Comments 945

Re: Alan Wake 2 Yet to Recoup Dev, Marketing Expenses as Tencent Raises Stake

ChrisDeku

@carlos82 It should be noted that the data includes all digital codes as retail sales and are included with physical sales. This is especially large for pack-in games like God of War: Ragnarok. Also, the UK is much larger in physical sales than regions like NA and Non-Japan Asia.

Games also trend more towards digital as they get older. For example RDR2 being 83.3% digital. Control was 90% digital in worldwide sales from its second year onwards.

Re: Alan Wake 2 Yet to Recoup Dev, Marketing Expenses as Tencent Raises Stake

ChrisDeku

The people talking about physical really need to understand some maths around physical sales. If the break even point for AWII is 1.5M units digital only then if it was also available physical and physical sales were 50% then the break even point would now be around 1.9m units. (Physical games generate much lower revenue per sale to the publisher/developer).

For a game that doesn’t have a broad mainstream appeal that’s a big increase in total sales needed. Is there really 400k+ players that would buy physical AWII at full price that will simply not buy a digital copy at all? Highly doubtful imo.

Re: Alan Wake 2 Yet to Recoup Dev, Marketing Expenses as Tencent Raises Stake

ChrisDeku

This isn’t unusual at all, it’s just that Remedy are being very open about it to investors. I feel like the random video game player has no idea how many games never even make a profit after years and they’d be shocked by it.

Just a reminder, this is Remedy’s fastest selling game ever, and will be their highest selling game ever eventually.

Re: Fallout Series Timeline Adds Up, Says Todd Howard

ChrisDeku

@Matroska The timeline is supposed to diverge around the 1940’s though. I wouldn’t look too much into it as the Fallout world is kinda nonsense(but works on a surface level) but the basic idea seems to be that after WWII people used nuclear power a lot more and modern computer micro chips were not invented, or invented much later, in this universe.

These kinds of Retro Future worlds don’t actually hold up under even the slightest scrutiny though, it’s more of a purely artistic approach I feel.

Re: UK Sales Charts: Helldivers 2 Returns to Top 10 in Quiet Week for New PS5, PS4 Releases

ChrisDeku

@NEStalgia

Seriously, they have the only single player AAA game that actually lives on the top 10 charts over a year past launch in memory, surpassing a Nintendo new release, surpassing the evergreen heavy hitters including 2 Mario games, surpassing even mighty Minecraft, Elden Ring, and fad Helldivers. And they don't want to make a sequel to that and instead want to turn it into another GaaS after all their failed GaaS's. So depressing.

Calling Helldivers a fad is a clown comment. Its player retention stats are incredible.

You’re talking about a physical only chart here and trying to draw conclusions from it. In March when Digital was added Helldivers was the number 1 game in the UK, Hogwarts Legacy was 9th. In Europe Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t in the top 10. On PSN Helldivers was no.1 in Europe and Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t in the top 20.

In 5 years when Helldivers lifetime gross is like 500% of Hogwarts Legacy you’ll probably understand why they want to go chasing that money. They probably won’t succeed but I understand why they are doing it.

Re: Amazon's Fallout Adaptation Seemingly Retcons Climactic Events of Fan-Favourite Game

ChrisDeku

@RicksReflection I mean it’s basically a scientific fact that the dangerous radiation from a Nuclear bomb will have decayed before 4 weeks are up. That after that the radiation threat is basically “You might have 57% higher likelihood on contracting cancer” kind of threat. It’s the kind of threat we’d take super seriously right now, but not in a post apocalyptic society.

These are the accepted facts: the dangerous parts are the initial blasts and fires. Then the atmospheric cooling event. Radiation is not a longterm factor in the kind of society that will live after a nuclear war. No one will be giving a damn about small radiation when they’re trying to not starve.

Re: Amazon's Fallout Adaptation Seemingly Retcons Climactic Events of Fan-Favourite Game

ChrisDeku

@RicksReflection

I'm pretty sure that the comet or meteor that struck the Earth wasn't made out of highly Radioactive Plutonium

It creates the exact same atmospheric conditions as a nuclear winter. You understand a nuclear winter is actually nothing to do with radiation right? It’s just debris in the atmosphere blocking the Sun and cooling the Earth.

The radiation is absolutely not the problem longterm. The most dangerous isotopes from a nuclear blast will be gone in weeks. People continued to live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thriving cities exist there. Inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone there is now a thriving ecosystem of “ Moose, deer, beaver, wild boar, otter, badger, horses, elk, ducks, swans, storks and more are now being hunted by bears, lynx and packs of wolves”

Only low levels of radiation remain for years. The kind a society could easily tolerate with no intervention, and probably only a small increase in cancer rates and some other side effects.

(longer than the month long time span that you originally said it would be".

4 weeks is for dangerous radiation, this is separate from the atmospheric cooling event. Again, a nuclear winter is actually nothing to do with radiation.

