Dragon Age: The Veilguard Sales Keep Pace with Dragon's Dogma 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in UK

Yeah, I mean once you cut through all the noise like 'Biggest Single Player Release on Steam' articles, which were just a taaaad disingenuous considering EA released on their own platform Origin until recently, I think most of us were generally tracking this wasn't setting the world on fire.

As the article points out, if this had decent to good sales, the publisher would be trumpeting from the rooftops. We don't have much data, but the Steam and PSNprofiles info tells a certain story. You can make some decent (if highly imperfect) extrapolations from that data.

That said, the important question is does it matter? And the answer is probably not. If you enjoy the game, enjoy yourself and that's alright. I'm not fan of EA or modern Bioware but who am I to get into he way of other people's enjoyment?

Have fun, that's what matters.

I hope this has done enough to keep Bioware going but this is EA. Like SE they probably over projected how much this will sell

With how much this game was advertised it seems like a poor showing to me. Even my android TV, which usually only advertises huge stuff like Call of Duty, had a banner for Veilguard. Getting numbers comparable to the niche darling Dragon's Dogma 2 probably isn't what EA was hoping for.

I was going to purchase this until I discovered its a rpg that removes certain options and forces you to follow a story without being able to circumvent that particular scene.When games start to force things upon you that's when I decide I'm having nothing to do with them no matter how good the game is.

@breakneck a-a-ah-CONCORD!

A different take might be... how badly must FF7 Rebirth have done ? Do we know sales figures for Rebirth? I know it was disappointing for SE... but they're always disappointed!

Im not far in as I waited for Pro to play, but so far it is a pretty good game - deserving of the pushsquare 8, and not deserving of any of the hate.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
And thats the problem isnt it - to some publishers a pile of apples is an opportunity to make a nice cider, or some apple pies.... to SE the same pile of apples is useless and only fit for rotting down making the place stink...

(Better analogies welcome lol)

@Rich33 from what I understand, SE have had for a long time the expectation based on beating competitive RoI through normal investment means. I genuinely think that it's reasonable if you're an investor and you can get a better (safer) return elsewhere, you kind of should. I think they're trying to be realistic. We tend only to worry about the sales side of things - not the cost side; so it's hard to get an idea of RoI. I can tell you one thing though... FF7Rebirth was very expensive to make.

So it did perfectly fine.

Also shows that FFrebirth did well as the other 2 are multi platform and FF isn’t.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner so.. reading the other Square Enix story (posted the same time) paints a different picture..."... the HD Games division lost SE some ¥1.2 billion ($24.7 million)." This includes the FF SP games sales; though is not exclusively FF.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
I do agree, but we often only have sales to go on, at least in the short term, and there is an argument to be made that in some cases its not low sales thats the problem.

The game has tanked. 10 year dev cycle, hundreds of millions spent and certainly less than a million sold, with no DLC plans you know EA have zero faith. Mass Effect 5 had better sell GTA numbers to keep Bioware alive, assuming EA don't shutter them in Q2 2025.

“It’s not earth shattering, but it isn’t terrible” is a very apt review of the game tbh - I’m perfectly enjoying my time with it, but I’m about 20 hours in and it’s not done anything particularly special. I’ve not not enjoyed my time with it though.

@Hyena_socks the plot is just so turgid, the characters dull, the environments narrow funnels from mob to mob, and there’s almost no meaningful decision making

@Loamy Hah! Not bloody likely. Regardless of affiliations, everything 'bout to get worse over here.

@Shigurui we don't know the numbers the game probably did not tank u guys always so ready to doom and groom a game

@LifeGirl once again their plenty of games to prove that theroy wrong prime ex would be bg3 which doing very well in sales had all the wokeness

Does EA ever release official sales figures?

By the logic applied here every FIFA game must be a failure too.

@Loamy I'm very confused by the constant changing of woke's meaning (except, not really because it's clearly just been a meaningless dog whistle for years now).

