209 réponses à ce sujet

[Merci357]

FedericoV wrote...

Nowaday if a franchise is really popular, then the sequel should sell nearly as well, whatever the devs said. Digital downloads? Maybe on PC. But look at the drop on consolle, wich is the crux of the matter and wich is much more radical than the drop on PC. Look at metacritic review/user score on consolle vs. pc for DA:O. The difference is hard to dismiss.

Remember, there was no retail release of Awakening for the PS3 in Europe. It was only available as a digital download.

Also, on a related note, a piece of anecdotal evidence on my part. I know at least three people that got DA:O at release, and later on the Ultimate Edition. Once the UE was released, there was no reason to buy Awakening - just because the UE was (far) cheaper compared to Awakening plus all DLC combined. Just look around in this very forum, you'll see quite some people who have DA:O + UE registered here, without Awakening. Those are not two customers, but DA:O sales numbers are somewhat inflated due to them.

In short, I'd rather trust Awakening did reasonably well. Maybe not it's stand alone sales, but that's only part of the picture. If anything it made the whole DA:O package more interesting, the UE is quite a lot of quality content for a bargain.

[NedPepper]

dheer wrote...

nedpepper wrote...
This is merely conjecture on my part, but here goes:

Wow, it sure was.

It's amazing what people will tell themselves.

Argue my points, dude.  If all you have to do is fling weak insults, go somewhere else.  If you want to talk about my ideas, then let's talk.

[NedPepper]

JaegerBane wrote...

nedpepper wrote...

This is merely conjecture on my part, but here goes:

Dragon Age; Origins was a game that captured a zietgeist. It became a game gamers decided to buy because there was a lot of talk about it. But the metric data and probably every one on this board knows people who bought the game and stopped playing after the origin because they didn't like it. My own stories I heard: It was too slow. It was boring. It was weird. I know a lot of people who bought Origins, and it's weird how many of them stopped playing right at Ostagar. These people are not RPG fans. So the game sold well, but the non-RPG gamer hated it. The real question is why they bought it to begin with?

So, Bioware tries to fix that problem by speeding it up action wise. Origin fans bought DA 2, and were going to regardless. Then came the RPG whiners who trolled metacritic and gave the game a zero.

And the decisions made then split the core audience. Bioware is in a very tricky posiiton here. The DLCs have been made specifically for a niche audience. The Bioware forums are just a small vocal part of the people who bought DA2, but it's still just a tiny piece of an already shrinking core audience.

The reality is that the great RPG you guys loved in Origins wasn't well liked by the average gamer. If Bioware would have made Origins 2, a game identical to the first, I honestly believe the numbers would have been the same.

Also, this forum is the only place I hear such negativity. I know a lot RPG gamers who simply don't do the whole posting on a message board....and they LIKE Dragon Age 2. Some, more than Origins.

At this point, Bioware has an idea of what the core audience wants, but the sales will never be like Origins, because Origins was an oddity. It was a best selling game that half the consumers disliked.

Fantasy RPGs like Origins are not traditionally HUGE sellers. I honestly believe it was just an anamoly.

The secret to this franchise going forward is continuing to experiment and to give the people who have fallen in love with the story and the world new and exciting things. Recreating Origins will not suddenly produce numbers like the first game did. I just don't believe it. This is a franchise for a niche audience, and will probably always be so. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Some interesting thoughts, indeed. There's a few things that you need to keep in mind, however -

1) Many who 'disliked' DA2 did so for very different reasons, and by 'disliked', one can mean anyone who thought the game was a disaster all the way through to someone who found a single aspect of the game annoying. There's such a varied group here that lumping them together will not give an accurate picture as to why people preferred Origins.

2) I think Bioware definitely had a bit of luck on their side, but the idea that Origin sold so well on luck alone sounds, to be honest, ridiculous. A game doesn't get stacks of awards, great reviews and sells millions simply on serendipity.

