127 réponses à ce sujet

[GN-Lelldorianx]

kevlarcardhouse wrote...

Elanareon wrote...

MW2 was ugly. MW was far better IMO. It was a money grabber because the last COD did not do well i hear.

Uh, what?  The last COD did ridiculous sales, just like they all did.  However the franchise is definetely a money-grabber.  Activision's even trying to find a way to do the same thing they did with the Guitar Hero games and put out more than one COD a year.

Which is money grabbing.

[Drake Sigar]

Inarai wrote...

I think the PC is gonna be it's biggest sales source

If this were a couple of years ago I would have agreed, but most of the people I know quit PC Gaming altogether thanks to the insane restrictions imposed by flawed 'anti-piracy' software, including myself. But hey, I guess it says something that I'm back, if only for Dragon Age.

[Koralis]

aberdash wrote...

You don't know how retail works if you think they would nearly cut the price of a new game in half if they didn't have to.

You've never heard of the term, "loss leader?"  It's when you practically give away a desirable item to get people into your store, in the hopes that they spend real money on other things while they're there.  Loss leaders don't work if no one cares about the thing you're offering.


Example:  Turkey around thanksgiving time is dirt cheap, and it's not because it needs to be especially cheap at thanksgiving for people to want to buy it.  The idea is that you sell the turkey cheap, and people also buy their potatoes, green beans, pies, bread, stuffing, cranberries, etc, etc, etc, at your store instead of someone else's store.


Do you really think that black friday deals are an attempt to move big screen TVs that no one wants to buy that particular day, but that they will want to buy (hence the higher price) in the subsequent 3-4 weeks?

[AgenTBC]

Drake Sigar wrote...

Inarai wrote...

I think the PC is gonna be it's biggest sales source

If this were a couple of years ago I would have agreed, but most of the people I know quit PC Gaming altogether thanks to the insane restrictions imposed by flawed 'anti-piracy' software, including myself. But hey, I guess it says something that I'm back, if only for Dragon Age.

I doubt that more than half of the sales will be from PC but I do think that PC sales will be a very significant source of sales.

My guess?  DAO ends up with around 1.5million units shipped.  Which should be seen as a major success but who knows what EAs expectations were.  It's not unknown for companies to have insane and ridiculous expectations for something that could never meet them.

Modifié par AgenTBC, 30 novembre 2009 - 08:50 .

[AgenTBC]

Actually if the VGchartz sales figures for PS3/Xbox360 are accurate it may end up closer to 2million units shipped which should be seen as awesome, but I have no idea how accurate those numbers are.

[bzombo]

according to shacknews.com, digital sales on steam and direct2download for dragon age were really good. go to http://www.shacknews...article.x/61304 to see week one sales and there a link towards the bottom for week two sales. it's only digital downloads, but it's a start. week one dragon age was #1 on both sites and in week 2 dragon age was #2 on one and #1 on the other. da have like 3-4 products all selling in the top 4 on both sites, which is impressive. think of what those sales are combined as one.

[AgenTBC]

Yeah DAO is selling well compared to other PC games, but we don't know what that means in absolute numbers which is what matters.

[aberdash]

Koralis wrote...

You've never heard of the term, "loss leader?"  It's when you practically give away a desirable item to get people into your store, in the hopes that they spend real money on other things while they're there.  Loss leaders don't work if no one cares about the thing you're offering.


Example:  Turkey around thanksgiving time is dirt cheap, and it's not because it needs to be especially cheap at thanksgiving for people to want to buy it.  The idea is that you sell the turkey cheap, and people also buy their potatoes, green beans, pies, bread, stuffing, cranberries, etc, etc, etc, at your store instead of someone else's store.


Do you really think that black friday deals are an attempt to move big screen TVs that no one wants to buy that particular day, but that they will want to buy (hence the higher price) in the subsequent 3-4 weeks?

I take it you've never heard of stores cutting prices around the holidays to get rid of items so they have more room for other inventory.

[AndrewN]

It won't give you the sales, but to get an idea of how well DA sold all we have to do is look at how badly the servers were thrashed when the game came out. As the server requirements were estimated and then doubled twice and this was still hopelessly inadequate I think the sales have been way above what was expected.



As to most of the sales being in the first 2 months, for a lot of games this is correct but some games sell for years. Diablo is still selling after 9 years, and I would suspect BG and BGII are as well, you can still see them in on line shops and they wouldn't be stocked if they weren't selling.

[astrallite]

Inarai wrote...

ElektroGuy wrote...

So...did DA:O tank or not?

It definitely didn't tank, that much I can say.