Re: Amazon's Fallout Adaptation Seemingly Retcons Climactic Events of Fan-Favourite Game

ChrisDeku

because the radiation would still be at extremely unbearable levels

I’m pretty sure this just isn’t true at all. The half-life of the isotopes is constant and predictable, it doesn't matter how many are fired or how big the bombs are, radioactive isotopes decay at the same rate.

Secondly, the worst-case scenarios for nuclear winter are based upon every nuclear warhead in the world being fired whereas in reality that isn’t even remotely feasible, as there’s more missiles than actual launch facilities by a huge margin. The number of missiles ready to fire right away is a small percentage of the total.

The Fallout games have people in vaults for 100+ years and then there are radioactive areas where the original bombs dropped 100 years ago.

Edit:
BTW the most up to date model for nuclear winter in which the USA and Russia fire every missile they have states that “However, the levels of smoke released into the atmosphere would be "orders of magnitude smaller" than those that helped wipe out the dinosaurs”. During this event around 25% of living species survived and around 50% of plant species. Thats just random animals without access to any technology or science etc.

Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Has Sold Around 2 Million Copies, PS5 Player Data Suggests

ChrisDeku

@Toot1st

exactly this even Sony's top franchises only 1 in 5 PlayStation owners buy

1 in 5 is over 20 million copies lifetime. What exactly do you think is a high sales number?

Call of Duty games sell 20-30m units across PS, Xbox and PC.

Hogwarts Legacy(best selling game of 2023) sold around 25m over PS, Switch, PC and Xbox.

Elden Ring sold around 20m units over PS, Xbox and PC.

Even on the Nintendo Switch where there aren’t as many third party games and first party games tend to sell at an extremely high rate there is only 4 switch games that have sold better than 1 in 5.

Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Has Sold Around 2 Million Copies, PS5 Player Data Suggests

ChrisDeku

I checked the source article and it states that Rebirth had a peak Daily Active User Count of 2.21m. That number suggest total sales are more likely over 3M and saying over 2m is just being very conservative.

Also, on PS-Timetracker which is a sample of around 10k people Rebirth had double the daily peak of Dragon’s Dogma2, which sold 2.5M.

Thirdly, in Europe Rebirth opened 4% above XVI when accounting for the full territory including Digital sales.

All in all I’d be inclined to assume that Rebirth sold over 3M units so far.

Re: Helldivers 2 Is Selling at a Faster Rate Than Spider-Man 2 in the UK

ChrisDeku

Spider-man 2 is brilliant, Helldivers 2 is brilliant. I’m glad that there’s a company out there making both these types of games, and to the highest level of quality and polish.

I fully expected HD2 to quickly track ahead of SM2. Helldivers 2 is the mega hit of the year, some people just haven’t fully realised it yet. 20m sales coming in 2024.

Re: Video: Our Favourite PS5 Games of 2024 So Far

ChrisDeku

Helldivers 2 will probably be the game of the year, as I suspect it will have a huge impact over the entire length of the year, will ultimately sell close to or even over 20m copies and be in an incredible state by the end of the year. As big as it is on PS it’s an even bigger deal on Steam too.

Re: Japan Sales Charts: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PS5 Sales Slip 91% at Retail

ChrisDeku

@awp69 There is only a single source for this, a sales survey called “Cesa” whose data always has a massive issue in that it doesn’t actually match any released sales data. The data is either completely wrong or the Famitsu sales estimates are completely wrong. If the Famitsu sales estimates are the ones that’s off then this whole discussion is pointless as that’s the source for this original article.

Re: Japan Sales Charts: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PS5 Sales Slip 91% at Retail

ChrisDeku

@awp69

Japan is actually one exception to that rule and more physical than digital is sold there

This is wrong, although it’s repeated so much it’s easy to understand why people believe it’s true.

Ghost of Tsushima officially sold 1M+ in Japan although its physical sales never even reached 500k according to Famitsu. Ghost of Tsushima didn’t even reach 50% digital in the west, and Sony first party games generally have much lower digital sales than other games. Digital sales have increased even more since 2020.

Armored Core VI sold just over 200k physical copies on console yet after 2 months FromSoft said it had sold 700k copies in Japan.

Re: Sony Partner Deviation Games Shuttered Before Shipping Its First PS5 Project

ChrisDeku

@Gamestation

look at everyone praising Sony for Helldivers 2 when they had pretty much zero involvement in it

Sony own the IP in totality. They funded the franchise for 10+ years. Sony support studios worked on the game in multiple capacities. Sony offer a wide range of support like Motion and Facial capture(Sony have one of the best motion capture studios in the business, even studios like Capcom pay to use it for Resident Evil), voice acting, assistance with art assets, executive level oversight of the project etc. In the Helldivers 2 credits there’s literally dozens and dozens of Sony employees.

Re: Sony Partner Deviation Games Shuttered Before Shipping Its First PS5 Project

ChrisDeku

@__jamiie You seem to be entirely missing the part in which it's very different releasing a bad game and identifying during development a game is bad and cancelling it earlier.