3) Forums do provide only a small snapshot of the general fan reaction to a game, true, but it is wrong to simply assume that this means that it doesn't mean anything. Were this the case there would be no reason to host forums at all, and feedback mentioned here would go nowhere.

4) Your conjecture above implies no mistakes were made in the development of DA2, and that the lesser sales were simply down to market forces. I would submit that to assume that no mistakes were made, or that ones that were made had no effect on the game's reception, is obviously not accurate.

Overall I think you make some interesting points - I just think that they form only a fragment of what went wrong.

No, I do believe that the critical response from hardcore RPG fans had an impact on sales.  Some of the decisions made for DA 2 simply didn't work.  We know that.  But, I still maintain that even if the game would have been identical to Origins, the sales would be very similar.  It's almost as if they lost the mass audience from the very onset.

And, just from personal experience, I know a lot of folks, particularly X-Box gamers, who buy games just because they're bored and they hear it's a good game.  Or used to.  People don't have as much loose change floating around in their pockets.  So when it comes to buying into a franchise, I think the average gamer wants the predictable.  (Call of Duty, Halo, ect....games I personally find dull and uninspired.)

[Joy Divison]

JaegerBane wrote...

Atakuma wrote...

Joy Divison wrote...

Don't you know anecdotal evidence trumps statistical evidence we don't like?

There is no statistical evidence, just numbers which don't mean much by themselves.

I think you really need to explain what you mean here.

In discussions where statistics and logic can only give an imprecise reflection of reality (which is virtually all discussions), people need bull**** to fill in the gap where statistics/logic end and what their desired conclusion is.

If your favorite sports figure's career statistics rate as the 10th best player in the league, yet you just KNOW he is better than that, you'll come up with some sort of bull**** - usually predicated on anecdotal evidence - to credit him with being better than 10th.  Stuff like "he's a good leader" "brings good chemistry to the locker room" or "performs well in the clutch when the game is on the line," or some crap that cannot be measured by statistics/evidence.

An Italian Communist named Gramsci came up with an elaborate theory of "cultural hegemony" to reconcile why the European working class preferred, voted, and acted like capitalists rather than the revolutionary workers they should have been according to Marxist theory.

It is true that DA2 sales figures and reviews on sites like metacritic and Amazon do not strictly measure how DA2 was received by the Dragon Age Community.  But they do unambiguously show that DA2 was less popular and was less well received by that community as a whole - something that Bioware has obliquely acknowledged.  Posts such as social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/315/index/8565245/1#8566433 and social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/315/index/8565245/1#8566629 and social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/315/index/8565245/2#8571009 are using their own personal experiences which cannot be confirmed, measured, or refuted to explain a position that the available evidence does not support.

We all do it.  Hell, I don't care what the statistics say, Joe Montana was the best quarterback to ever play football

Modifié par Joy Divison, 28 octobre 2011 - 12:41 .

[BY-TOR STORMDRAGON]

WHO cares anyhow? The only question is individually- did you like the game? After all, once in hand- you were one of the buyers and owners. I think we all know the storm created by it's unfinished/untimely release.

[NedPepper]

MerinTB wrote...

nedpepper wrote...

This is merely conjecture on my part, but here goes:

Dragon Age; Origins was a game that captured a zietgeist. It became a game gamers decided to buy because there was a lot of talk about it. But the metric data and probably every one on this board knows people who bought the game and stopped playing after the origin because they didn't like it. My own stories I heard: It was too slow. It was boring. It was weird. I know a lot of people who bought Origins, and it's weird how many of them stopped playing right at Ostagar. These people are not RPG fans. So the game sold well, but the non-RPG gamer hated it. The real question is why they bought it to begin with?

So, Bioware tries to fix that problem by speeding it up action wise. Origin fans bought DA 2, and were going to regardless. Then came the RPG whiners who trolled metacritic and gave the game a zero.

