Monte Cristo Games has announced that it will be closing the online component of its Cities XL, reports VGChartz. The company stated:
“Three months after the launch we have to admit that the subscription rate is lower than what we expected and therefore the Planet Offer is not sustainable. Not enough players decided to subscribe,” the company wrote to its subscribers. “Therefore, it is with deep regret that we decided to put an end to the Planet Offer as of March 8th 2010. It will no longer be possible to subscribe to the game starting Monday February 1st 2010.”
Cities XL is a Sim City-esque game with MMO and social networking components. While users could build cities offline, they could populate them online in a world shared by other users through the Planet Offer.
Having played the game it comes as no surprise to me. While the concept is strong, the actual game strategy implementation had many flaws. Once your city got to a certain size, it was hard to improve the environment and the only way to get additional components was basically handing over more money. For now Monte Cristo will end the online component in mid-March and focus on its single-player side.
Tweet