In reference to Dragon Age, I saw someone make an entire argument about how woke is NOT the inclusion of nontraditional heteronormative/gender identity, but rather the explicit propping up of them in some perceived 'agenda' (as though all media doesn't have an agenda, explicit or otherwise).

Just kinda wish people would be more transparent about calling out things that cause them moral outage rather than hiding behind a nebulous word that doesn't mean anything.

@Loamy I'm much preferring Dragon Age. The companions in Dogma were a bunch of kiss asses.

@C25CLOUD - Probably did not tank? EA would milk a desiccated cow corpse but they already gave up on this game. It tanked hard.

Looking through these comments, and it does prove that this game is very divisive. Maybe being ignorant here, but I would say for how long it took to make this game, these sales figures are pretty poor.

The playing figures on steam are currently 16k with a peak of 90k a week ago. This game has failed. BioWare will be in trouble financially I would imagine

I doubt it will have legs. It's an average game, with at times downright atrocious writing.. It's like a 5-7 out of 10 game, which isn't good enough for a triple A studio. I honestly question the objectivity of the publications scoring this game any higher than a 7.

@Loamy taking both games a tech point of view DD fails dreadfully, Veilgaurd released pretty much complete , bar the obligatory day one patch,
DD is out how long now ? Still runs like a a piece of ***** even the pro cant save it 🤣🤣, the companions are awful much better in Veilgaurd, combat feels heavy and actual " feel" the hits dd feels like your swinging a feather so infinitely better it is absolutely not

@scoobdoo hate to say it but I do agree in a lot of ways.

It is fun, and Solas is genuinely brilliant as a character when he does pop up. But everything else is very mediocre.

I like that it’s diverse, and I’ve not met all the characters - but the humours flat, I’m not feeling invested in everything, I keep falling off ledges because everything in the game is a bloody ledge with floaty controls, and the combat is alright.

I’m enjoying it as a chill by-the-numbers RPG but I don’t think it’ll live on in my memory when I’m done

Bioware is nothing more than a hollow corporate brand name to be ignored at this point. The real new game from the actual people who made the Dragon Age / Mass Effect / KOTOR / Baldur's Gate classics we all love is called Exodus. And it looks pretty awesome.

Im pleased that those with an obvious agenda didnt completely scupper the sales. If its tracking like dd2 and ff rebirth it will do ok over time and thats good for the devs who undoubtedly poured their hearts into making it.
For what its worth, im enjoying it. Im only about 15 hours in, but if I were scoring now Id give it an 8 as I enjoy the combat and skill trees and I like the 'Rangorok' style level design and the environments can look stunning. Choices seem arbitrary and of little consequence, they feel like a legacy feature. Writting varies from 'ok' to 'Disneyeque' to a bit 'cringe', but its not a red line I cant cross. If it werent for the issues Id score it higher than 8, but 7 or 8 seems about right for me.

It bombed..End of discussion

@Victor_Meldrew Do you think Dragon Age: Inquisition sold 16m In one week? (it didn't even do 16m lifetime)

"Dragon Age: Inquisition debuted at No. 5 in UK in its first launch week. According to retail monitor Chart-Track, it had sold almost the exact amount of launch week copies as 2011's Dragon Age II"

Making 5th in the charts for its opening week is pretty pathetic for AAA gaming standards. It probably sold around 1m at launch WW(veil guard is tracking beside games that opened at 2.5m). It reached 12m lifetime after being available for 2.99 for years.

Dragon Age is not a top tier franchise, this game didn't cost "hundreds of millions" like some people claim, that's beyond ludicrous. It uses stylised graphics for a reason.

@Stino69 It didn't. End of discussion. There you go. Argument

Sales arent as abysmal as people are making them out to be, also Veilguard will be included into the EA Play subscription within 12 months so a lot of people will be waiting for then, especially those with gamepass.

There is only so much room for games that require 50+ hours of people's time.

If a game doesn't catch the zeitgeist and simply reviews well it won't make huge numbers any more because the week after the next big game is out.

Next year will be worse. GTA VI - if it releases in 2025 will crush the chances of any other big game making decent sales as people put hundreds of hours into RockStar's latest game.

