46 réponses à ce sujet

[Rubbish Hero]

I can find figures for the console but nothing on the pc so far.

[Skellimancer]

Well i bought a copy. So thats at least one.

[Ponce de Leon]

That would interest me too. I know it was very expected as a game. For example, I may ask people from my city about the other BioWare games, they won't know, but for Dragon Age, they'll all know about it. And trust me, that's already something BIG.

[MightySword]

I think about 2 weeks ago I read up the monthly best selling chart on Gamespot and Dragon Age Xbox360 made the top 5 with about 370000 units in the US. So the PC version probably is lower than that. Not sure about international though.

[Ponce de Leon]

Why should the PC be lower than that? I mean, the PC version is better (hoping you don't start a flame war here) in sense of... accomplishment. I mean, you get the better tactical view and you can mod it too.

Or is it simply because the US are more console players than PC players?

[MerinTB]

The common wisdom is that PC sales are "harder to track" due to direct download sales. You can check out the stats for sites like Direct2Drive and Steam (and others if you find them) and Dragon Age was in the top ten if not top two for all those sites for weeks.



Still no hard numbers. All you really have are the 360 numbers from a month ago, some other numbers on console sales, and the "over $1 million in DLC sales" from about a month ago as well.

[Ponce de Leon]

1M $ in that time for DLC is not bad, considering new copies already have the Stone Prisoner which, as far as I know is the most expensive for now.

[Borschtbeet]

Not good likely since most PC gamers are thieves.



I remember when this game came out every idiot at work(I work as a computer repairman, lots of computer geeks) was bragging about how they got the game on torrent.

It seems like I'm the only PC game these days who isn't apathetic about the economics behind the industry.

[elys]

MightySword wrote...

I think about 2 weeks ago I read up the monthly best selling chart on Gamespot and Dragon Age Xbox360 made the top 5 with about 370000 units in the US. So the PC version probably is lower than that. Not sure about international though.

dark-lauron wrote...

Why should the PC be lower than that? I mean, the PC version is better (hoping you don't start a flame war here) in sense of... accomplishment. I mean, you get the better tactical view and you can mod it too.
Or is it simply because the US are more console players than PC players?

US, EU, Asia are different market in term of Console VS PC videogame sales.

In US, console game sales are crushing PC.
It's not the same in EU.

I remember an interview of Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi back in may 2008 about PC gaming.

NPD, god love 'em, they release a US retail sales report, and people take that and say that's the world picture. And it's just not true. It's not like NPD is trying to be evil. Their job is to report North American sales data. They're doing their jobs. But people are taking that and discounting.. in Germany for example, retail sales of PC products crush all other games, with the possible exception of the DS. It certainly kills all of the next-generation consoles. So if people were looking at that and factoring it in, if people were looking at WoW's subscriptions alone and factoring it in, looking at Steam sales and factoring it in.. Just look at what Popcap's doing--Bejeweled and Peggle and all this stuff--they're not in that NPD data.

If you go around and you look at all these different things that are happening on the PC, and you add them together, my hunch is that [the sales numbers] would actually be much larger than all of the consoles put together. Again, minus the DS, because the DS is this crazy thing by itself. But talking purely in terms of the Wii, the PS3, and the 360, if you added those together and looked at the whole picture, I'd bet you PC would be even, if not bigger than those three systems in terms of the money that's changing hands and the opportunity for doing business.

[Luna Lupis]

I think bioware is a bit more safe than another PC game companies. The fact that they let you make mods and do what you want with the game is a huge plus.



I work in a gaming store and we sell about the same amount on the PC as the consoles.

I try to make people get the PC one if they can cause it is better and you get more out of it. Yay for the mods.

[Default137]

It was Steams #1-3 for about two months now, and this changes weekly, and usually quite drastically, meaning its selling amazingly well over that service, and has even passed up MW2 a few times, meaning its probably somewhere up there in the millions.

Add in the fact it was selling for $30 a few days ago on Steam, and went from literally number #5 or so all the way to #1, and stayed there against titles like MW2 for $25, and a few other really good games for $2-$10 makes me think its selling amazingly well on Steam.

