Game News Divinity: Original Sin has sold 160,000 copies, already approaching profitability

[Roguey]

The Quest was perfectly designed, in a vacuum (see bellow)

Hmm no, linearity and lack of choices in a RPG is always a bad thing and we don't need more glorified fetch/fedex quests.

 

[Infinitron]

Baldur's Gate 2 is often quoted in the 250,000 range back in the day, Planescape Torment 80,000. That took a while, and it had an established audience.

Both of these numbers are far less than what the games ultimately sold. Where'd you see them?

 

[Zeriel]

Baldur's Gate 2 is often quoted in the 250,000 range back in the day, Planescape Torment 80,000. That took a while, and it had an established audience.

Both of these numbers are far less than what the games ultimately sold. Where'd you see them?

Both of those numbers were quoted back in the day a few years after release, which makes them way more relevant to what D:OS is doing now than how much BG2 or Torment has sold after a decade.

 

[Excidium]

Hardly relevant data considering how different things are over a decade later

 

[Infinitron]

Baldur's Gate 2 is often quoted in the 250,000 range back in the day, Planescape Torment 80,000. That took a while, and it had an established audience.

Both of these numbers are far less than what the games ultimately sold. Where'd you see them?

Both of those numbers were quoted back in the day a few years after release, which makes them way more relevant to what D:OS is doing now than how much BG2 or Torment has sold after a decade.

I'm fairly certain that BG2 had sold more than that by a few years after its release. That sounds more like the stats for the first few months after release.

 

[Lerk]

Larian have shown their aptitude for quirky humor. D:OS is whimsical, non-GrimDark adult fantasy that nevertheless explores interesting themes with entertaining, well drawn characters, sometimes subverting established tropes to humorous or dramatic effect.

So...can I hope for Discworld as their next IP?

 

[Zeriel]

Baldur's Gate 2 is often quoted in the 250,000 range back in the day, Planescape Torment 80,000. That took a while, and it had an established audience.

Both of these numbers are far less than what the games ultimately sold. Where'd you see them?

Both of those numbers were quoted back in the day a few years after release, which makes them way more relevant to what D:OS is doing now than how much BG2 or Torment has sold after a decade.

A decade is probably an exaggeration. You didn't answer my question, though...

'Cuz I didn't have an answer! It's just from memory from years of reading the Codex. They were numbers constantly cited in 2003-2005 when people were still discussing those games here as a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm pretty sure the numbers originally came from Bioware and Black Isle, since this was before Wikipedia became an omnipresent arbiter of facts.

http://web.archive.org/web/20021022081249/http://www.interplay.com/bgate2/pressrelease.html

Right after release, 4 million dollars. Probably tallied from total retail prices.

 

[Tolknaz]

Larian seem to have hit the gold vein with this one. Still purely word of mouth driving the game and player numbers continue to grow every night. Highly unusual thing to happen to a game on steam to put it mildly. Congratualtions to all involved!

 

[Zeriel]

Unfortunately, googling BG2 sales numbers just gets a lot of people in 2013 claiming "Baldur's Gate sold 2 million copies within MONTHS!". That press release was the best I could find. I do distinctively remember the 250K and 80K numbers coming from Bioware and Obsidian Black Isle respectively, though.

 

[Arkeus]

'Cuz I didn't have an answer! It's just from memory from years of reading the Codex. They were numbers constantly cited in 2003-2005 when people were still discussing those games here as a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm pretty sure the numbers originally came from Bioware and Black Isle, since this was before Wikipedia became an omnipresent arbiter of facts.

http://web.archive.org/web/20021022081249/http://www.interplay.com/bgate2/pressrelease.html

Right after release, 4 million dollars. Probably tallied from total retail prices.

"Baldur's Gate is now firmly established as one of the leading brands in interactive entertainment, and fans of the franchise can expect to see a lot more in the future."

Hehehehhe.

 

[Renegen]

Just FYI, as an experienced diviner of the Steam top sellers list and Steamcharts, I think this is the first traditional game where the peak player number actually increases daily after launch. Normally you'd see a high number on day 1, and then significant dropoffs. For example, SRR debuted at ~24k, and two days later it was at ~18k, which is a 25% drop.

