Why the game "Ballerium" failed

Ballerium was an Israeli MMORTS - Mass multi player Real time strategy developed by Majorem studio.

Another promising Israeli Tripe-A game company which failed. This one was the closest to success (almost published by Activision).
What were their problems?

1. Make sure there is target audience for the game niche
First and foremost ,they developed a niche game and the niche was bad.
They were unique with the RTS which is MMO , but that is generally a bad concept. There are not successful game today in this niche.
Going for a new niche is a very bold move. In the game business, unlike the other technology niches , being first in a niche does not mean you will be the most successful. It is typically the other way around. "Everquest" MMO had a small community , later MMORPG`s had more and more players and only years after the first game, the niche was accepted by the general public. I'm not saying you can not be the first an be successful (I think Id`s first FPS was a success) , but it is hard.
And as it turns out, that niche was not good enough.
This is the major reason for the game failure. A game without an audience , even if it is carefully coded , beautiful looking and aggressively published, can not sell enough to cover its investment.


2. Art - "sufficiently beautiful"
The game was bit ugly. You could see that some artists have been working there , but not enough. That was really shame for a game with so much work which was done into it. see screenshot and gameplay video.
As said in a previous post , art must be "sufficiently beautiful". sadly this game was not.


3. Don`t aim too high
: They developed all from almost scratch. Unlike "Rising eagle" , they could not use an existing game engine , because no MMORTS engine existed then, hell , the MMORPG market just started to flourish back then and no real MMO engine existed at all. They were smart enough to market the studio as both technology-engine and a game, but you have to remember that to be successful in both you need a lot of money to start with. really a lot.
Again a bold move. If the niche was good , and the game was good , they could have become an industry leader. But with the risk comes the failure. Aiming high meaning it is hard to polish the game and hard to be profitable if the game is only doing "some" money and is not a hit.