Vidya Games Thread

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

No shit.

Make a good game. It's stupid easy to sell a good game. It's incredibly hard to sell a bad game. If you give me an actually good game that hits some demographic group well enough, it's like 100k to get that thing into the stratosphere. You just need a couple of streamers. AmongUs was a globally phenomenon because 1 decently sized streamer found it and inadvertently figured out how to market it. The game had been out for 2 years at that point. Move the chart back to see.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

Another update on Schedule 1. It just hit its peak for the day based on what its normal peak hours and it didn't just hit 200k, it completely blew all the way up to 234k. Also note its lowest point for yesterday, which is 65,900. Assassin's Creed Shadows topped out at 64,825. There's a chance it could go even higher over the weekend. I'm fairly confident this is outselling Shadows on revenue unless there's some real oilers buying up tons of MTX for Shadows.
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Since our last discussion, it's gone up 3k reviews and 100k activate users. This might hit 350k this weekend. It'll clear 1 mil real sales in probably the first 2 weeks. If the Dev comes out and posts it had hit 1 mil in sales of the weekend, I would not be shocked. The sales analytics for Steam Only games can take a while to catch up.

As for AC:Shadows, it's got a console fanbase that will have bought the game. It's the same cycle we see with series that either go Woke or just slather the game in stupidity. They'll get a decent launch window because it's a big company with a marketing budget and Marketing Spend becoming Sales is real. (It's bigger in Movies, normally.) The problem they run into is the real money is the long-tail medium price sales. You make your budget back in the 1st month, but you make all of your profit in months 2-4 as word of mouth encourages people to pick up the game. But it also works in the reverse direction. The Last of Us 2 might be the most stark example. They shipped/sold over 4 mil copies in the first month. It might not have cleared 6 mil by this point. That game series died on word of mouth, when the PS4 re-release sold 18 million copies.

Shadows isn't a complete flop, the problem is it likely cost 3x as much as it should have. It'll likely have lifetime sales over 5 mil and "engagements" in the 8 mil range. It's just going to take a long time to get there and Ubisoft was clearly hoping they could extract a Per Player revenue that's a lot higher from the microtransactions. Using some Whales to offset the future discounted version. The problem with so much of the loss of physical distribution is they've lost that baked in sales volume. Those games that sold 10 million units on console used to be on "shipped" copies. That's probably how they'll make the numbers look pretty, as they might have produced 2-3 million copies and put them into the retail market.

 

[UberSoldat]

Cyan Worlds cut in half

 

[RestlessRain]

On a different topic, I was going to make a point about how a big game gets sales that never play. I was specifically thinking about datamining the Forza fanbase did that found that at least 5 million copies that were sold had never played the game. Those were Sales that hit an Xbox account but never did anything in the game. That's a lot of money for being popular and showing up, something Ubisoft has been terrible at pulling off.

Which actually got me thinking about where the heck is Forza Horizon 6?

Okay, a quick check in with AR12 Gaming and the consensus is that it'll be coming this year, and they never officially announce the games until E3 Time the year they launch. Weirdly, Forza Horizon is Xbox's only 10 out of 10 type of launch in their entire library in recent years. lol

Forza regularly appears on Microsoft's Gamepass, and if you have Gamepass, there's no reason (besides memory) to not download it. Makes me wonder if Gamepass downloads count in the "sales" numbers.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

Forza regularly appears on Microsoft's Gamepass, and if you have Gamepass, there's no reason (besides memory) to not download it. Makes me wonder if Gamepass downloads count in the "sales" numbers.

I had that same thought too, but the data on the Horizon 5 was from a while ago, I think before all of the gamepass stuff went. It was a cross-gen title and Horizon has normally been Xbox's biggest seller. But the truth of game sales is 30% of sales will normally play like 5 minutes of a game. That's why they try so hard to get Flavor of the Month scale, because it's basically free money without any bad word of mouth.

Considering how many games we all have in our Steam libraries that we haven't gotten around to playing, it's understandable. But, still, funny.

