Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 release date, EOS date gets announced on the same tweet

[exvaran]

 

Summary

After the Japanese version of the mobile game "Love Live! School Idol Festival 2" announced its EOS by the end of March 2024, the long-promised English/Global version (which hasn't released yet) announced that it will launch next month, but in the same tweet announces that services will end in May.

 

Quotes

Quote

【Global Launch Notice】 We are excited to break the news to you that the global version of Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE! is launching soon in February 2024. However, we also want to inform you that, the Global Version will close its doors on May 31, 2024, and cease in-app purchases accordingly. We appreciate the love and support you've shown, and we're committed to making these last few months an unforgettable moment.

 

My thoughts

The shutdown of live service games, especially mobile games, isn't anything unusual. But this game series in particular, being one of the first Japanese mobile games to be released for English-speaking audiences (back in 2014) sets a new precedent where games have a built-in expiration date. The development of this game in particular is remarkably similar to other live-service games (*cough* Overwatch 2 *cough*), where the first game, with flagging interest and aging mechanics (functionally the same as it was when it originally released in 2013), was forcibly EOS'd last year to make way for a "sequel" (which is just the old game shoehorned into a new engine that struggles to run it). Not to mention the other game in the franchise (Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS) that was better-received getting shut down as well, which is speculated to be due to diverting resources for this newer game.

 

Sources

 

Tweet from official English account

(Japanese) Tweet from official Japanese account 

 

[porina]

I played both SIF and AS from the start, but wasn't active in recent years. The original announcement that SIF was going to close was a shock but not unexpected. The games basically became unplayable to me as the layers of mechanisms built up over the years meant my inventory was always full, and managing that wasn't exactly fun. AS just seemed far less popular in general.

 

When SIF2 was announced I hoped that would prove a good reset, but launching and ending the game in a few months doesn't make sense to me.

[Mark Kaine]

On 1/27/2024 at 8:52 AM, porina said:

but launching and ending the game in a few months doesn't make sense to me.

same, but it probably does for the shareholders. 

 

they pay no mind to possible long-term implications of such practices.