Now we wait for sales I guess. I'm very interested in what EA expectations were and what their benchmark for a "success" is for Vilguard. The devil is in the details, or, in this case, the sustainability after the initial hype. Dragon's Dogma 2, a game that sold way more than this, struggled with its long term sales after the initial hype died off - for context, there was a huge hype by us DD fans because we expected the sequel to be a better title than the first, the original director was also at the helm so we were pretty hopeful - mainly because he directed DMC 5 which secured confidence. Dragon's Dogma 2 cashed in on all the built up goodwill from us fans for its 2 mil something sales. When people realized just how poorly the game ran, streamlined mechanics, unfinished story, bad implementation of pawn system, etc; the game got negative steam reviews and now sits at 'mixed' steam ratings. DD 2 sales have struggled ever since, see:
https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/explanation/2024/2nd/explanation_2024_2nd_01.pdf
To add to the shit cake, the Director would leave Capcom, post support for DD 2 would be pretty much non-existent, and Capcom would prioritize its resources on Monster Hunter instead.
Now that was a game that sold way, way, more than Veilguard. Had way, way, more players. Plus it had some serious organic support from enthusiastic fans. Vileguard on the other hand relied heavily on manufactured, aggressive, marketing - EA must have paid a lot of money for that, and even then it still didn't scratch the top ten (for context Elden Ring, DD 2, DMC 5, all did) so it's going to be interesting to see the sustainability after the fact - no way they're recouping costs from marketing alone. I personally believe this is a dud but we won't know for sure until months later.
I've seen articles proclaim this launch as *the* 'biggest' for Bioware, but again, as others have noted, this is Bioware's first release on steam on day one. Steam has a bigger potential market for games than the proprietary service EA uses - I'm not saying releasing on steam will give you an immediate hit, but it does help, a lot.
Here's my uneducated dumb dumb opinion: I believe earnestly that the LGTBQ+ elements, the political preaching from the rainbow freaks, did way more harm in instilling confidence than anything else. I think even as a shit RPG with poor game design Vileguard could have secured more sales if it didn't neuture itself with the poor fan service on offer - no sexy companions, terrible ass/boob slider, tranny shit, DEI compromises, etc. I think if you make sexy, attractive, characters you can sell off of that alone: The First Descendant had way more players because of its fan service (said players will drop but it still pulled a crap ton of players because of its attractive character design); another example is the entirety of the Gacha industry which doesn't even have gameplay in some instances, just trading cards with hot waifus, and that industry makes over a billion dollars a year. You can't have a bad game with also bad fan service and expect it to sell as much as your competitors, you got to at least do one thing right.
Another thing I'm looking forward to is the normie perception. Very interested in how normies recieve this title. It's only been a day so far so its in the air if the game will get a super low metacritic score, get negatively review bombed, maybe have juicy controversy, etc. I'm not really hopeful in this front though since normies have gotten even dumber over the years.