And the decisions made then split the core audience. Bioware is in a very tricky posiiton here. The DLCs have been made specifically for a niche audience. The Bioware forums are just a small vocal part of the people who bought DA2, but it's still just a tiny piece of an already shrinking core audience.

The reality is that the great RPG you guys loved in Origins wasn't well liked by the average gamer. If Bioware would have made Origins 2, a game identical to the first, I honestly believe the numbers would have been the same.

Also, this forum is the only place I hear such negativity. I know a lot RPG gamers who simply don't do the whole posting on a message board....and they LIKE Dragon Age 2. Some, more than Origins.

At this point, Bioware has an idea of what the core audience wants, but the sales will never be like Origins, because Origins was an oddity. It was a best selling game that half the consumers disliked.

Fantasy RPGs like Origins are not traditionally HUGE sellers. I honestly believe it was just an anamoly.

The secret to this franchise going forward is continuing to experiment and to give the people who have fallen in love with the story and the world new and exciting things. Recreating Origins will not suddenly produce numbers like the first game did. I just don't believe it. This is a franchise for a niche audience, and will probably always be so. And there's nothing wrong with that.

There is an awful lot of conjecture in there, for certain.

A few things I'd note:

- the common addage that "the forums are just a small percentage of the customers" is true, but "the forums are not representative of the whole of customers" is not; you cannot assume that people on a forum are or are not representative of customers as a whole.  Reason tells us there are more purchasers of DA:O or DA2 than there are forum members, yes... but logic does not tell us that the subset of customers on the forums represent any other specific subset of customers other than the subset that have computers and visit forums; market research will assume that a random sample from a given location (say, a mall or a movie theater) are representative of the public as a whole, even if the public as a whole doesn't necessarily visit malls or movie theaters.  Regional differences account for more than specific locations - so if there were separate North American versus European boards, for example, this might matter... but assuming that people on the forums skew to a certain kind of demographic other than "people who visit forums" is unsupportable without evidence.  I, personally, have seen love and hate of DA2, conservatives and liberals, religious people and agnostics, super-hero fans and people who hate said comics and movies, etc.  I think the forums are pretty eclectic with the only really skewing factors being 1 - people who have access to a device that allows them to post on forums, 2 - a desire to post on forums, 3 - some level of interest in BioWare.  Any other guesses as to how the demographic is skewed is conjecture.

- fantasy RPGs don't sell Call of Duty numbers, unless you count WoW.  If you think WoW is an outlier, then Call of Duty should be an outlier, and then you have to compare to Madden numbers for "big outliers".... and yet Diablo is one of the best selling games ever, while there are tons of sports and shooter games that do horribly.... so, in actuality, saying DA:O selling well should not count for considering why DA2 sold less well all because of genre is silly, especially by genre.  A better measurement, rather than genre, would be to compare how well sequels sell in general.  And I thnk from Final Fantasy to Madden to Call of Duty show that sequels don't always sell significantly less than their predecessors, though they can - and that will largely depend on quality (or perceived quality, at least) of each given iteration.
- all genres are niche audiences, even the best selling genres; as successful as Call of Duty may be, you'll find more gamers who don't want to play it than do.  Less than majority might not be enough to qualify as "niche" but unless you add in Facebook game players and Wii owners and smartphone Angry Birds people, video games are still a niche audience as a whole;  if done well, any genre can transcend it's audience - the movie Iron Man sold to MUCH MORE than Iron Man comic readers, the movie Lord of the Rings sold to MUCH MORE than Tolkien readers, and even the Superbowl is watched by MANY MORE PEOPLE than football fans.