 

[CalciumAnimal]

Forza regularly appears on Microsoft's Gamepass, and if you have Gamepass, there's no reason (besides memory) to not download it. Makes me wonder if Gamepass downloads count in the "sales" numbers.

they do until proven otherwise. Remember Bethesda shoving copies of 76 into tv packages or whatever?

all they care about is big number.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

Cyan Worlds cut in half

I'm honestly surprised they didn't sell the company during the IP Binge. It would have been worth more than they'd have ever made going forward. Also, they have released one product to very minor traction in 5 years. I guess the back catalog of Myst sales isn't hitting so well now?

 

[Security]

Cyan Worlds cut in half

Not sure how I feel about this. Myst and Riven are near and dear to me. On the otherhand, I've not played their recent releases, and I've not heard good things about the "new" Myst and Riven games.

Like most creatives, they usually have a 5-10 year window of their peak. Lots continue on despite the spark being gone.

 

[RestlessRain]

Cyan Worlds cut in half

Who? (Proctor trigger warning)

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

The Last of Us 2 might be the most stark example. They shipped/sold over 4 mil copies in the first month. It might not have cleared 6 mil by this point. That game series died on word of mouth, when the PS4 re-release sold 18 million copies.

TLOU2 actually sold 10 million units and that 4 million copies were actually sold in the release weekend. We know they weren't actually lying about that figure because the Insomniac leak showed that they sold 10.3 million units. The problem is that it took like 2 years after launch to reach that number and the net sales were really low for that number ($447 million), indicating that the game was enormously discounted. Seeing as how 4 million copies were sold in the first weekend at full $60 price, that's going to be around $240 million out of that $447 million. Leaving ~$207 million in sales across 6.3 million copies comes out to about $32.85 per copy for that 6.3 million copies ($43.39 per copy across all 10.3 million copies).

For comparison:
-Miles Morales ($40 glorified DLC turned full game) sold 11.1 million sell-in and $427 million in net sales. That comes out to $38.46 per copy, hardly much of a drop when the game released at $40.
-Ghost of Tsushima had 7.6 million sell-in for $397 million in net sales. That comes out to $52.23 per copy, a very minimal drop compared to its $60 launch price. The leak also showed that the remaster sold 1.8 million sell-in for $107 million in net sales ($59.44 per copy).

Keep in mind, the FTC trial revealed that TLOU2 cost $220 million in development costs while Ghost of Tsushima cost only $60 million. We also learned that Miles Morales cost $156 million to make. If we're looking at just raw dev costs versus net sales:
-TLOU2 was up $227 million
-Miles Morales was up $271 million
-Ghost of Tsushima was up $337 million

This is ignoring marketing costs and considering how heavily TLOU2 was advertised, there's a possibility it had a movie budget in advertising somewhere between $80 million to $200 million.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

TLOU2 actually sold 10 million units and that 4 million copies were actually sold in the release weekend. We know they weren't actually lying about that figure because the Insomniac leak showed that they sold 10.3 million units. The problem is that it took like 2 years after launch to reach that number and the net sales were really low for that number ($447 million), indicating that the game was enormously discounted. Seeing as how 4 million copies were sold in the first weekend at full $60 price, that's going to be around $240 million out of that $447 million. Leaving ~$207 million in sales across 6.3 million copies comes out to about $32.85 per copy for that 6.3 million copies ($43.39 per copy across all 10.3 million copies).

For comparison:
-Miles Morales ($40 glorified DLC turned full game) sold 11.1 million sell-in and $427 million in net sales. That comes out to $38.46 per copy, hardly much of a drop when the game released at $40.
-Ghost of Tsushima had 7.6 million sell-in for $397 million in net sales. That comes out to $52.23 per copy, a very minimal drop compared to its $60 launch price. The leak also showed that the remaster sold 1.8 million sell-in for $107 million in net sales ($59.44 per copy).

