160 réponses à ce sujet

[Kinthalis ThornBlade]

VGcharts only extrapolates sales data by targeting a few brick and mortar stores. This tremendously under represents PC sales because:

 

1. PC sales are largely digital. Some publishers report up to a 90% digital sales Vs consoles up to 30%.

 

2. These brick and mortar stores are where console gamers tend to purchase their physical copies (Gamestop, EB games, Best buy, etc), NOT PC gamers who most often shop at stores NOT sampled by VGcharts (micro center, Amazon, Newegg, etc).

 

And also every digital sale on PC brings in as much PROFIT as roughly two console retail sales, and that's for a title selling on Steam, say. But for someone like EA selling most of their copies directly from their own digital store, every digital copy is almost pure profit, or about 3 times the amount of profit from a console retail sale.

 

My guess is in that 4 months Xbox one will have sold over a million copies, PS4 over 2 million copies, and PC over a million copies, with PC bringing in more money than any single next gen console in terms of profit, even though it won't do as well as both platforms combined. But the only people who care about that are console warriors, EA just sees the bottom line, and as a platform,the PC is very profitable.

 

And also VGCharts tends to update it's console numbers but NOT it's PC numbers, either ever, or really late. For example, the day the Witcher 2 devs had announced 2 million PC sales, VGCharts had the PC numbers at something  ridiculous like 250,000. I don't even know if they've updated it.

[SilentWolfie]

People are criticizing your claims because they are so far against what is the standard for every other game out there. It's well known that on PC digital sales far outnumber physical ones, and then you come along and say "I think that digital only sold as much as 20% digital".

 

I'm not asking for exact numbers, but the idea behind speculating when sales numbers aren't given to us is that we use existing data to estimate. The 92% number is a good overview of what the PC market is line, and the fact that just over 50% of EA's total revenue was in digital sales(including consoles) is a good overview of how people are buying EA's stuff. Neither of those numbers line up with your 20% guesswork.

 

Ignoring that Origin actually does have a lot of users, no matter how you buy the game on PC you have to use Origin anyway. It's popularity isn't really a question here. You don't get around it by buying physical.

 

 

 

After searching I finally found some Battlefield 4 PC global players data (2.5 million registered vs 1 million~ hard copies in vgchartz, 7+ million in total sales including consoles, probably inaccurate as of this post timing). This is probably the closest relevant comparison. It's certainly not the 92% to 8% comparison (60:40 comparison, digital vs physical), but I'm quite surprised that many people use Origin to purchase things. Perhaps PC sold the same number of DA:I as PS4 did or even more.

[omphaloskepsis]

What's there to question the hard copies of the PC numbers? I can't give you the digital numbers and nobody except Bioware/EA can. The best I can do is give you my opinion. Other than the 26 GB download, origin not being popular, people still prefer a physical copy on online polls, there's no other valid information that I can give you. Some of you keep attacking my opinions, which is fine, but I have to remind all of you multiple times that I cannot and am unable to tell you concrete stats of digitially sold copies of DA:I.

 

It is in my opinion that consoles outsell the PC version at least 4-5 times. That is all. And finally I'll edit the title to get some extra clarity.

It took me about an hour to download and install DA:I, which is a lot faster than driving to a store, buying it, driving home, and then running the installer, and that way I don't have all of the junk from the packaging, looking for the media in a few years, etc.  Also, most (or all) Origin and Steam titles these days require the respective client for DRM.  So you have to use Origin even if you buy a physical copy of the game.

 

Also: three years ago, the various industry analysts were estimating digital sales at between 50% - 90%.  Let me repeat that: 50% was a conservative estimate three years ago, and you want to estimate at less than half that in 2014.

 

Your whole argument boils down to: you hope that console sales are much greater than PC sales, and you'd rather make up data than even try to make an honest estimate.

 

But the whole argument is moot.  If those VGchartz numbers were accurate at all, Bioware would be in big trouble.  They'd need ten times those numbers to be considered successful by their parent company.