- if this forum is the only place you hear negativity about DA2, you've not visited much of the rest of the internet - this forum (and that Escapist review) are about the only places I hear the game PRAISED; for the record, of my 8 friends who played DA:O there's only one who joined the forums, and only briefly a few years back; 3 of them don't even have computers to get on a forum (though one of their smartphones probably could if he wanted to); almost all of them played it on consoles (so this wasn't a PC gamer thing - I don't have any RL PC gamer friends anymore, hazards of moving a lot) with one of them playing it on a Mac (that person's only other video games he plays are Madden.)  Anecdotal, sure, but you saying you've not heard negativity outside this forum means you haven't looked very hard - check out X-Play's review and Adam Sessler's semi-frequent references to the chore that playing through DA2 was.  Or here are some quotes:

"Dragon Age II is a great game, but it could have been better had it kept more of Origins’ strong points."  - http://origin.avclub...n-age-ii,53075/ - B+
"In certain key ways, Dragon Age 2 is a step back." - http://www.gamespot....iew.html?page=2 - 80
"CONS: Game lacks "epic feel" of Origins; framed narrative feels a bit gimmicky; PC players lose large battlefield view of combat; final battle falls flat." - http://www.gamepro.c.../dragon-age-ii/ - 4/5
"One can only hope that a future installment will learn these lessons and return the Dragon Age series to the fore with the kind of risk-taking and storytelling that the first game had handily delivered." - http://worthplaying..../reviews/80426/ - 6/10

That's a random sample of some bigger sites, taken from the middle of the critic's reviews (there are some higher (PC Gamer and Escapist) and some lower (PC review at X-Play, Gaming Nexus) but most are in the middling ground (about 70/100 or 3/5).  Overall Dragon Age 2 almost universally gets this response - "a good game, not as good as what came before."

- there were likely people who bought Origins who were very disappointed, and I'd bet good money that a sizable portion (if not the majority) of those unsatisfied customers had bought it almost exclusively on the slick Marilyn Manson gorey ads and Sacred Ashes trailers, all horribly misleading about gameplay (none of those ad campaigns showed ANY real game footage.)

You make a lot of speculation based off of your experiences with your friends.  Anecdotal evidence is largely useless.  I did present mine, yes, but I noted it was anecdotal... but also compared it to hard statistics one can find online and saw that the experiences around me are fairly typical of what one can glean from the internet.

Seriously, I'd give the game a 7 or 7.5 out of 10 myself - and still find myself darkly disappointed with DA2 after the superior game that was Origins.  I think I'm the most forgiving of my entire circle of DA:O playing friends.

I DID preface by admitting that it was conjecture and ancedotal evidence.  But, I refuse to simply buy into the notion that the drop in sales was simply because Dragon Age 2 was a poor game.  Dragon Age 2 initial reviews were actually very strong.

Here's another ancedotal thing:  A guy I worked with bought Dragon Age 2 because he saw the commerical for it.  This is not a RPG guy.  He didn't play Origins.  He just saw the hype and bought it.  HIS review:  "The dragon lady was cool, but it's kind of slow and there's too much gay stuff."

I may be jumping to another assumption (I enjoy it, I'll be honest), but I think a lot of casual X-Box and PS3 gamers would rather shoot things than role play.  Again, Bioware was trying to make an rpg for the masses that still tries to bring in all of the role playing apsects...I don't think it works.  I also think RPGs that give you a sandbox and a lot of things to kill can appease these people.  Fallout being a big example.  They don't have to roleplay as long as they can shoot mutants and ghouls.  And there's just enough story to keep them entertained.  (Not much, mind you.)

But, you know what? Regardless of sales, I want Bioware to stick to telling good stories, strong characters, and complex universes.  Say whatever you want about the gameplay of DA2 or the rushed feeling, I do believe Bioware was trying.  The idea that they're some heartless coroporation who has abandoned their principles?  I don't buy that.  It's cynical garbage. 

[Yrkoon]

FedericoV wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Expansion pack/DLC sales are never to be compared to the sales figures of the main game because the vast majority of gamers don't buy them.