This is natural, as most people will want to at least try the game out at launch, and then fall into their own playing schedule. But the number has actually increased slightly for D:OS, which can mean one of two things: either the game is selling well enough that new players offset the drop off, or people like it so much that they just keep playing, ignoring all of their responsibilities. Darth Roxor, when have you last eaten?

I think this can be blamed on the hilarious nature of modern gaming, and also D:OS's size. Most modern games can be completed in one sitting. D:OS has tons of people playing it because after 30 hours of play time, the average customer is just making their way past the first area. I imagine players will drop off quickly once everyone has 90-100~ hrs invested.

I doubt it. This effect is pretty consistent across all types of games. For instance, it was the case for Dark Souls 2 earlier this year, and that's a very long game with an average completion time upwards of 50 hours. Or a game like EU4, which doesn't even have a well-defined idea of "completion", still the same thing.

This is very interesting analysis. I checked the first month of Dark Souls 2 and the number of players actually went UP until the 4th day, after which it settled slightly lower. This "high volume" persisted for about 2 weeks, after which it slowly began to fall. So D:OS can still fall, it needs to remain high for longer than a week or so to really indicate increased sales.

 

[Roguey]

I'm fairly certain that BG2 had sold more than that by a few years after its release. That sounds more like the stats for the first few months after release.

In May 2000, someone (I think Desslock?) quoted NPD figures of RPG sales, which is US retail only. I saved it and wrote down the time since release.
Baldur's Gate 500,000 (two years)
BG Tales of the Sword Coast 156,000 (one year)
Fallout 144,000 (three years)
Fallout 2 123,000 (two years)
Diablo 1,300,000 (three years)
Planescape: Torment 73,000 (five months)

Troika bonus from March 2005 since I'm already pasting:

Arcanum 234,000 (four years)
Temple of Elemental Evil 128,000 (two years)
Bloodlines 72,000 (four months)

Double those figures to get something closer to what they actually sold.

 

[Zeriel]

Based Roguey delivers once again.

 

[jdinatale]

I'm fairly certain that BG2 had sold more than that by a few years after its release. That sounds more like the stats for the first few months after release.

In May 2000, someone (I think Desslock?) quoted NPD figures of RPG sales, which is US retail only. I saved it and wrote down the time since release.
Baldur's Gate 500,000 (two years)
BG Tales of the Sword Coast 156,000 (one year)
Fallout 144,000 (three years)
Fallout 2 123,000 (two years)
Diablo 1,300,000 (three years)
Planescape: Torment 73,000 (five months)

Troika bonus from March 2005 since I'm already pasting:

Arcanum 234,000 (four years)
Temple of Elemental Evil 128,000 (two years)
Bloodlines 72,000 (four months)

Double those figures to get something closer to what they actually sold.

That's impressive keeping 15 year old sales data for the off chance that someone asks about it.

 

[Irenaeus]

Never trust a Romulan Roguey

 

[Arkeus]

I am trying to be optimist and believe that D:OS will sell something like 500K in the first year. That would be really fine, and not /that/ impossible given that two days ago D:OS was at 160K, and it has been fairly constantly on the top selling spot for steam.

I guess everything hinge on when the mainstream reviews fall and what they say. things could be helped if 'youtube persona' like AngryJoe/TotalBiscuit released positive reviews before that.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

So you're only interested in slamming things you'll never play before they're released?

Man, you're arguing with Roguey.

I'd post the same thing, I even pressed reply... but when I would ask the question I thought: why bother?

 

[hoverdog]

'Cuz I didn't have an answer! It's just from memory from years of reading the Codex. They were numbers constantly cited in 2003-2005 when people were still discussing those games here as a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm pretty sure the numbers originally came from Bioware and Black Isle, since this was before Wikipedia became an omnipresent arbiter of facts.

http://web.archive.org/web/20021022081249/http://www.interplay.com/bgate2/pressrelease.html

Right after release, 4 million dollars. Probably tallied from total retail prices.

"Baldur's Gate is now firmly established as one of the leading brands in interactive entertainment, and fans of the franchise can expect to see a lot more in the future."

Hehehehhe.

 

[Jarpie]

Larian has great timing with the release, no big games put out at the same time. Shame they didn't have more money to advertise.

