Don't Nod "pause" two game projects and "refocus" others following Jusant and Banishers sales disappointment

rockpapershotgun.com:

We liked Jusant, Don't Nod's clamber-upper masterpiece, and we also liked Banishers, their colonial ghost-busting action-adventure, but it seems that not enough people did. The company have posted a profit warning, reflecting an 11% decline in operating revenue for the first half of 2024. They've also "paused" two unannounced games in development, and altered other unannounced games to be more appealing to a "wider audience". Beyond that, they're considering "all possible options regarding our roadmap", which sounds just a touch ominous.

"Despite an excellent critical reception, Jusant and Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden unfortunately did not achieve the commercial results we had hoped for, resulting in a deterioration in our 2024 half-year results and leading us to consider all possible options regarding our roadmap," chairman and CEO Oskar Guilbert explains in a press release published yesterday. He adds that Ghost Of New Eden and Jusant "performed well below expectations". They're expecting to make a loss for the first half of 2024 of around €1 million.

To compensate for this, Don't Nod are writing down the assets of Jusant and Banishers: Ghost of New Eden (i.e. lowering their value on company books, to match what the market says they're worth) and making some sweeping changes to their line-up of games in development.

These include two unannounced in-house projects, codenamed P10 and P14, which are pencilled in for release before end of 2027. "In order to bolster sales potential and increase partnership opportunities with industry leaders, project design has been refocused to reach a wider audience, which involves scrapping certain developments (P10)", the press release notes. It's not wholly clear from the wording whether this means that P10 has been entirely cancelled.

They're also "temporarily pausing two projects in the design phase in Paris", codenamed P12 and P13, for a write-down of €7.6 million. "This decision will enable us to prioritize resources