ChrisDeku

@__jamiie There’s nothing astonishing about a successful portable device selling 30m+ in Japan. Since that’s on the upper end of expectations, especially considering the device is very cheap in Japan since launch day ~$190 for the base model, $128 for the lite.

Several million of those Japanese sales are likely exported to mainland Asia due to how cheap it is to buy in Japan relative to other territories.

@__jamiie That’s hardly astonishing. The PSP was not classed as a particularly successful device and it still managed 20m there. The 3DS, which sold even less than the PSP worldwide, managed 25m in Japan. Switch worldwide sales are just about to hit double the 3DS so it’s perfectly normal that it sold at least 10m more in Japan. Switch sales are pretty much in keeping with expectations.

Someone selling 20m units of a non-portable device would be astonishing(it’s basically impossible now)

@__jamiie That’s not surprising at all, Japan is Portable dominated. Even the PSP sold 20m there, which is more than any Nintendo Dedicated Home Console has ever managed.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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 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?

@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.

@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?

@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.

Does EA ever release official sales figures?

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

@Lofty1985 You joined the website yesterday and commented almost exclusively on PS5 Pro articles.

@Boxmonkey

Really surprising that pre orders are more than ps4 pro considering the games library at the half way point of the 4 was so much stronger than now

This is pure revisionist history. The PS4 pro launched after 3 years and the PS4 catalogue was significantly worse than the current PS5 library at that point. In the first 3 years it was yet to get big games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War(2018) and Spider-man. It’s big hitter was uncharted 4, and it’s launch year was anchored by the weakest titles in their respective series KIllzone:Shadowfall and Infamous: Second Son.

@GamingFan4Lyf

Then to just nonchalantly comment that Sony will do just fine taking the risk because it can make money back?! At what cost?! How many jobs will Sony continue to have on a chopping block chasing the live service grail?!

You understand that if Sony hadn’t backed this game it would still have existed and been published in the same state and everyone at the studio would still lose their jobs right? It was being funded by private investment before Sony took over publishing.The entire creative vision for the game existed for years before Sony took over publishing.

The game failed because the people making the game made a bad game.

@GamingFan4Lyf Well maybe someone did lose their job, how can you possibly know that they didn't? Unless you're given credence to nonsense Internet rumours that it was Herman Hulst personally pushing the game, which sounds like the type of agenda driven garbage I'd expect from the usual Internet moaners.

Or maybe that person who pushed the game was also involved in all the successesful games of the last decade and on the balance they have earned enough to survive one bad decision.

@GamingFan4Lyf

I said it once before - it's like a Captain firing the deckhands because the ship ran aground, despite the Captain being at the whee

Absolute rubbish. The captain was the director, creative director or studio lead. They all lost their jobs you'll be happy to know. Sony were just the money men. They lost the money.

@GamingFan4Lyf So would you be happier if a person who greenlit the buying of the game(and 20+ other successful games) should get fired and the people that worked every day for years on Concord, designing characters, mechanics of the game, could keep their job?

Sonys consequences is the lost money. When you invest money you risk loosing money. When you risk your labour on a project your consequence is you might not have that job anymore if the project you chose to work on doesn't pan out(and everyone at the studio chose to work on Concord, it was their first game and it was in development from day one)

@GamingFan4Lyf You're talking nonsense. The attempts to absolve people at the development studio of all responsibility for the game they developed is completely bizarre.

The game existed completely independently of Sony's desire for more live service games.

@__jamiie They’re actually not even remotely close to lifetime sales, they’re just the last published official numbers. I believe from the Insomniac leak Returnal had sold around 1m in it’s first year and R&C was around 4M in March 2023.

@mazzel The Nintendo Switch sells less software than Playstation every quarter.

For this Quarter Nintendo reported 39.64m units of software. Sony just reported 77.7M.

It’s kinda funny that people made such a big deal out of how much of a bomb Concord was but in the quarter it released their operating Income(profit) rose 184% from ¥48.9T to ¥138.85T.

It kind of highlights why companies are willing to take these risks when losses can be absorbed so easily but if they get it right and you make a $1B a year then that will actually have a material impact on your accounts within a couple of years.

@Banjo- You’re completely wrong here. Microsoft has always shared digital sales for this data. It’s Nintendo that doesn’t.

@Rog-X $1.8b for the whole franchise seems low, if that’s correct.

Halo:infinite is rumoured to have cost around $500m, which is believeable(concords 400m is not, 343 industries is about 3x the size of Concord dev team). it appears the full studio continued to work on the live service aspect for 3 years as they only recently announced a plan to move to UE5 and start a new project after some early prototyping.

3 years of support from a 500+ man studio would probably be north of $200m and maybe as much as $300m (average salary in Washington is way above the USA average, it actually one of the most expensive places in the country).

Add in the advertising, which was considerably bigger for Halo:infinite, Probably $100m+.

We’re now at a figure of close to $1b for one massive colossal failure. At these kinds of numbers making $100m is not significantly different from making zero.

Cutting the servers and closing down the studio seems a lot better idea than giving 343 three years of development for almost zero gain then another 5+ years and $300m+ of dev costs on another game.

Whereas on PC every month is a big month for Pirates.

Boom Boom.

Wolverine was scheduled for 2026 according to the leaked documents, they considered moving the SM2 guys onto it to push it out in 2025 but went with Venom: Lethal Protector for 2025 instead, so the team working on Wolverine is still relatively small.

The biggest flop in terms of actual money lost is likely to be Halo: Infinite which likely cost as much as $500m to initially develop and the got supported for years while making almost no money. Of course it’s on Gamepass day one so it’s hard to quantify just how much value that brings to the table.