 

[Arkeus]

Larian has great timing with the release, no big games put out at the same time. Shame they didn't have more money to advertise.

Good for us, they put all htat money into the game. Now, to hope it's not bad for them.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Just FYI, as an experienced diviner of the Steam top sellers list and Steamcharts, I think this is the first traditional game where the peak player number actually increases daily after launch. Normally you'd see a high number on day 1, and then significant dropoffs. For example, SRR debuted at ~24k, and two days later it was at ~18k, which is a 25% drop.

This is natural, as most people will want to at least try the game out at launch, and then fall into their own playing schedule. But the number has actually increased slightly for D:OS, which can mean one of two things: either the game is selling well enough that new players offset the drop off, or people like it so much that they just keep playing, ignoring all of their responsibilities. Darth Roxor, when have you last eaten?

I think this can be blamed on the hilarious nature of modern gaming, and also D:OS's size. Most modern games can be completed in one sitting. D:OS has tons of people playing it because after 30 hours of play time, the average customer is just making their way past the first area. I imagine players will drop off quickly once everyone has 90-100~ hrs invested.

I doubt it. This effect is pretty consistent across all types of games. For instance, it was the case for Dark Souls 2 earlier this year, and that's a very long game with an average completion time upwards of 50 hours. Or a game like EU4, which doesn't even have a well-defined idea of "completion", still the same thing.

This is very interesting analysis. I checked the first month of Dark Souls 2 and the number of players actually went UP until the 4th day, after which it settled slightly lower. This "high volume" persisted for about 2 weeks, after which it slowly began to fall. So D:OS can still fall, it needs to remain high for longer than a week or so to really indicate increased sales.

Dark Souls 2 was a bit of a weird case, in that it released at midnight CET on a Thursday, so it automatically went lower than it should have. It then proceeded to hit its all time high on Sunday evening. So maybe the dropoff is related to weekends more than anything else? Then again, SRR released on a Thursday, and that's when it saw its maximum concurrent players. EU4 on a Tuesday, exact same thing. Meanwhile, D:OS debuted on Monday, and has continued growing since. We'll probably see its all-time high during the weekend, if the DS2 casus is indicative of anything.

Heh, all this sounds like a cool idea for some enterprising sociology student's thesis. If Steamcharts has a halfway usable API, maybe I'll try pulling some of their data and compliling some charts on the max concurrent players vs release date of games.

 

[Infinitron]

Cowboy Moment As I've stated elsewhere, I believe a huge factor in SRR's huge concurrent players number is the fact that the game was such a small download, around ~700 megabytes. For a large number of players, it was on their hard drives and ready to play within 10 minutes of being released.

 

[ZoddGuts]

D:OS peaked today at 15,797. Will be interesting to see what number I'll peaked during the weekend.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

You don't buy new RPG to play it for 3 hours and never play it again. Especially fun RPG. Hell you can't even tell if game is shit or not for few hours. Also reviews aren't out yet so that means soon there will be major impact of sales and numbers.

This is why I haven't played an RPG for a long while. Seriously, lost my save games for Witcher 2 and only just re-downloaded that a month ago but haven't had the time to start again. Now it's on a computer I won't have access to for a few months while I work off my laptop, where I'm still playing the original Divine Divinity (after also losing my save game for that in the HDD crash).

Man, you get old and suddenly RPGs have this time commitment that's harder and harder to meet. But I'll get to D:OS eventually. Honest.

 

[Zeriel]

You don't buy new RPG to play it for 3 hours and never play it again. Especially fun RPG. Hell you can't even tell if game is shit or not for few hours. Also reviews aren't out yet so that means soon there will be major impact of sales and numbers.

This is why I haven't played an RPG for a long while. Seriously, lost my save games for Witcher 2 and only just re-downloaded that a month ago but haven't had the time to start again. Now it's on a computer I won't have access to for a few months while I work off my laptop, where I'm still playing the original Divine Divinity (after also losing my save game for that in the HDD crash).

Man, you get old and suddenly RPGs have this time commitment that's harder and harder to meet. But I'll get to D:OS eventually. Honest.

I like bingeing on work and then taking some time off to just no-lifer my way back into gaming. Just a matter of scheduling. People with super-active family/vile spawn are fucked, though.