Modifié par Default137, 02 janvier 2010 - 05:25 .

[Trajan60]

I could've gotten it on Torrent too but unfortunately I have morals. I just forked out $50 to pay for it because I believe a company should be paid for the work they do. Call me crazy.

[Default137]

Amusingly enough, if you actually visit the Pirate Bay, and check the torrents, the 360 torrents tend to have double if not triple the number of downloads then the PC versions do, Ps3 versions rarely have more then 1,000 downloads, which is fairly amusing in its own way.



I have no idea where they idea that pirating is easier on the PC, or is done more often on the PC actually came from, probably some company who got a bad port on PC, and lost a ton of sales due to it, or who forgot to add in money made from DD, but if you actually look at the facts we can see on torrent sites, 360 is crazy pirated compared to PC.



And why wouldn't it be? I mean, all you need to do to modify a 360 is some minor tweaks, and if you do it right, Microsoft just can't catch you, all the sweeps and checks they do only catch those who messed up while modifying, most of my friends modified their 360 shortly after getting them, and not a single one has been banned yet, despite using these modified 360s for several years straight now.



With the PC, its alot harder to pirate, if you don't know how to encrypt your data stream, or forget to on one torrent, you can be caught, if you upload to much, its suspicious, and your IP can rat you out, if you download to much each month, your IP can get suspicious and rat you out, heck, just visiting a scene site can get you a keylogger that can be used to catch you, its not exactly hard to do.



I'll find it very amusing 2-3 years from now, when more companies make the switch to 360 to "avoid piracy" and end up getting their games pirated even more, as the pirate market puts even more effort on modifying 360s, which is already crazy easy to do.

[Fraevar]

Default137 wrote...

Amusingly enough, if you actually visit the Pirate Bay, and check the torrents, the 360 torrents tend to have double if not triple the number of downloads then the PC versions do, Ps3 versions rarely have more then 1,000 downloads, which is fairly amusing in its own way.

I have no idea where they idea that pirating is easier on the PC, or is done more often on the PC actually came from, probably some company who got a bad port on PC, and lost a ton of sales due to it, or who forgot to add in money made from DD, but if you actually look at the facts we can see on torrent sites, 360 is crazy pirated compared to PC.

 

QFT. There have always been software pirates, from. Nintendo games to floppy discs to 360. The problem is on every platform and there will always be people who just won't pay for anything. I'd like to remind everyone that EA and BioWare did try going all hardline on their PC audience with the DRM on Mass Effect PC and look how that turned out. Dragon Age: Origins was deliberatly designed to offer incentives for legal purchase, rather than punish those who did buy it with needless restrictions.

As for the sales numbers, I don't know. But given that a fair bunch of people here are posting as registered owners of the PC version and the fact that every major gaming site is telling everyone to buy that version, if they can at all run it, I would think they're not so bad. But you would need accurate data that covers the EMEA territories where the PC is the dominating platform, not just NPD data for North America, to make an accurate guess.

[DragonRageGT]

Lots of people who get the T copy also buy the game after testing it, if they like it and a company like BioWare is well reputed among gamers who do want support companies that make great games! Or when the game is finally released and their pre-order is finally delivered! Long live file-sharing!

What is stupid is that there's no demo anymore. Check what Risen sold thanks to its Demo!

Modifié par RageGT, 02 janvier 2010 - 11:03 .

[Borschtbeet]

It's simple. To pirate on the Xbox360 you have to mod it and Xbox360 servers can detect modded consoles and ban their users.

Recently over a million Xbox live accounts have been banned because of this.

Such risks are not present for PC gamers.



It's why PC gaming is almost dead. There are PC games out there of course but most so called PC games are just console games ported to the PC, including Dragon Age. Nothing is optimized for the PC anymore really even though modern PC's are far more powerful than consoles.



It's the fault of PC gamers who think they're some sort of charity and just entitled to everything.

[Rubbish Hero]

Borschtbeet wrote...

most so called PC games are just console games ported to the PC, including Dragon Age.

This is false.
Pc was the lead platform, Bioware have never been good at optimising.
It's also false that most pc games are console ports, most big budget games are, games in general, no.