@Savage_Joe

Dude who has access to sales figures: It’s keeping track with DD2 and FF7 Rebirth in the UK(those games opened over 2m)

Random dude on the internet: It sold under 700k.

Had Veilguard been a success, Bioware would have already told it on the opening weekend…

How many games have BioWare announced first week sales for in their entire lifetime? Is it even one?

@themightyant The problem with these budget estimates is that people solely use the most expensive games ever made as their reference points. Also the Sony games allocated costs in a manner that really inflates the budget, as it pro-rata’s the cost of the entire Sony Support studios across all ongoing projects. It also includes all employee remuneration for that project during the specified time period of the development, so an executive at Insomniac getting a big bonus due to the success of previous games would fall under the budgetary period for the next game. This is part of the reason why games like SM2, H:FW are so much more expensive to make than the previous games(the reality is the resources used were probably only slightly more and the true budgetary difference was probably only like +50%).

There are lots of games that we know the budget for that are generally ignored in these estimates.

Horizon: Zero Dawn - $47m
Control - $30m
Alan Wake II - €50m
The Witcher 3 - $80m Development + Marketing (Dev cost $40-50m)
The Medium - $8-10m
Detroit: Become Human - €30m

That covers a bunch of games that were pretty cutting edge from a technical perspective, and a few big open world games too.

It’s much more reasonable to assume that DA was built within similar budgetary scope than something like Spider-man 2 that was a guaranteed 10m+ seller.

One thing to keep in mind is this games development has been rebooted not one but twice. That means the development budget was probably pretty bloated.

That and Bioware has lost a lot of trust over the years for some folks.

All this to is to say EA would be wise to not expect colossal profit from this one. They need to have realistic expectations.

@Savage_Joe 90k peak concurrent users is higher than Read Dead Redemption 2 btw, that game sold 61m units. So maybe, just maybe, steam concurrent user numbers are basically useless in projecting sales figures?

@Savage_Joe There’s also zero evidence that any DLC was ever planned. Did the Star Wars: Jedi games get DLC? The first one sold 8M in its launch quarter(lower peak concurrent user count on Steam than DA:VG btw, 46,550) which exceeded expectations according to the Official EA statement. The team went straight to work on the next game.

@Savage_Joe Also, you just linked me a blog with 30 followers, that I’m pretty sure is a AI algorithm spitting out nonsense news articles from scanning the net.

@naruball it's AAA game that was 10 years in the making and a 200 plus million budget. It won't even get close to making even. It's a failure and does not warrant all the high review scores. It's simply not a very good game. It's average at best

@Loamy you shouldnt need a Pro for the game to run well. What kind of argument is that?

@ChrisDeku Out of curiosity I looked up Anthem's earnings (on Google) and it says it earned over $100 million, even that didn't meet their expectations. I'm not one to champion the down fall of a company. But still I really did expect Dragon age to do way better than this.

Cool. dragon age the veilguard is a excellent game.word up son

@themightyant The most reliable report of Andromeda’s budget was $100M CAD which is about $73m in USD.

The main problem i see with DA:VG budget is that the previous games did not make a lot of money, they were almost certainly a lot less profitable than Mass effect games. I’d be pretty shocked if EA were signing off on any of those kinds of budgets that are being thrown around. I could see, because of the reboots and delays, it might go hugely over budget and approach $100m as I suspect it’s original budget was probably more in the $50M range.

@RoomWithaMoose
Given how disgusting I find the more vocal opinions of people who use the word woke in a negative context, and the shameless wishing a game fails / trying to convince you it has failed - More and more, every time I hear a game is woke, I have a more positive opinion of it (whether earned or not - its like a reverse Psychology thing).

I thought the origins of the term were simply a positive signification that a person or society had 'woke'n up to the fact that everyone is not the same, and that hate towards minority groups is not right.

Dring also said it sold worse than Star Wars Outlaws which you've conveniently left out of this article and it took about a month for outlaws to sell about 1 million copies so this statement by him is so vague and pointless it means absolutely nothing.