@Korgon Media Molecule was a 50-80 person studio throughout that time period. Tokyo studio was a 400+ person team that by all accounts had become completely dysfunctional with people all over the place working on whatever they felt like and nothing coming to fruition.

None of those things are facts, you have no idea what the developers are doing next, you don’t just get to decide what the community thinks, that’s not quantifiable.

Ragnarok was a massive hit. 15m in 12 months is huge. 94 on metacritic is one of the highest rated games of the entire generation. That’s the end of the story, your hopes and dreams and made up stories are not facts.

@Gewertzx Keep telling myself literal facts? 15m in 12 months is better than GoW done in the same time, that’s a fact according to Sony's own financial releases. It sold for 70$/£70, which is higher than GoW, that’s also a fact.

Ragnarok was a 94 on Metacritic, same as GoW(2018).

These are all facts.

@Gewertzx

Sharp decline

Fake narrative. GoW sold 23m in 4.5 years(including PC Port). Ragnarok sold 15m in 12 months. Ragnarok was a £70/$70 game and was basically never on sale during its first year.

Ragnarok is not only selling at a faster rate than GoW but it’s also selling at a much higher average price point and generating way more revenue.

These comment sections continue to be alternate realities where all kinds of weird what-if scenarios play out in real time. Todays:

“What if Killzone was actually a beloved series, that was really successful and highly rated…”

@Deityjester Not really sure what this means as Sony most definitely did not publish SFV, nor was it released during the Xbox 360 era, it was released during the era where PS4 was the dominant console. I also highly suspect that SFIV sold considerably better on the PS3 considering its a japanese game.

It sounds like they offered them a publishing deal, which is very different from paid exclusivity. They would have been taking on the costs of getting the game out and actively assisting in its development.

Whenever there is an article about digital sales ratios you’ll always find the same 10-20 people in the comments explaining why the data is bad(using terrible logic, misinformation or just not reading basic information from the article).

Also, secondhand sales aren’t relevant because they generate zero revenue for the games industry. Zero for Sony, Zero for the publisher, zero for the developer. They generate the exact same revenue as a pirated copy, so let’s track pirated copies too.

@Rog-X

look at some of the games coming to Gamepass before Christmas..
COD Black Ops 6
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
Stalker 2
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Genshin Impact
Mech Warrior clans
Nine Sols

The most interesting thing here is that you actually think that’s an impressive list of games as highlights for an entire quarter. For a £14.99 service that’s meant to be the primary reason to own an Xbox. You even listed a free to play game that you can play on your phone for over 4 years.

I think the big Subscription push is truly ending and we can expect mediocre release schedules from now on.

@Nem What guys? That's a public wiki that can be edited by any human being in the world without even creating an account. It's also been fixed and states the publisher correctly now.

You can also search in Global Brand Database to find out official filings for trademarks etc. Helldivers 2 is registered to Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. solely.

They own the IP in totality, they always have. They would have covered the entire budget and Arrowhead will be working for a fixed rate with some bonuses based on performance.

@Nem What a bunch of absolute nonsense. Helldivers Intellectual Property is 100% owned by Sony, it wasn’t co-published by anyone and Sony will take 100% of all earnings and Arrowhead will be given a commission or bonuses based on milestones.

It’s the exact same situation as say Pokemon or Smash Brothers. Neither of those games are made by studios owned by Nintendo. But Nintendo owns the IP.

@LifeGirl They’ve only released 2 Live Service games and the other one, Helldivers 2, made about $500m in its first 3 months. That definitely covers the cost of both itself and Concord. So Jog on.

@RudeAnimat0r Famitsu was famous at one time but now is an absolute joke. They gave FFXIII: Lightning Returns a 37/40 for example(that means they had 4 people that thought that game was a 9 or a 10!). FFXIII-2 even got a perfect 40/40.

They have also given 30 games a perfect score and only 3 of them were not made or published by a Japanese company and one of them was Ghost of Tsushima(A game entirely set in Japan).

Thirdly they also gave perfect scores to multiple games that had cameos by the Famitsu main guy in them. I believe it was Death Stranding and 428 Shibuya Scramble(this one was around the time they started to lose credibility)

This headline is a troll, right? 😅

They're not a Singaporean based company btw. They're Russian and they rent an empty office in Singapore to register their company there.

@Frmknst

in what way? you think good animations have anything to do with the power of the hardware? oh boy

These cutscenes are almost certainly being run in real time and are not pre-rendered. I.e. they are 100% being produced by the PS5.

@Chupa_loyzer The combat is not even vaguely like Arkham style combat, which is based around rhythmic button pressing into long attack chains with complex animations cycles base around simple button presses.

Ghost of Tsushima is just normal third person action combat, its much more Freeform where you are not locked into long cinematic animations where you just press attack, attack, attack, dodge, attack to the rhythm of on screen actions and indicators.

Shadow of Mordor, Hand of Fate, Spider-man use Arkham style combat systems.

There will almost certainly be a second chapter in the Jin story, especially since there is a second mongol invasion of Tsushima just a few years later. It was probably just too much a retread to do right away though.

@Bez87 Theres only the PS4 version of the game, the patch lets it run at a higher FPS on PS5 but it’s still just running the PS4 game, there’s no native PS5 version.

Ah, it’s one of those articles where people will freely out themselves as being a chud in the comment section. Bravo, guys, bravo.

Thats great for them, but I’m also a little bit annoyed that this sold so much more than 13 Sentinels. I’d love more games like that.

Oh God, can people shut up about "My Data!" like they're a bloody MI6 agent or something.