I think the PC is gonna be it's biggest sales source, though, and you don't get much by the way of measurements there, although the 3 different versions of it DID top the digital download sales charts for the first week, which is pretty big.

MW2 was $34.99 in Best Buy during Black Friday.

[Inhuman one]

I think the PC is underestimated in the sales.



My prediction is that at first the PS3 and X360 versions will sell more, but later on the PC version will keep selling more copies for a longer period.



Personly I cant see why anyone with a good pc would bother with either of the crappy console versions since every magazine seems to agree with it being seriously inferiour to the pc version.



Personly I dont even care about that because Bioware at first planned it to be just for the PC and EA whined about a console release.

[astrallite]

AgenTBC wrote...

I doubt that more than half of the sales will be from PC but I do think that PC sales will be a very significant source of sales.

My guess?  DAO ends up with around 1.5million units shipped.  Which should be seen as a major success but who knows what EAs expectations were.  It's not unknown for companies to have insane and ridiculous expectations for something that could never meet them.

If you look at useview reviews in Gamespot or Metacritic, Dragon Age reviews on the PC is significantly higher than the 360 or PS3. With other games there is a direct correlation between per platform reviews and sales figures.

VGA sales report 770,000 already for the consoles, I would think the PC should be very close to that number. Remember niche games see most of their sales almost immediately at release so I would not be surprised if it's hit 1.5 million sold already at this point.

Remember Mass Effect sold over 2 million on the Xbox360 platform alone, and Bioware's brand recognition at the time was not as big as it is now.

Modifié par astrallite, 30 novembre 2009 - 09:21 .

[Rixxencaxx]

I think that lack of answers from bioware means that the game sold less of expectations....

Modifié par Rixxencaxx, 30 novembre 2009 - 09:33 .

[clonmac27]

I think it is safe to say that DA:O is one of the best selling games this holiday season. Not only has it been on the top sellers list on steam consistently, but on pc.ign.com they had a poll asking what visitors will be playing the most of this holiday season and DA:O beat out MW2 by a good percentage. Granted, that site is visited by PC users and doesn't account for console users.



There are a ton of signs all over that show that has sold well. Add in the fact that DLC has allowed Bioware/EA to generate some more revenue and DA:O is a financial success for them.



But the fact that it is one of the most popular PC games this season means that it is undoubtably a hit and has sold well.

[AgenTBC]

I'm primarily a PC gamer astrallite so I say this with sadness, but I think you are overestimating the size of the PC market. I think PC sales will be very good but I think there are currently so many more console gamers that the PC sales won't be half of the total.

[Grovermancer]

EA's stock is as low as it's been in months.



I know, cause I own some of it. Ouch.

[Catsith]

astrallite wrote...
VGA sales report 770,000 already for the consoles, I would think the PC should be very close to that number. Remember niche games see most of their sales almost immediately at release so I would not be surprised if it's hit 1.5 million sold already at this point.

We'll see. I'll be shocked if the game hasn't at least reached a million so far, considering the absolutely ridiculous marketing push EA gave for this game. Seems like there was way more advertising for DA than L4D2, and that game was given a 25$million marketing budget. 

[wrexingcrew]

Catsith wrote...

We'll see. I'll be shocked if the game hasn't at least reached a million so far, considering the absolutely ridiculous marketing push EA gave for this game. Seems like there was way more advertising for DA than L4D2, and that game was given a 25$million marketing budget. 

That's what concerns me - DA:O got blockbuster-level advertising (including multiple ad buys during the World Series?) and doesn't seem like it's necessarily justified that spending in sales, although we'll have to wait and see obviously.  So I'm worried that when ME2 or DA2 or whatever comes around, EA is going to say, eh, well, you're mostly on your own - viral promotion, buzz, critical praise - make do with what you can get.  In other words, EA may draw the lesson that BioWare games have a market share cap regardless of advertising - built-in audience will buy the games no matter what, and everyone else will get MW2 or its equivalent.  I think they'd be wrong to draw that lesson, but I could see them reading the data that way.  Obviously I've strung together a set of hypotheticals here...must be in a cheery mood.

[Inhuman one]

Well at this period there are many big releases, and Dragon Age may not be able to compete with the competition because of a lack of innovation.



Dont get me wrong, Dragon Age is a great game. but it does lack innovation, it is not really doing anything no other Bioware game ever did. Cutscenes are better than ever, but they do not affect gameplay. A customizable party AI is also not that revolutionary. Its a neat little improvement but its not really something I would consider a reason to buy the game.



I just dont know but somehow I do get the feeling that Dragon Age was kind of meant to be the lesser release and Mass Effect 2 being meant as the bigger release of the two.