He didn't even give any percentages like he usually does. He was as vague as possible and tried to paint it in a good light, which is hilarious because he ***** on Rebirth sales but suddenly Veilguard is doing okay according to him, yeah no make it make sense.

These characters look so hilarious to me 😂

@ChimpMasta Bro, I’m a fan of FFXVI but the storyline relating to the bearers was completely one dimensional hammer bludgeoning you in the head stuff. There’s nothing subtle about it at all.

So what's almost exactly the same according to Dring? 10% less? 20% or maybe even more. He's quick to throw out the percentages for other games but it's clear he can't be trusted with this one.

Anecdotal evidence is suggesting that it sold well to start with, that then got trashed by the number of refunds asked for. The Steam numbers are abyssmal even for a DA game, which this is only in name.
It's live service origins are evident all the way through, especially with the amount of useless tweaks to your appearance you can make.
Gone is the dark and gritty DA play, replaced with a disneyfied imagery and amusing sidekicks. The RPG element is just not there, it's a paint by number approach, any attempt at player choice is gone. You are forced to tread the path the writers want and nothing else. And the writing is dire in most places.. They seem to have gone out of their way to make some of the characters just unlikeable.
Mostly it just plays like a the writers decided to record a couple of their therapy sessions and turn it into dialogue. And I am not really interested in some strangers issues with their parents.
It's one of those games that I'll complete but never replay. And now it's not even worth re-sale as the price has tanked since it got into the hands of real players.
In a world where developers like CD Projekt and Larian exist there appears to be no room for Bioware. Not that they seem to be even trying to be honest.
I would be very surprised if this is not the beginning of the end for them, if they screw ME up as badly as this they are done.

@Loamy Absolutely. Dragon's Dogma 2 one of the most creative games of the same genre and theme in years.

@ChimpMasta
I never played FF16 past the demo as the Framerate made the game unplayable for me.

If you are talking about using subtlety or not making a big thing of something in order to show that it is normal, that is certainly one way to go.
For example, in romance systems in games, given the usually small number of (sometimes very bad) choices, I would always prefer a simple system that does not label every romanceable character, but simply allows you always to romance them, irrespective of their and your characters gender. This system tends to prevent the addition of stereotyped characters too.
For a further example, I really liked the way the character Sirona was handled in Hogwarts Legacy.

That said if a game is too heavy handed, it is not a reason to hate on the game, which is very different to just not liking how the game handles something.

Hopefully it sells well and EA set a realistic expectation for it. While the people hyping it up as GOTY seem to be talking out of their ass, it’s clear at the very least that this is a good solid game. Which for BioWare is at the very least a solid W.

@TruestoryYep Sarcasm Mode Activated:
Sure lol, that is exactly who I was referring to.

@Loamy oh crap, my apologies! I completely misread the comments!

@breakneck what was that Sony studio game that got closed down recently because of the overspend and lack of sales?
Not all Sony games are bangers.

@Loamy
Fair enough. I only see it regularly being used as a label, by those negative to inclusion, these days.

You decided to write a professional article and use the word "hater". Really?

Can you be a bit more descriptive and explain that it's a mix of people that align themselves with different ideals and haven't played the game, so they're just giving low scores for that reason with people that played the original trilogy and are disappointed with the lackluster dialogue and lack of impact on the choices.

By saying hater, you're absolutely not helping with establishing any dialogue between opposing opinions. Just helping with the divide.

If you're going to write a professional article, be professional.

@Sveakungen “Forced” gender politics is when you give people a choice they can completely ignore? Sounds backward.

@Hoodie718 But it's not a choice. If you want the 'good' ending you have to simper and agree with all the crap spewed forth by some of the characters. There is no choice to disagree with them, there is no choice to truly ignore them. In this game choice boils down to being forced to agree with them. Which is no choice at all and definitely removes the RP from the G. And in this case the G is pretty dire as well.

