverse smash hit Genshin Impact, has launched in Japan with the help of developer Bandai Namco. The global version of the game was supposed to be released earlier this year, but developer Bandai Namco and publisher Amazon Games have been cautious. Late last night, the reason for this became clear: Blue Protocol has now finished its release in Japan, and plans for a Western release have been scrapped entirely.
“We’ve been working hard to prepare for the release, but we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not possible to provide a service that satisfies everyone.”Read the statement in English On the game’s website.
Blue Protocol has been featured at various events as an upcoming anime-inspired online game and has been in development for nearly eight years. In 2022, Amazon announced that the game would be released in North America starting with a beta in 2023. The beta was criticized for an empty world and missing content, and the Bandai Namco team promised to fix it, but nothing has been heard since. The cancellation may not come as a shock to Japanese game fans, who felt the game’s online updates were too little, too late.
This puts Blue Protocol in a bad light when compared to rivals such as the aforementioned Genshin Impact, which boasts over 66 million active players. Hoyoverse’s latest game, Zenless Zone Zero, exceeded 50 million downloads in its first month. While there is certainly a market for this kind of game, it seems likely that Bandai Namco expected to incur greater losses by continuing their attempt at Blue Protocol and releasing it in North America than they would have by cancelling the game outright.
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For big publishers like Bandai Namco and Amazon to give up before even putting up a fight is a sign of a somewhat unhealthy situation for the Games-as-a-Service industry. While perhaps a financially responsible decision, it does suggest that some failures are irrecoverable. New World, another MMORPG from Amazon, got off to a rocky start but has enjoyed moderate success since launch and is likely to be a focus for the company in the near future.