Tell it to AC2/AC:B fans. Or to COD fans. Or to FM fans. Or to EA sports fans (Those "one release a year" games are basically bloathed and overglorified expansions set). Imho, you are using old concepts to justify the poor perfomance of Awakenings since it does not support your romantic vision of DA:O's reception.

Good old expansion set like Tales of the Sword Coast does not exist anymore. Now we leave in the age of brands and franchises and the concept itself of expansions does not make a lot of sense anymore (DLC have taken the place of them in many ways). A lot of people buy games just because of their popularity and the brand, then they do not even play/finish those titles (if we think that only 20-30% of gamers finish the game they begin).

Awakenings wasn't an expansion set. It does not expand the main story of DA:O (the fall of the Archdemon). It was a game in itself with a story and new NPCs, worth something like 25-30 hours of gameplay (longer than most games on the market). It used and expanded the same combat mechanic of DA:O. It could continue the story of your PC if you accepted the DR but that's more of a sequel thing than a proper expansion set.

Nowaday if a franchise is really popular, then the sequel should sell nearly as well, whatever the devs said. Digital downloads? Maybe on PC. But look at the drop on consolle, wich is the crux of the matter and wich is much more radical than the drop on PC. Look at metacritic review/user score on consolle vs. pc for DA:O. The difference is hard to dismiss.

That maybe can even offer an alternative explanation to the changes made to the chore game and even to the rushed nature of DA2. Have they screwed it big time? Yep. But that does not mean that their motivation were wrong (at least, from a business perspective).

 No, I'm NOT going to get myself dragged into a tedius semantics discussion about  what the definition of Expansion Pack or DLC is, because it has squat to do with the point.  The fact of the matter is that  additions to a game (what we were discussing)  don't EVER sell as much as the game they're made for.  So comparing  their sales  tells us nothing.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 28 octobre 2011 - 02:18 .

[Sinuphro]

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game. maybe if u studied organizational behavior, business communication and marketing principles in college, u would had understood why DA2 was a failure. There are ways to tell when a game would be a total failure.

[Morroian]

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game.

Not sales alone there are numerous examples of great pieces in any media not selling well.

[Zjarcal]

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game. maybe if u studied organizational behavior, business communication and marketing principles in college, u would had understood why DA2 was a failure. There are ways to tell when a game would be a total failure.

Is that comment supposed to be a joke?

Since when does a game that doesn't sell well immediately equal bad game? Seriously, I mean... *facepalm*

[Mr.House]

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game. maybe if u studied organizational behavior, business communication and marketing principles in college, u would had understood why DA2 was a failure. There are ways to tell when a game would be a total failure.

Then this must mean Avatar is the best movie ever then and Call of Duty is the best series ever.

[dheer]

nedpepper wrote...
Argue my points, dude.  If all you have to do is fling weak insults, go somewhere else.  If you want to talk about my ideas, then let's talk.

To what end, dude? I'm not slinging insults, weak or not.

Most of your points are silly. Why try to argue with them? I just think it's interesting the lengths people will go to.

Modifié par dheer, 28 octobre 2011 - 03:24 .

[NedPepper]

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game. maybe if u studied organizational behavior, business communication and marketing principles in college, u would had understood why DA2 was a failure. There are ways to tell when a game would be a total failure.

......

I honestly don't even know how to respond.  I think I'll just let your idiocy stand for itself.

[NedPepper]

dheer wrote...

nedpepper wrote...
Argue my points, dude.  If all you have to do is fling weak insults, go somewhere else.  If you want to talk about my ideas, then let's talk.

To what end, dude? I'm not slinging insults, weak or not.

Most of your points are silly. Why try to argue with them? I just think it's interesting the lengths people will go to.

Yours too.

[seraphymon]

Morroian wrote...

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game.

Not sales alone there are numerous examples of great pieces in any media not selling well.

Is that comment supposed to be a joke?

Since when does a game that doesn't sell well immediately equal bad game? Seriously, I mean... *facepalm*

While partially true. He isnt saying because of low sales, but because of the "drop" in sales. Thats what makes a huge difference.