@cuttlefishjones How so? I haven’t finished the game and don’t want to spoil it, but a quick google for trans character in Veilguard seems to only return results referencing the option for the player character to be trans. Which actually seems like a step back from the previous game where there was a trans party member.

Either way, the whining about inclusion is beyond tired at this point. Considering that we just elected a fascist president here in the US after he campaigned on fearmongering about trans people, it’s actually incredibly dangerous.

@Loamy Most everyone who says woke is meaningless knows what it meant and what it's generally supposed to mean. Calling it meaningless is a response to the droves of people who use it in different contexts to mask bigotry or their misunderstanding of history and its systemic affects. Anti-wokism can be transphobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-elite, anti-media — it can be whatever, hence it isn't really anything. Like I said, it's a dog whistle — you pretty much said the same yourself.

The most consistent thing I see is that wokism is about pushing an agenda. Usually an anti-white, anti-patriarchal agenda. And, like I said, all media has some agenda. All the anti-woke media and commentary — surprise, surprise — has a pro-status quo agenda. For that reason, among others, it's pretty clear to me that 'agendas' isn't what anti-woke is about; it's about silencing perspectives that challenge the status quo and perturb the individual. Or moral outage based on the arbitrary sense of 'normal.'

As for "what's a woman?" Absolutely no one struggles to define what a woman is regardless of their views on gender-roles and the supposed binary. It's always been a weird philosophical 'got'cha' that both wrongfully assumes it throws off the gender-liberal and that womanhood isn't a mailable thing even before getting into gender-performance and the choice of gender representation. A woman — like a man (I didn't even get into how weird it is this philosophical question is exclusively about womanhood when all the same arbitrary dilemmas apply to manhood, let alone how it's usually men answering the question) — is whatever you define a woman as. That might be a biological definition, a socio-performative definition, a maternal definition, an objectifying definition, a manhood-alternative definition, a moral-expectation definition ("a real woman would never betray her heart"),etc. As far as I'm concerned, the only madness here is that there are people who think there's no conversation to be had about the philosophy of womanhood, manhood, and gender.

And I won't go on a long rant about this one, but between the British empire only recently controlling 1/4 of the global population, the USA using it's super power status to influence governments throughout the globe, and the easily proven disproportionate distribution of power and representation, it's insane to me that 'contemporary systemic oppression' isn't considered real by a subsect of people. Or, at least, isn't considered problematic.

I am very open to middle ground, hence my stance on "what is a woman?" And I'm not trying to attack you; I'm sure you're a fine fella. I typically remove politics from someone's personal merit anyways.

But using/defending 'woke as derogatory' does align you with bigots. That's one reason I would say you shouldn't hide your views behind that word: at best, it clouds your actual opinions, and, at worst, it emboldens the actually racist, etc. bigots.

I will say, though, while I'm sure there's more nuisance to this statement that isn't being disclosed, your seeming summary of transgenderism as "bodily mutilation" up there followed by saying you're not, "any kind of phobic," is not a great look.

I don't hate it, but it's a bummer that it was once my most anticipated game. I used to be genuinely giddy about dragon age, and granted I'm 10 years older now but I miss being giddy about games. It's gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but it's missing the depth and the edge too, I think. I mean, the veil jumpers are Dalish elves that welcome everyone to join them - when we've only ever been told that the Dalish elves are hostile isolationists who actively dislike most other people.

The Antivan Crows are...a friendly local militia I guess? they hang out on rooftops in leather and sip wine in a sexy manner? They oppose tyrannical occupation for the good of the people, not because they're being hired to by the ruling classes? I thought these dudes were assassins. That one house of repose guy you meet in inquisition is more sinister, and he's got a french accent.

There's never been a DA game everyone universally loved, not since Origins anyway, so maybe Veilguard is just maintaining the tradition. I do think the fans deserved far far more, though.

Anyway, it's not the end of the world. There'll be other games, maybe even other Dragon Age games if we're lucky, and maybe they'll be good.

