Interview Greg Zeschuk Interview

[circ]

Greg completely dodged the DA is more succesful than ME question. Way to go champ.

 

[Morgoth]

There's a difference between "shipped to stores" and "actual copies sold." They shipped 2 million copies to stores in one week, but only sold sold 1.6 million as of March 31. That 3.2 million Dragon Age figure is also only counting shipped copies.

Shipped = sold to retailers. They got their money either way.

 

[Lingwe]

Over time, I think people will kind of understand what we’re doing and probably really like it.

Even politicians give straighter answers than this.

Imagine a politician answering a question with "Vote for me because while I haven't really explained why my policy is any good, if I get in I'm sure over time you'll kind of understand and come to like it".

We think it’s ultimately going to be a better game, so I think ultimately the fans will agree when they get to play it. That’s the fundamental thing.

No, the fundamental thing is that you learn to explain your decisions and make sure people understand them. You can only run on a platform of "we're not the other guys" and expect to win if you are the New South Wales Liberal party.

He could always just be honest and come out and say "We think that making the game more like Mass Effect will sell more copies, so that's why we did it".

 

[AnalogKid]

Shipped = sold to retailers. They got their money either way.

Not entirely true. One of the reasons there are only a few huge game publishers instead of lots of little ones is that it's real easy to lose your ass. Most big retailers have the right to return un-sold inventory and demand their money back from the pubs. So it's a real guessing game: you want to ship a shitload to the stores to take up shelf space so that your game looks popular and you get bandwagon purchases, but if you do that and still nobody buys it, then you get hammered with returns and go out of business. Basically what happened to Interplay in its brief attempt at publishing.

With games that have been proven pupular (like DA and ME2) the retailers will very likely keep their inventory and eventually sell them all. So comparing shipped units is reasonable. No "shipped 2 million, but only sold-through 200K" surprises with these games.