[bEVEsthda]

nedpepper wrote...

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game. maybe if u studied organizational behavior, business communication and marketing principles in college, u would had understood why DA2 was a failure. There are ways to tell when a game would be a total failure.

......

I honestly don't even know how to respond.  I think I'll just let your idiocy stand for itself.

Sinuphro is entirely correct. So maybe you shouldn't sling around "your idiocy" so much?

You're probably thinking, like some other posters, that because there are good products that sell poorly, etc. But nope. Doesn't apply. DA2 had first rate marketing and availability. And it also had the reputation of DA:O. All things which can be seen in early sales, before word of mouth got around and killed it.

No, a drop in sales signify a failure of some kind. And if the market is there, and the marketing, availability and awareness, then it's the product.

[Rorschachinstein]

Funny enough. Dragon Age 2 has about 1.3 million sales right now. However DA:O has about 3 Million. It was in no way a failure but something did go wrong. You have to ask the right questions as to why it happened. Massive pirating maybe. Lack of interest.

But you guys keep pointing towards word of mouth.

[FedericoV]

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Funny enough. Dragon Age 2 has about 1.3 million sales right now.

I don't know where you make up those figures. I heard an interview with Laidlaw on Major Nelson's podcast before MotA lunch and Major talked of 2+ million copies and Laidlaw has not corrected him. 

[FedericoV]

Yrkoon wrote...

 No, I'm NOT going to get myself dragged into a tedius semantics discussion about  what the definition of Expansion Pack or DLC is, because it has squat to do with the point.  The fact of the matter is that  additions to a game (what we were discussing)  don't EVER sell as much as the game they're made for.  So comparing  their sales  tells us nothing.

Perfect, then don't use the semantic artifice like "addition don't sell as well as the original game". Or explain to me AC2 and AC:B sales. Awakening reported sales figures sign a dramatic drop on Xbox sales (PS3 are unkown since they were digital). If sales=popularity wich is the whole argument of the thread, Awakenings was not popular however you put it.

[FedericoV]

MerinTB wrote...

Metacritic scores:


DA2 - PC: 82/4.2 ; 360: 79/4.4 ; PS3: 82/3.9
DAO - PC: 91/8.3 ; 360: 86/7.6 ; PS3: 87/7.6
Diff % - PC:90/50 ; 360: 91/57 ;    PS3:94/51
What exactly are you trying to say about those scores? 

I was not talking of DA2's reception. We know it's been bad. That's the point I'm trying to make:

1) The reception of DA:O on consolle was mediocre (not good or bad: mediocre). DA:O user score on consolle on metacritic for example seems more "meh" than anything to me (at least if you look at the reception of real popular games in terms of vote and numbers of user reviews). Bioware have indirectly confirmed that it's the case with their DA2's marketing campaign (good or bad: they were trying to correct a perception).
2) The better part of DA:O physical sales happened on consolles.
3) The dramatic sales drop on Xbox sales for Awakenings (from 2.17 to 0.33 million copies) is a proof of point 1 and the old "it's just an expansion set" argument does not make a lot of sense to me since expansions to popular games nowaday sold really well and are as popular as the main game (look at AC:B sales or wait for SC2 expansion set sales).
4) I don't want to talk about semantics and you are right off course: Bioware called it "expansion set". I'm just saying that if a game or a franchise is really popular as DA:O's fans insists DA:O was, then Awakenings should have sold a lot more on the XBox.
5) The rushed and consolle friendly dev cycle of DA2 and the Doc's talk about "new fans" coming to the franchise seems to support my point.

Sorry if the previous post wasn't that clear: I posted it in a hurry without the possibility to check things or explain better what I meant and honestly I vented too much even for me. I regret some of the arguments I've used (not my general point). It was a rushed job... like DA2 .

Modifié par FedericoV, 28 octobre 2011 - 07:49 .