I’ve bought this, on PS5, because I’m a fan of the series. I’m a big BioWare fan. But this game is just objectively bad. It’s not a good Dragon Age game, and it’s a bad rpg objectively. I will finish it, and get the Platinum Trophy. But I’m 10 hours in and everything about the game is infuriating. I don’t care about the DEI stuff at all, that has no bearing on the game for me. The combat is unpolished and the parry system is abysmally implemented, the dialogue is terrible, the level design is unintuitive. The only thing that seems to work well is the dodge mechanics. The only reason I’m bashing the game is because it’s been 10 years, Inquisition is one of my favourite rpgs ever. I platinumed the Mass Effect trilogy last year, I’ve even platinumed Anthem. Veilguard is an insult.

@Loamy While I would still say I disagree with some stuff here, there's a lot of fair opinions and I appreciate how openly you're communicating them.

I have no qualms with different thoughts, only intolerance.

I heard it selling less 1M, and had 30.000 returned, which is crazy if it's true for AAA games

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call cope.

It’s very hard to get accurate information about the game. Every single site telling us it’s been review bombed also go really over the top about good it is/how well it’s been doing.

If this article is to be believed though I’m going to take it that it hasn’t done so well. FF7 Rebirth was a PS5 only game that mostly sold online so it should have outperformed that in U.K. physical sales pretty comfortably. And Dragons Dogma 2 doesn’t have nearly the name recognition of Dragon Age.

You have to remember the media is saying this is the best dragon age game ever and it was the most expensive ever. So just getting by surely has to be deemed a failure.

@Cloud39472 Not necessarily. UK chart is U.K. only and it only counts physical copies sold. It’s not a great metric but it’s one of the few genuine sources of information. I think people are getting under a million sold by the amount of players that have been on steam and industry insiders.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Rebirth did alright but remember it was PS5 only. So it still presumably has sales to come for PC and/or Xbox.

Haven't played it or any dragon age game yet but from the gameplay I was watching this isn't going to get me to try one anytime soon!

@Justin113 Who am I intolerant to, exactly? Women? All your bullet points are debatable and — reaching back to one of the main themes of my pleasant exchange with Loamy — loaded with nuisance.

I'm not infringing upon a woman's right to exist and protect themselves. So how am I intolerant? You're speaking for an entire demographic that I'm assuming you're not apart of (...your username is Justin, I think it likely you're a man), and generalizing talking points to say a marginalized group shouldn't exist. Which is intolerance. Again, feel free to explain to me how I'm intolerant. At best, you can argue ignorant. Intolerant...doubtful.

And to address your specific claims: there are practical solutions to these problems that don't necessitate the eradication of an entire demographic. Like private bathrooms, more diverse sports classes, and actual tolerance. A woman can be offended about a trans-woman claiming womanhood — that's their right. Just like a white man can be offended by working under a black man — also their right. But just because they have a right to feel that way, that doesn't mean it's not intolerant.

@Savage_Joe "And the biggest indicator of all, Bioware canned all plans for DLC"
Can you find a post where EA talk about their plans for DLC that they then cancelled? Because over a month before the game came out, they said there wouldn't be DLC, it wasn't something said only after release. And at no point did they say they planned for DLC.

And incidentally, the only time I can think where DLC plans have been cancelled was with FFXV. One of the best-selling FFs, having sold over 10 million as of 2022. So even if your fictitious point was true it wouldn't relate to the success of the game. But as far as I can see it, it's not true anyway.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare I'm convinced Square Enix won't be satisfied with sales numbers until all 8 billion people on the planet buy their game.

dont get the hate goty easily the writing is some of the bests since george orwells 1984

@RoomWithaMoose This is one of the greatest comments I've read on this site. Expressed so eloquently. And I agree completely.

When I see people say "there are two sides"; all I see is one side is for hatred and suppression, and the other side is for compassion, and, well basically, letting people be who they want to be, and love who they want to love. For me personally, this kind of inclusion in games like this is to make those people feel seen, feel heard; I have absolutely no problem with it; doesn't negatively impact my enjoyment at all. I think it only upsets some people because they read too much on the internet, and perhaps their perception of certain demographics is skewed.