If they'd funded this game all the way to release and it was bad then they'd get destroyed for it. They didn't do that though. Part of working with a studio is identifying what is working and what isn't. No one wants to release a Redfall, but cancelling a Redfall 2 years ago and using the resources for something else would be a lot better.

Re: Helldivers 2 Is Still Absolutely Killing It on PC, By the Way

ChrisDeku

@Weebleman It was never actually stated but at one point all those stats were turned off, presumably to cut down on information being sent to and from the servers(which was the main bottleneck) I thought most stuff was turned back on now, but it might depend on your time of the day etc.

The servers were completely rammed again after the mechs were unlocked.

Re: Everyone's Talking About Eve's Outfits in PS5 Exclusive Stellar Blade

ChrisDeku

That first video is actually misleading as I understand it. Thats the in-universe equivalent of being naked. She doesn’t actually put on clothes, she has a skinsuit that replicates looks and that’s the default skinsuit look I.e. not wearing an outfit.I believe you even disable some of your combat capability using that “outfit”.

So it’s somewhat similar to going naked in Cyberpunk with your willy dangling around and then going “look at the outfits you’re able to wear in this game!!”

Re: PS Store Sales Charts: Helldivers 2 Is Unstoppable, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Settles for Second

ChrisDeku

@Professor_Niggle Based on publicly available Steam sales estimates and PS5 playerbase estimates and sampling,

Steam Sales Estimates:
Play tracker - 3.7M
Gamalytic - 6.4M
VG Insights - 7.4M

Steam sales are roughly 50% of worldwide sales so even the low end of the estimates would be in the ballpark of 7.4m across both formats in 4 weeks. like the article said, sales increased for three straight weeks(this was confirmed as the case in the USA too)and it’s still the number 1 global top seller on Steam right now. Sales are not suddenly going to fall of a cliff. Its overall sales curve is going to be much smoother than normal.

Re: Helldivers 2 PS5, PC Almost Matching Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Sales in UK

ChrisDeku

@breakneck I meant for Steam as a whole, the peak time is 14:00 UTC, which is in about 1 hour.

However, you’re right that Helldivers 2 does have an unusual peak, which correlates to very late USA time. In fact Gamalytic predicts that 42.9% of Steam sales were in USA alone. I’m not sure what to make of that, that’s kind of insane. I’ve never seen a big steam game that skewed to USA.

Re: Helldivers 2 PS5, PC Almost Matching Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Sales in UK

ChrisDeku

It’s likely that it could be tracking ahead of SM2 at worldwide sales level for 2 reasons. The UK was a comparatively slow market for Helldivers 2, it actually didn’t get to no.1 on steam UK sales until well into its second week.

Steam has a more consistent global reach compared to the PS5 which likely trounces Steam in NA and Europe but at worldwide level user numbers are similar to slightly higher on Steam. Steam concurrent user peak time actually corresponds to Asian evening time and the middle of the night for USA.

So you’ll likely find that Helldivers 2 tracks behind SM2 in NA and Europe but well ahead in the Rest of the World categories.

Re: Spider-Man 2's Massive New Game+ Update Is Finally Here, Mission Replay and More Included

ChrisDeku

New Game+ (NG+) Features

Ultimate Levels: Go beyond the base game level cap in NG+
Note: Ultimate Levels are NOT tied to any difficulty
Symbiote Suit Styles: Unlock new story symbiote suit styles via Ultimate Level progression
Golden Gadget Styles: Upgrade your gadgets with exclusive Golden looks
Suit Tech Fusion: Unlock both perks in a shared Suit Tech slot
PlayStation Trophy Unlock a new trophy for completing the story in NG+

The new Game plus seems to have quite a lot going on, and yes there is a new trophy.

Re: Ghost of Tsushima's Anticipated PC Port Launches an Assault on Steam Charts

ChrisDeku

@ZhuckelDror

You don't need a top tier video card to get PS5 level graphics in these ports

GoT specs aren’t posted yet but H:FW recommends an RTX 3070 for 1440p/60 and an RTX 4080 fpr 4k/60. For 1440/60 you can probably build a complete PC setup for maybe $1000 at a stretch(using cheap components) but more like $1200+. For 4k/60 that’s a $1500 graphics card, your PC will be well over $2000.

Re: Ghost of Tsushima's Anticipated PC Port Launches an Assault on Steam Charts

ChrisDeku

@ZhuckelDror

Not to mention they will get the definitive versions of said Sony titles with all content, better graphics and at a lower price

It’s only better graphics if you have a $1500+ PC. If you have a $500 PC(price of PS5) you’ll be getting a black screen or maybe 1080p 30fps.

It’s also $60 on PC and has been available on PS Plus for years, and $30 on sales.

With all the games available on Steam I'm sure waiting 1-2 years for Sony "exclusives" shouldn't be a problem

Got will be 4 years old in July.