After a year of competitive dino survival, Capcom ends new updates for Exoprimal
Though it sounds impossible, the mix of mech suits and dino fights didn't find a large enough audience to justify continued development.
It's a sad day for humanity's endless culture war against large lizards: Exoprimal, Capcom's competitive action game that pits two teams of anime mech suits in a race to see who can fight dinosaurs fastest, has gotten its last new update just a year after its release. Capcom announced today that "all planned Exoprimal seasonal content has been finished," and the conclusion of Exoprimal's Season 4 on July 11 will mark the end of ongoing content development.
While Exoprimal won't be getting any new seasonal updates, Capcom says "all online services will continue to be available" and that all game modes will remain playable. Once Season 4 ends, Exoprimal will start cycling monthly through old Seasons beginning with Season 1. Likewise, former limited-time endgame missions and collaboration events will return on a weekly rotation. Alongside today's end of new content announcement, Capcom released a full breakdown of the monthly season and weekly event rotation. It has charts!
Somewhat confusingly, while players will still be able to purchase and progress through the premium reward track for each season's Survival Pass, they'll only be able to do so during the months where that respective season is active. For example, "if a Survival Pass Season 2: Premium Tier is purchased in July, it can only be used in April, August, or December."
Seems a little clunky, but it's nice that players will have an opportunity to earn rewards they might've missed from premium passes they'd bought in earlier seasons. Capcom says it'll be releasing a discounted bundle of all four premium season passes, too, for those of you who might decide that now is the best time to go all-in on Exoprimal despite available evidence. Aside from a few spikes following sales and updates, Exoprimal's concurrent player counts hovered below 200 for most of the year since its release in July 2023. But hey, Capcom also says there'll still be bots to fill out teams if necessary, so at least your games won't technically be empty.
I appreciated the absurdity of Exoprimal's concept as a kind of spiritual throwback to the days when major publishers were putting out a lot more weird middleware. But I'll admit my enthusiasm for the idea dropped once I tried the pre-release beta and realized that Exoprimal's primary game mode was competitive, rather than the co-op PvE horde mode I'd hoped for where I might casually fight waves of dinosaurs with mech-suited friends. It seems like that's a common feeling, based on the replies from Exoprimal fans mourning the announced end of updates on Twitter.
It's sad to see Exoprimal join the ranks of multiplayer-centric games ending ongoing development, but at least it'll remain playable for the foreseeable future. And hey, if Exoprimal left you with a lasting taste for how Capcom does dinosaur fights, there's always Monster Hunter.