[Yrkoon]

FedericoV wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

 No, I'm NOT going to get myself dragged into a tedius semantics discussion about  what the definition of Expansion Pack or DLC is, because it has squat to do with the point.  The fact of the matter is that  additions to a game (what we were discussing)  don't EVER sell as much as the game they're made for.  So comparing  their sales  tells us nothing.

Perfect, then don't use the semantic artifice like "addition don't sell as well as the original game". Or explain to me AC2 and AC:B sales.

  <sigh>  Assassins Creed 2 , and Assassin's creed Brotherhood  are full  titles.  Not some expansion pack or DLC that requires  you to have  original  installed  in order to play, like Awakening does.     Huge difference.  Since one can open up the field and attract new players, while the other is strictly limited to the existing pool  of players who own the original title. 

Awakening reported sales figures sign a dramatic drop on Xbox sales (PS3 are unkown since they were digital). If sales=popularity wich is the whole argument of the thread, Awakenings was not popular however you put it.

That would be because Awakening  is not a full title.  It's an expansion pack, or if you prefer, it's a DLC.   It's not supposed to  sell as well as the main game.  And it most certainly isn't meant to outsell the main game since that would  be impossible.  You NEED the main game in order to play Awakening. So comparing its sales to  a full title in the IP is beyond silly.  Are you going to  next argue that Legacy and MoTB   also  signal a  decline in the IP's sales, since neither one outsold  DA2?

Modifié par Yrkoon, 28 octobre 2011 - 09:31 .

[Yrkoon]

FedericoV wrote...
 That's the point I'm trying to make:

1) The reception of DA:O on consolle was mediocre (not good or bad: mediocre). DA:O user score on consolle on metacritic for example seems more "meh" than anything to me (at least if you look at the reception of real popular games in terms of vote and numbers of user reviews).

What in the world are you babbling about?
 
   The Console versions of DA:O   got a 7.6 user score on Metacritic.    Which is a favorable  rating (higher than  mixed, higher than unfavorable)     It's not up to FedericoV to  interpret a green  score as "meh" or "mediocre".    

Modifié par Yrkoon, 28 octobre 2011 - 09:45 .

[Master Shiori]

Sinuphro wrote...

@nedpepper
the drop in sales means DA2 IS a bad game. maybe if u studied organizational behavior, business communication and marketing principles in college, u would had understood why DA2 was a failure. There are ways to tell when a game would be a total failure.

No idea what school you enrolled in, but I'd ask for my money back if I were you..

"good" and "bad" aren't the terms you use to measure a product. The main measure of a success for any product is how much profit a company made on it.

DA2 had lower sales, yes. But it also had a shorter development time (less expense on salaries, bills, etc.) and, according to David Gaider, was significantly cheaper to make than DA:O (adds to lower developement cost). Therefore DA2 might as well be just as profitable as DA:O, if not more so, despite selling less copies.

The fact that Bioware is already discussing plans for future DA games, shows that DA2 met their expectations in terms of money earned.

[IanPolaris]

Master Shiori wrote...

The fact that Bioware is already discussing plans for future DA games, shows that DA2 met their expectations in
terms of money earned.

That is a non-sequitor.  Given the pre-release hype (and discussions with perfect apparent sanity of five million copies) I think it is very safe to say that DA2 is a dismal dissapointment in terms of expectations.  However, that does not necessarily mean that they would not continue the franchise.  If Bioware thinks they know what went wrong and think they can make the franchise into a blockbuster, that's enough.

I'd say it would take at least two lemons to kill the franchise which means that the Dragon Age franchise depends on DA3 and if Bioware actually learned it's lession.

I am extremely skeptical on that last point.

-Polaris

BTW, just because Bioware shipped (sold-in) 2 million copies does NOT mean they actually sold two milion copies.  The best info I have suggests a 1.5 million 'true" sales figure (sold-through rather than sold-in) at best.