Keep in mind, the FTC trial revealed that TLOU2 cost $220 million in development costs while Ghost of Tsushima cost only $60 million. We also learned that Miles Morales cost $156 million to make. If we're looking at just raw dev costs versus net sales:
-TLOU2 was up $227 million
-Miles Morales was up $271 million
-Ghost of Tsushima was up $337 million

This is ignoring marketing costs and considering how heavily TLOU2 was advertised, there's a possibility it had a movie budget in advertising somewhere between $80 million to $200 million.

I always keep thinking TLOU2 was a lot more recent than it was, so that it wasn't mostly covered in the Insomniac leaks. i.e. I didn't go check the number as I was typing, lol.

Main thing with TLOU2 is also it was a massive physical release, so there's a sizable part of those physical copies that probably got sent to the discount shelf and bounced around for ages. The long-tail public reception for the game cost them over 5 million in direct sales and the per copy average. Also, that marketing budget was probably over 150 million. It was the Days Gone team that mentioned one problem they ran into when a game got pushed is they got the entire Sony Marketing budget for that year, so it functionally added like 100 million to their "cost" of development that they needed to recoup. (It appears that Sony studios operate a lot more like Music Contracts than I expected.)

TLOU2 made money, but it probably took an entire year to actually recoup that. Which, given the comedown from 1 and the remaster, is exactly why they never greenlit another one. Frankly, the fact Druckman is getting 1 more crack probably goes with why Sony sacked so much of the Playstation leadership recently. From a purely business prospective, Naughty Dog fumbled hard enough with TLOU2 to get everyone fired.

The Ghost of Tsushima costs are where these AAA games should be. There's zero reason they should be more than that unless you're talking about COD and the much tighter turn arounds. I always have a lot of questions when budgets balloon. Someone is pocketing that money via middlemen. That's always the case.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

The Ghost of Tsushima costs are where these AAA games should be. There's zero reason they should be more than that unless you're talking about COD and the much tighter turn arounds. I always have a lot of questions when budgets balloon. Someone is pocketing that money via middlemen. That's always the case.

It's almost always correlated with extremely inefficient studios that take forever to pump out a game while having a literal legion of employees working on the project. When credits include like 7+ different studios (read as: asset farms) and still take like 5-7 years to make their game, there is some fundamental incompetency at all levels from management, middle managers, and the devs themselves.

 

[CalciumAnimal]

If one man can make Stardew valley in what was it 7+ years? Why can't companies with millions of employees tons of money and far more resources make several stardew valleys quicker or a better stardew valley in the same amount of time.

even Story of Seasons (aka Harvest Moon) sucks now.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

If one man can make Stardew valley in what was it 7+ years? Why can't companies with millions of employees tons of money and far more resources make several stardew valleys quicker or a better stardew valley in the same amount of time.

even Story of Seasons (aka Harvest Moon) sucks now.

Because indies have equity in the project, literally. They make all of the money. A moderate indie success can be a lifetime amount of money. Then there's 1 random Canadian that's going to make over 100 million from Balatro.

The real problem, from an outside view, of most AAA game studios is the game isn't functional until late in development. There's way too much design tweaking going on way too late. At the end of the day with Computer-based games, the art can all be done later. Games should be mechanically sound and basically fully built before all art assets are in. There's some prototyping that can be necessary if you're doing something different with the visuals to effect the game play (some of the Early Animation Age stuff comes to mind), but games are all just bounding boxes and inputs. Everything else is flare.

Games need to be "done" a year before they're "finished". If not 2 years. You need time to smash all of the interactions together and sort out 4th order effects that no amount of pre-design can solve for.

 

[CalciumAnimal]

Because indies have equity in the project, literally. They make all of the money. A moderate indie success can be a lifetime amount of money. Then there's 1 random Canadian that's going to make over 100 million from Balatro.