@Cloud39472 Honestly I do think a lot of the positive reviews for dragon age have been faked/bought or in many cases with user reviews, inflated to fight the review bombers.

It’s fine to like the game but I think the general consensus is that it’s objectively pretty average, with decent enough gameplay, great production values and below average writing. It shouldn’t be getting 10s anymore than it should be getting 4s I don’t think. Anywhere between 6-8 seems correct.

@JB_Whiting This will probably be the most divisive thing I've said in this thread (good thing no one's likely to read it, I guess), but I've never understood how 'diversity, equality, and inclusion' could be positioned as a bad thing.

I get the cynical side of the argument: companies don't actually care about marginalized groups and are just trying to use these things as selling points. I can even empathize with the group that finds it overbearing — not agree with, just empathize. And, or course, DEI in media isn't even really what DEI is; how the workplace approaches DEI initiatives is worth scrutinizing, even though the inherent positives of it far outweigh its bureaucratic failures — to me, at least.

But regardless of all that, we got people out here saying 'inclusiveness' is inherently bad... I just really can't understand that. Art has always been about sharing the human experience from different perspectives; that is art's noblest pursuit. That feature is lost when only a handful of adjacent perspectives get the time of day in popular culture, and I would think breaking away from such ethno/gender normality would universally be considered a good thing. Not drowning out the norm, but creating a diverse space where everyone has an opportunity to share.

And don't even get me started on "equity." I always thought the majority of humans believed in equity, it just seemed like it should've been instinctual as globalization marched on.

@Cloud39472 objectively simply means fair, or more not influenced by feelings or opinions. Almost all of the very low and very high reviews come with comments about how the game opposes or supports their world view.

Everyone just reviewing it fairly on a scale against every other game out there seems to be finding that 6-8 margin. It’s an average game.

Also they mostly didn’t send review copies to people who were critical. It caused a lot of criticism as people who didn’t like the first play event didn’t get a review copy. There’s plenty of evidence they tried to skew reviews in their favour but I don’t think that’s a terrible thing, it makes business sense.

As for reviews in general, any reviewer who relies on the game company for revenue is bias, even unconsciously so.

No, Dragon Age Veilguard is not keeping up with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth sales.

FF7 Rebirth sales - 3 million+ (2 million from Feb launch til April)

Dragon Age Veilguard: under 500,000 with vast refunds on steam. Currently has 32,000 active player's. It has under performed the poorly sold Star Wars Outlaws which sat at 1 million.

And both of these games have done very poorly compared to FF7 Rebirth despite being on not 1 - but 3 platforms.

@Cloud39472 6-8 is pretty average for a AAA title with high budgets and expectations. It’s good if you compare it to games from smaller studios but something like Dragon Age should be really looking for 8-10. Origins being an 8 doesn’t really impact review scores, most credible reviewers don’t compare against other games.

As for reviews I guess they have to send to some people but it was a definite thing where press members who weren’t wholly positive in their previews weren’t granted review copies when they usually get them. Fexxtra Life and a few others. And they weren’t even that critical and certainly not part of the anti-woke media. Outlets like IGN simply can’t be trusted when a large proportion of their income comes from EA advertising the game on their website.

Companies want to control the narrative of their reviews as much as they can of course they do. That’s why they send out free stuff to them.

I’m glad you like the game.

The game hasn't even broke a million sales, if it had, we would have heard about it.

This was 10 years in development, it is a very safe bet that it had a minimum budget of 150 million without marketing.

This needed to sell at least 5 million to break even.

@Cloud39472 AAA games are expected to be better than Indy titles though. Traditionally reviewers give scores for visuals, music etc. So wouldn’t it make sense that there is higher expectations on a game with huge budgets, the best graphical designers and video game composers than there is on undertale which was all done by one guy?

You can score Veilguard whatever you like, doesn’t change the fact that for most people it was disappointing and could have been better. Whether it ticks boxes to get review scores is neither here nor there, it could be the greatest game in the world in all other respects but the dialogue is still so bad it puts most people off playing.