[AshesEleven]

god now I'm worried hopefully the sales in the first few months will be good enough for EA so that we can get DA:4
otherwise I'll be sad and pissed

Don't be worried . The game is likely selling well. We will know for sure soon.

[Cyonan]

 

But the whole argument is moot.  If those VGchartz numbers were accurate at all, Bioware would be in big trouble.  They'd need ten times those numbers to be considered successful by their parent company.

 

The main thing to remember here is that these numbers are USA only, not worldwide.

 

US is a huge market for them, but I would say that even if you take VG as 100% accurate here that we can assume Inquisition has likely already broken 1 million sales worldwide if the US alone is sitting at around 550k.

[DLaren]

I'm happy this game isn't selling well...

 

That's not a slight against the good folks at Biolware who poured their hearts into this game -- I think Inquisition is a great game, but Origins is legendary; and I want the direction of this franchise to return to its roots.

 

Origins sold ~6M as a new IP with zero hype, but the hardcore PC community helped it  move units with word-of-mouth. EA has moved further & further away from Origins with every new Dragon Age release, and so far all it has to show for it is reduced sales and poor word-of-mouth each time.

 

Selling ~1M units for a game as hyped as Inquisition is disasterous -- they were chasing Skyrim, which has sold ~25M.

 

Maybe its time to try chasing Origins...there are at least 6 million of us ready to buy that kind of game.

[AshesEleven]

I'm happy this game isn't selling well...

That's not a slight against the good folks at Biolware who poured their hearts into this game -- I think Inquisition is a great game, but Origins is legendary; and I want the direction of this franchise to return to its roots.

Origins sold ~6M as a new IP with zero hype, but the hardcore PC community helped it move units with word-of-mouth. EA has moved further & further away from Origins with every new Dragon Age release, and so far all it has to show for it is reduced sales and poor word-of-mouth each time.

Selling ~1M units for a game as hyped as Inquisition is disasterous -- they were chasing Skyrim, which has sold ~25M.

Maybe its time to try chasing Origins...there are at least 6 million of us ready to buy that kind of game.

If the game doesn't sell well, they won't make another game like origins though. Why would they? They would make a much cheaper game like DA2, something that doesn't take 4 years and a lot if resources. I can't imagine why you'd want this game to sell poorly if you're enjoying it...

Also I'm fairly certain no one was planning for this to sell as well as Skyrim.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Those numbers seem reasonably sound, but I'd rather wait for the NPD report.

[Cyonan]

I'm happy this game isn't selling well...

 

That's not a slight against the good folks at Biolware who poured their hearts into this game -- I think Inquisition is a great game, but Origins is legendary; and I want the direction of this franchise to return to its roots.

 

Origins sold ~6M as a new IP with zero hype, but the hardcore PC community helped it  move units with word-of-mouth. EA has moved further & further away from Origins with every new Dragon Age release, and so far all it has to show for it is reduced sales and poor word-of-mouth each time.

 

Selling ~1M units for a game as hyped as Inquisition is disasterous -- they were chasing Skyrim, which has sold ~25M.

 

Maybe its time to try chasing Origins...there are at least 6 million of us ready to buy that kind of game.

 

Current information suggests that Inquisition isn't selling all that badly.

 

You're comparing sales numbers of a game that's been out for 8 days(not even everywhere in the world) to that of one that has been out for 5 years.

 

~1 million units isn't terrible for a game's first week.

[WillieStyle]

I'm happy this game isn't selling well
Selling ~1M units for a game as hyped as Inquisition is disasterous -- they were chasing Skyrim, which has sold ~25M.

Maybe its time to try chasing Origins...there are at least 6 million of us ready to buy that kind of game.

Sigh! I get it. We all have our pet issues about which we feel passionately. I, for one, think pandas are an evolutionary dead end that we should let go extinct.

But here's the thing: no matter how passionately you feel about an issue, you still need to try to make arguments that make sense. Even if you assume DA:I only sold 1 million in its first week, how does it make sense to compare that to the 25 million Skyrim (the most successful RPG of all time) has sold to date?