The real problem, from an outside view, of most AAA game studios is the game isn't functional until late in development. There's way too much design tweaking going on way too late. At the end of the day with Computer-based games, the art can all be done later. Games should be mechanically sound and basically fully built before all art assets are in. There's some prototyping that can be necessary if you're doing something different with the visuals to effect the game play (some of the Early Animation Age stuff comes to mind), but games are all just bounding boxes and inputs. Everything else is flare.

Games need to be "done" a year before they're "finished". If not 2 years. You need time to smash all of the interactions together and sort out 4th order effects that no amount of pre-design can solve for.

True enough but i was more saying TRAPPLA EH companies can't even do half a stardew.

I probably should of said that huh.

 

[Thomas Talus]

Another update on Schedule 1. It just hit its peak for the day based on what its normal peak hours and it didn't just hit 200k, it completely blew all the way up to 234k. Also note its lowest point for yesterday, which is 65,900. Assassin's Creed Shadows topped out at 64,825. There's a chance it could go even higher over the weekend. I'm fairly confident this is outselling Shadows on revenue unless there's some real oilers buying up tons of MTX for Shadows.
View attachment 93536

Aside from missing the console userbase in those numbers, don't Ubi games have their own separate launcher that might cause some players to not show up in the steam count?

 

[UberSoldat]

Jonathan reacts to Delta Force's guns

 

[RestlessRain]

If one man can make Stardew valley in what was it 7+ years? Why can't companies with millions of employees tons of money and far more resources make several stardew valleys quicker or a better stardew valley in the same amount of time.

even Story of Seasons (aka Harvest Moon) sucks now.

I remember when Ubisoft tried to do indie-style games and no-one was interested:

Making indie-style games is a crapshoot, for every Stardew Valley there are a thousand games where the developer would have made more money had they flipped burgers at McDonalds instead. Betting on indie-style gaming is no better than betting on AAA gaming, and is arguably worse, given that large studios aren't curating an audience with the tastes required to be successful at an indie level.

 

[Kazuma]

TLOU2 actually sold 10 million units and that 4 million copies were actually sold in the release weekend. We know they weren't actually lying about that figure because the Insomniac leak showed that they sold 10.3 million units. The problem is that it took like 2 years after launch to reach that number and the net sales were really low for that number ($447 million), indicating that the game was enormously discounted. Seeing as how 4 million copies were sold in the first weekend at full $60 price, that's going to be around $240 million out of that $447 million. Leaving ~$207 million in sales across 6.3 million copies comes out to about $32.85 per copy for that 6.3 million copies ($43.39 per copy across all 10.3 million copies).

For comparison:
-Miles Morales ($40 glorified DLC turned full game) sold 11.1 million sell-in and $427 million in net sales. That comes out to $38.46 per copy, hardly much of a drop when the game released at $40.
-Ghost of Tsushima had 7.6 million sell-in for $397 million in net sales. That comes out to $52.23 per copy, a very minimal drop compared to its $60 launch price. The leak also showed that the remaster sold 1.8 million sell-in for $107 million in net sales ($59.44 per copy).

Keep in mind, the FTC trial revealed that TLOU2 cost $220 million in development costs while Ghost of Tsushima cost only $60 million. We also learned that Miles Morales cost $156 million to make. If we're looking at just raw dev costs versus net sales:
-TLOU2 was up $227 million
-Miles Morales was up $271 million
-Ghost of Tsushima was up $337 million

This is ignoring marketing costs and considering how heavily TLOU2 was advertised, there's a possibility it had a movie budget in advertising somewhere between $80 million to $200 million.

TLOU2 was also released at the height of covid so that might have boosted its sale as well.

 

[Punished Anime Discusser]

"fuck Square Enix" "fuck Square Enix" "fuck Square Enix" he screamed rolling on the floor holding a cheap T-Shirt

this man is my god and will save the company ~ Kenichiro Yoshida

It was uh
"Nier Automata t-shirt, Nier Automata t-shirt, Nier Automata t-shirt, Nier Automata t-shirt, Nier Automata t-shirt, SHIT SQUARE ENIX!"