To be honest I feel the your posts have some fanboyish motivation behind them, or something along those lines.
At least thats the impression you give.

Modifié par Rubbish Hero, 02 janvier 2010 - 03:00 .

[Jonp382]

BioWare games bad console ports? I feel it's the other way around, they're sub-par PC ports! I want to bang my head on a brick wall whenever I try to play ME on the X360.



Although admittedly, I haven't tried any of their other games on the controller.

[DragonRageGT]

Borsh, you're so wrong, from where I view the whole "pirate" thing!  From the "Is this the way to fight piracy" thread!

RageGT wrote...

PC Version costs $55 USD in my country. Dollar lost a lot against our currency or it would be around $40 bucks!

There are two very different situations usually being generalized and labeled "piracy".

One is the action of criminal organizations that have manufacturing falicities in many countries and actually produce copies of not only games and softwares but lots of other things that they had no right or patent to produce and they profit money by selling it all over the world. It is a very professional scheme and those are the guys that should be and probably are, hunted down by Interpol and alike.

Some streets in the city I live (18 million ppl, big metropolis) are crowded with small wooden stands that sells these goods. Cheap quality disks with games, softwares, all console games you can imagine, music CD, movies DVD, whole TV series season DVD's... I've seen it too in London and NYC when I lived in those cities over 20 years ago. Few aprehensions here tracked down the goods to China, but there are other producer countries too.

Now, it is almost like the drug business. The little fishes who are in the street selling also have a bunch of lookout guys with radio comms to warn when the police or any blitz are near. They vanish in the air and 5 minutes after the cops are gone, they're back. Very difficult to catch those guys. But this is the piracy I feel indignation for. They are the ones that cause losses to legit owners of the rights for those goods, not only because they profit from stealing but potential paying customers are deviated from legitimately purchasing the goods, only to save a few bucks. They could probably pay ffor the real thing as well.

The second situation is very different. People over the internet getting games or softwares that they will not profit from, for personal use, because they cannot afford it, in no way hurts companies. Moreover some of these downloaders will actually buy the real product if they are hooked by its quality or when they have the cash to afford it.

Why would that upset someone?

I remember when I was a ranked Starcraft player on Bnet and in a Lan house tournment here I met some ppl that could only play over Kali service because of their copied version of the game. Very soon many of them were on Battle.net meaning they actually purchased the game.

I have my Bioware games' CD-Keys registered in my Bioware account since 2002 and I can participate in forums only registered owners can post, for instance. there are many advantages for being a legit owner (or licenced user... argh) of a game, such as patches do not stop running the game until a new crack is available, if ever it becomes available. Else they're restricted to play an old outdated version of the game.

I understand and support anyone being upset with the first situation I list above. If there is anything we can do to help stop it we should, but not irrationally because it is dangerous. Those are mobs with no fear of killing someone. They are same "company" that makes forgeries out of "mineral water" , medicine pills, gasoline, milk, the list is immense. And includes our beloved games too, both PC and console version!

Sorry, english is not my primary language. And I made it his long because I copied from another post of mine somewhere else about the same topic... and the OP sucks!

Try these for enlightment:
foobar's thoughts on copy protection • Myths about DRM • A proposal for a better copy protection system

Modifié par RageGT, 02 janvier 2010 - 10:37 .

[Ponce de Leon]

Was thinking on a something... Strictly speaking, most of the DA:O players will have a registered account here now... If not else, just for the pleasure of having the DLC (as far as I understand it). So wouldn't it be possible to check the registered users here for a first idea?

[Default137]

Borschtbeet wrote...

It's simple. To pirate on the Xbox360 you have to mod it and Xbox360 servers can detect modded consoles and ban their users.
Recently over a million Xbox live accounts have been banned because of this.
Such risks are not present for PC gamers.

It's why PC gaming is almost dead. There are PC games out there of course but most so called PC games are just console games ported to the PC, including Dragon Age. Nothing is optimized for the PC anymore really even though modern PC's are far more powerful than consoles.

