Uniform Stealing Board

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yE_pSmscJY

Returning to this 2012 gem. Max Payne 3. Developed by Rockstar Games after they purchased the IP from Remedy Entertainment, whose previous 2 games had sold poorly in spite of mostly positive reception.

I was initially quite critical of Max Payne 3 when I first played it in 2012, saying it lacked the feel of the 2 originals and that Rockstar should stick to GTA and Red Dead Redemption.
But looking at my achievement list, I see I only went through the game once and on the EASIEST difficulty. Which is just shameful. Currently rectifying that! Have to say I am appreciating this game a lot more than I originally gave it credit for.

Wish Rockstar would return to making these shorter set pieces style games. I don't know what was wrong with me back in 2012 to dismiss this game so quickly. Guess I was just too mentally focused on the (then) upcoming GTA V and playing Elder Scrolls and Fallout way too much.

The voice acting in Max Payne 3 could not be any better. Sadly the voice actor behind Max Payne, James McCaffrey, passed away in December of 2023. But damn does his narration in both cutscenes and gameplay really enhance the experience.

I also liked Max Payne 3! It felt different to be out of New York, and so much in the bright sun, but it was still gritty and Max felt like Max.

I'm looking forward to the remastering of Max Payne 1 and 2 which should be done soon, it would be fun to play through all 3 again.

Been doing a little research, apparently Max Payne 3 was a HUGE disaster for Rockstar and Take 2.
The game supposedly had a production budget of $105million. This does not include the MASSIVE marketing campaign they did at the time of release. There was a 3 part comic book released. But marketing is very expensive....with this added onto it's original production cost the number would be massive.

According to their 2012/13 quarterly earnings calls, they SHIPPED 3 million copies in first week of release in May 2012 and by May 2013 had SHIPPED 4 million copies.
Shipping or "sold in" is merely copies sold to retailers, not "sold through" or sold to actual customers.

But even being very generous and assuming they sold through 4 million copies at $60 a pop in it's first year, minus the 30% platform holder revenue on each copy places the game having earned around $168million in it's first year.
But I can see forum posts from August 2012 where the game had already been heavily discounted only 3 months post release. So it was no doubt much less than $168 mil.

This game may never have recouped it's overall production and marketing budget.

The reason I find this interesting is that Rockstar did have another single player stealth espionage title in the works at this time by the name of AGENT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_(video_game)
Old article of apparent leaked screen shots https://wccftech.com/leaked-images-rock ... ame-agent/

Though not ever specifically stated, did the poor sales of Max Payne 3 have a hand in the decision to pull the plug on AGENT?

GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 are the only actual new games Rockstar have currently released since Max Payne 3 (excluding remasters of older games) in almost 13 years.

Will be interesting to see how the Max Payne 1&2 remakes turn out and fare with the gaming populace. I wonder if Max Payne 3 will get a remaster or re-release in the run up to those.