Then again, Mass Effect 2 seems to have greatly improved the universe of the franchise, giving it more its own look. and shedding growing beyond being just another generic sci-fi setting.



Dragon Age might need a second installment as well to grow beyond being just a generic medieval fantasy setting.



Personly I just think that Bioware should work more often with established IP's again. Nothing wrong with it and the time they would otherwise spend on building an entire setting could be used on other things.



and KOTOR online doesnt really count, Since I saw a hollywood esque trailer with a big force of jedi fighting against a large force of Sith that attacked the jedi temple I lost all hope for this game. Sure it looks awesome, but it ruins what little there was still special about jedi and sith. The more you see something, the less special it becomes.

[Maj Gant]

I've seen this title for as low as $29. If retail wanted to entice people to come in, then they would have used the far more popular and overpriced (on the PC) COD title. You aren't going to use a niche segment to lure people into the store for bigger purchases. You need something with greater appeal.

[MerinTB]

Having worked quite a bit in retail, the big sellers are OFTEN discounted early because they are big sellers. Sites like Amazon and such online have forced brick-and-mortar stores to really discount things on release.



Video games are harder to discount than many products, but consider this -



most expected best-seller books when released are initially sold at a significant discount to create a huge initial amount of sales and to get them as high in the "bestseller lists" as possible. Harry Potter books, for example, were going for 30-50% at regular stores and I saw up to 60% off online. When it released, not even just preorders for many of those places.



Games aren't quit there YET, but between big holiday sales AND PC games quickly being discounted anyway (we're at about 2-4 months for the first significant price drop on most, and many by 6 months are half price already.) Except for some big games this is becoming more true for consoles as well.



Yes, I've worked at book stores, video stores, and game stores, more than enough to at least have a small clue as to what I'm talking about.



I honestly believe the best way to tell how well some PC and console games are doing is based on how much DLC is sold. Many people buy games without ever going online (look at the number of complaints on release day about "having to register at a website!"), and many people will buy games without ever even considering DLC (some not even knowing it exists!) - and so if you see a good deal of DLC sales, well, those are a small portion of the people who bought the game.



Number of people who bought the game > number of people who buy DLC.



So if DLC numbers are good, then game sales numbers are good.

[DarthMuffin]

Unless I have a major memory lapse, I think it's safe to say that DAO is one of the only multiplatform game this generation that is truly "better" on the PC (and by this I mean more than a slight graphical advantage at the cost of high requirements). Sure we've had Oblivion and Fallout 3 with mods, but beyond that PCs haven't had much love over the last few years. Also, DAO has extremely reasonable system requirements. Notwithstanding high-profile cashcows like MW2, I'd say that if there's one game that has potential to sell the PC version in large amounts, it's DAO.



That said, it's true that the market has shifted considerably in favour of consoles. And I'm saying this as a long-time PC supporter who doesn't even have a PS3 or X360. Also, with the pathological obsession gamers have with graphics this generation, I would expect most people with average machines to go for the console version even if their PC could manage the game. Bottom line, I don't think PC sales will outsell the console version. Or if it does, it won't be by much.



As for global sales, well it's definitely a niche game. Actually, it seems like anything that doesn't let you shoot people or mash a button is a niche game these days. People call the likes of Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect RPGs; I'm sure many "average gamers" must have been shocked by DAO's style. I really doubt it will be much of a blockbuster title overall, which is a bit of a shame (though I was pleasantly surprised to see the high DLC sales, and like MerinTB said that means game sales are even higher). I find DAO to be considerably more enjoyable than Bethesda's games and Mass Effect, but then I find myself in the minority much more often than before nowadays.

[MerinTB]

Again, this is a niche thing as well, but remember that Collectors Editions of the game had sold out virtually everywhere about a month before the game was released.



Whether Bioware and EA had drastically underestimated how many potential customers would want the CE I couldn't tell you.



But considering that many versions of DAO gave away one or the other of the DLC free, those DLC sales numbers should be even more impressive.

[VanDraegon]

Rixxencaxx wrote...

I think that lack of answers from bioware means that the game sold less of expectations....

lol, right.

Bioware isnt going to post sales data here on this forum first of all places. lol

[igniteip]

It would be nice if DA:O sales figure were to exceed the mass market titles out there including fake RPGs like Oblivion, WoW, and others. But DA:O is not for the average gamers whose negative comments litter this forum. But does DA:O sales figure have to be that large for Bioware to be rewarded with the fame (and money and security that is attached) that they have cultivated with maven RPG gamers starting with their renown BG epic? I don't think that is a measure of long term consequences. Bioware's work is like art that has attracted a loyal RPG following.