It's the fault of PC gamers who think they're some sort of charity and just entitled to everything.

Sorry but no.

First off, you have a very romantic idea of how easy a modified 360 is to catch, as I mentioned in my other post, modifying one is actually a fairly simple task, and its only if you mess up will you get caught by the server sweeps, unless you'd like to tell the thousand + sceners who modified their 360 correctly, and never got caught on any of the last 6+ years sweeps that they should have been caught by now?

Secondly, PC gaming is not dying, we can't put up the base sales of consoles in the brick and mortar, thats a given, and everyone knows this, consoles just have to large an audience, however with Digital Distribution growing so quickly, and many companies like Valve, Blizzard, and Bioware putting so much support into the PC scene, it would be hard for it to ever go under. ( And I almost forgot MMOs! )

Sure, a few games will be made 360 Exclusive, or Ps3 Exclusive, and a few might be shoddy ports, but if you actually look at the grand scheme of things, those are EXTREMELY RARE, and the VAST majority of games ( at least 80-90% ) are cross platform, well done, and in fact it could be argued the PC version is in fact superior, due to the moddability of most of these games.

No offense, but anyone who thinks that moving to Console Exclusive is a good way to help stop piracy is a total and utter fool, it took pirates two months tops to figure out how to modify 360s correctly, and while right now its not that big of a deal, because as I mentioned 90% of games are cross platform, if more companies switch to 360 exclusive, then the pirate community will be able to make the modified 360 even more stable, even harder to catch and all sorts of other things, and will make the move over with them to the much easier to steal on 360 platforms then it already is, and with 360 torrents outnumbering the PC torrents 2>1 as it is right now, I don't think that could be good at all for the Xbox Exclusive Devs, who will suddenly not be making any money from the other versions like the PC version.

[Borschtbeet]

Right right right. Modifying a Xbox360 is a simple task. That wasn't my point. The point is that Xbox live servers can detect modded consoles and ban the users as they recently did to over a million accounts, good riddance to thieving scum I say. I don't doubt their are ways to get around that, but obviously those million plus who were banned weren't aware of how.
With PC games, there is no risk at all.
Glad you mentioned Blizzard because they represent the future of PC gaming. Get used to games like WOW, pretty soon those are going to be some of the only PC exclusives we see.

Moving to consoles is not going to stop pirating completely but it is nevertheless a more lucrative option for developers since pirating is less difficult.  Anyone can get away with pirating on a PC.
This hurts PC games in the long run since while the PC version of cross platform games is usually superior, it is only a taste of what PC games are capable of.

Why else do you think a game like Crysis, released 2 years ago is still the best looking game out there by far? Even the original Unreal couldn't hold that title for that long.

PC gamers need to stop complaining about consoles hurting PC games. It's you guys who are killing PC games with your apathy towards the economics behind the industry. Drop your arrogant sense of entitlement and stop thinking you deserve everything for free like some sort of spoiled child.

This is a business, you aren't a charity.

As for Dragon Age being PC based.  Fine, I stand corrected but my original point about most games being console based remains factual.

Modifié par Borschtbeet, 03 janvier 2010 - 03:15 .

[Rubbish Hero]

This was a faiirly simple question, now it's turned into Hamlet.

[DragonRageGT]

I wish you could walk around the chinese outlets in São Paulo that sells pirate copies of Console games... those are the best sellers... no one buys PC games from them. PC games are much cheaper than console. The sale of pirate console games easily reaches the millions of units.

I never owned or played console games, so I really don't care but blaming that industry "loses" money because of file sharing is idiotic! They would never get that money to begin with. People who don't buy games would not buy them only because there is no T copy around.

The PC gaming industry actually benefits from it. Some of those people actually buy the legit copy if they like the game and decides to support the devs, as long as they can afford it. It is a fact, proven in many articles which I actually believe.

The industry do loses money when a purchase money goes to pirate industry instead of legit owners which is what happens with the console piracy!

Modifié par RageGT, 03 janvier 2010 - 04:44 .

[Panderfringe]

The majority of PC gamers probably just downloaded the game and didn't purchase it, so I'm going to guess something like four unique copies were sold.