[Aolbain]

So we got (supposedly) 560k hard copies sold in the US in the first week? Unless everyone shunned the concept of buying online and everyone in Europe, Australia and Asia just dropped dead this actually looks halfway decent.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Other than the 26 GB download, origin not being popular, people still prefer a physical copy on online polls, there's no other valid information that I can give you.

People are terrible at identifying their own preferences. There's lots of good research into this.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't think EB Games in Canada even carries PC games anymore.

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't think EB Games in Canada even carries PC games anymore.

 

I think you still get select releases (our midnight release did seem to have a tiny section for PC games when I wandered in there), but I stopped using EB Games for PC purchases probably around 2005 as the selection continued to decline.  FO3 was my "gateway drug" for steam (I had used Direct2Drive in the past) and it wasn't long until I appreciated the all digital nature.

[Wothen]

No digital sales really.

Basing it on vgchartz would mean that minecraft was a complete failure

[Darkly Tranquil]

I don't think EB Games in Canada even carries PC games anymore.

EB Games in Australia does, although it's not a very large selection, mostly just major releases and few golden oldies.

[lastpatriot]

It would be interesting to see how much of the sales are from digital download.  I honestly can't remember the last time I bought a PC game where I actually had the DVDs.  Digital versions are just so much easier. 

[lazysuperstar]

It took me about an hour to download and install DA:I

 

hurts to read this.. Downloading the game since Sunday with origin swallowing 2 GBs of download

[Lenseflare]

I didn't know people actually bought physical editions anymore o.O

Hell, I didn't even bother to put in a dvd drive in my computer this time around.

[DragonKingReborn]

I don't think EB Games in Canada even carries PC games anymore.

 

Really?  The are about the only widespread retail store in New Zealand that does still carry PC games in any quantity or variety.  The electronics/hardware stores that also sell games are exclusively consoles, or at least, the ones I've found are.

 

When the first patch comes out, and assuming 'the big problems' are addressed, I'll be getting my physical copy from Mighty Ape.  I like spending banana dollars.  Something about that sentence just always makes me smile.

[StingingVelvet]

We will have absolutely ZERO idea how well the PC version is selling until EA decide to tell us. That's just a fact.

 

Given that Skyrim sold amazingly well on PC according to Bethesda, I would imagine Inquisition's PC sales will reflect interest in the game a lot more than they do the PC platform.

[goishen]

Heh.  I haven't purchased a physical copy of a game since I started using Steam about 4-5 years ago.

 

I was about to like this, then I remembered my set of unused disks behind me for ME3.   Unused because I think I punched in my number, because I didn't wanna have to do it at a later time and the game automatically started downloading.  

 

EDIT :  Oh, and...   Origin (not to be confused with DA:O) isn't that bad now.  They've made massive strides in their return policy, which made me say, "Well, ****, I guess I better have a second look at Origin now."  Because it is sure better than the bone that you're gonna catch buying (and then trying to return) anything you got off'a Steam.

[AlanC9]

Origins sold ~6M as a new IP with zero hype, but the hardcore PC community helped it move units with word-of-mouth. EA has moved further & further away from Origins with every new Dragon Age release, and so far all it has to show for it is reduced sales and poor word-of-mouth each time.

You got any numbers to back this up with? I've never seen any evidence that anything like a majority of DAO sales were on consoles. Or do you mean that PC gamers sold console players on the game?

Edit: I'm only thinking of the US market, though, and I probably shouldn't be.

[Aurok]

Based purely on those numbers, I would not be at all surprised if the PC version is the highest selling version so far. Most PC game sales are digital now, and console gaming is more dominant over PC gaming in the US than it is elsewhere.

 

In general I don't think these numbers are too bad. Dragon Age was always more of a global success than a purely US success, or at least that's what they said about Origins way back when.

[Spaceweed10]

DOA? I'm sorry, but what does that mean? Never read it before and I don't find any coherent results googling.

 

Dead on Arrival...