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Mass Effect: Andromeda Pre-Release Thread

ThoseDeafMutes

Learned
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Messages
239
The problem isn't the gameplay--EAware makes reasonably competent skill-tree action games--but the everything else. There's a reason why Bioware has been butting its head against ~5m sales for 15 years, while Bethesda sells more on launch day that Bioware games do over their lifetime. The fact is that core gamers (talking males 18-34 ± 5) have never really taken to the soap opera/romance elements that have been progressively devouring the main plots from ME2 onwards. If they absolutely had to include those elements, ME2 was probably the most core-accessible way to do so: supersoldier/underwear model Shepard saves the galaxy while blowing shit up and fucking a variety of (theoretically) hot women.

7 years later and where are we? The Thalidomide Twins, Hipster Manlet and his sister Potato, picking space-elfroot in a game where the devs have spent more time tweeting about what insect- and tentacle-people the player can fuck than they have the actual plot. I assume EA wants these games to make as much money as possible, which is why they've been dropping Skyrim and TW3 comparisons, but I doubt the combined slashfic and animalfucker communities are going to come through for them.

tl,dr: If "see that cricket-woman? you can fuck it" is part of your online marketing, you're probably not making games for core gamers anymore.

I'm not sure you can say they're progressively devouring the main plotlines. Even in ME3 where you had the highest number of romances, they didn't spend much of the game on them at all. They're still shallow, minor flirting with a few dialogue prompts on top of what everyone else got, then one cutscene for sex at the end. The reason it had a high number of them was because it had to be able to continue them from the first two games. Inquisition had fewer numerically, but slightly longer. Still, that game was excessively long by every metric, so they're a far smaller percentage of the total game, even if you just count the main questline and whatever bare minimum of sidequests you need to gather enough power. What ME3 and Inqusition did offer was more variety in the types of romance options, e.g. gay men, lesbian women (as opposed to the standard bisexual woman they'd usually throw in in previous games). It was Dragon Age Origins I think where they first had a bisexual man. Ultimately this is part of the bioware DNA and it's not becoming more prominent over time, at least not for their last three or four games.

For reference, ME3 was confirmed to have sold 6 million units recently. Each game in the core ME trilogy sold progressively more than the last. As to whether or not Inquisition sold well, I have no idea. EA bragged about it at launch, but has been quiet ever since. We rarely get total sales figures anymore from any company. But in any case, you don't hit 6 million units without appealing to the core gamer. There aren't a lot of franchises that do better in the RPG space, it's basically Bethesda, Witcher and that's it.
 

Talby

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 15, 2008
Messages
5,507
Codex USB, 2014
Leave it to BioWare to write a character more shitty and annoying than Jar Jar Binks, and then write a character even worse than that for the very next game. :negative:
 

santino27

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,678
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
C4YngWCWIAI7sEi.jpg:large

This makes me sad. WTF Biioware.
 

Durian Eater

Learned
Joined
Nov 8, 2014
Messages
75
I'm not sure you can say they're progressively devouring the main plotlines. Even in ME3 where you had the highest number of romances, they didn't spend much of the game on them at all. They're still shallow, minor flirting with a few dialogue prompts on top of what everyone else got, then one cutscene for sex at the end. The reason it had a high number of them was because it had to be able to continue them from the first two games. Inquisition had fewer numerically, but slightly longer. Still, that game was excessively long by every metric, so they're a far smaller percentage of the total game, even if you just count the main questline and whatever bare minimum of sidequests you need to gather enough power. What ME3 and Inqusition did offer was more variety in the types of romance options, e.g. gay men, lesbian women (as opposed to the standard bisexual woman they'd usually throw in in previous games). It was Dragon Age Origins I think where they first had a bisexual man. Ultimately this is part of the bioware DNA and it's not becoming more prominent over time, at least not for their last three or four games.

For reference, ME3 was confirmed to have sold 6 million units recently. Each game in the core ME trilogy sold progressively more than the last. As to whether or not Inquisition sold well, I have no idea. EA bragged about it at launch, but has been quiet ever since. We rarely get total sales figures anymore from any company. But in any case, you don't hit 6 million units without appealing to the core gamer. There aren't a lot of franchises that do better in the RPG space, it's basically Bethesda, Witcher and that's it.

First male bisexual romance from Bioware was the eminently forgettable Sky from Jade Empire. ME3 apparently sold "close to" 6m according to EA's CIO, and those are the first lifetime sales figures I've seen for a Bioware game in a long time. Usually they stop reporting around 3m, and we didn't get any numbers at all for DA:I. This is with TW3 at "nearly" 10m sales as of last July, Skyrim up around 30m and the execrable FO4 over 20m. Bethesda's appeal obviously extends well beyond the core audience, but I'm all ears for alternate theories as to why Bioware is being lapped badly by CDP.

Re: ME3, amongst their latter-day games it was the one that was obligated to have something resembling a plot--since it had to wrap up, however poorly, the series. From what we know of this game, aside from the Mass Effect window dressing, both mechanically and otherwise it seems to be following in the footsteps of DA:I. And that game is the best representation of the decline of Bioware's core appeal. The plot--wandering around closing rifts for Power points, one of the worst progress-gating mechanisms I've ever seen in a game, is not part of the plot--is maybe 10 hours of story missions plus whatever time you want to invest in romancing and/or solving the personal problems of your motley crew of weirdos. (For the most part, you could describe ME2 the same way, but it's clothed in core-friendly trappings, i.e. Bald Space Marine Shep, action movie tropes and hot women.)

The plot itself is paper thin--Corypheus loses before the game even begins, never feels like a threat after the first encounter, and is absent for almost the entire game--so the narrative load is carried by the soap opera elements. And what we get is the DA writers' special blend of goofiness and camp: Cassandra shamefully reads smutty romance novels...written by Varric! Dorian's dad tried to use gay conversion therapy on him! Blackwell masqueraded as a Gray Warden somehow! Sera steals pants and throws bees at people because a woman gave her a cookie! Cullen is an effete drug addict! Bull is a walking Qunari retcon! Cole is... fucking annoying! Who is any of this supposed to appeal to?

While the peculiarities of 'the Bioware Game' are such that it was never going to be a blockbuster, adding more nerdbait elements that were largely absent from ME but prevalent in DA2/DA:I is moving Bioware further from the goal. Maybe it was necessary to fold DA writers into the ME:A team with so many 'narrative designers' jumping ship. Maybe Bioware thinks that quirky, goofy writing geared for the fanfiction crowd will tap a hitherto untapped market. Maybe these are just the games they want to make for themselves, and they can't separate their own tastes from that of the broader gaming public. Either way, EA expects ~3m sales in the abbreviated launch month. We'll just have to wait, see, and speculate. What has me scratching my head is their EA Origin deal that lets people start the game a week early: does that mean they're confident that at least the first 10 hours of the game will impress, or is it a sign that they don't expect the game to have a long tail (a la DA2) and want to suck up a few extra bucks from gullible preorders?
 
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Red Rogue

Learned
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Dec 6, 2015
Messages
148
Location
The Squat Rack
My hype for this game doesn't exist. After the complete fucking blunder that Dragon Age Inquisition was, I don't think I have a particular interest in playing a singleplayer MMO or, at best, an action exploration game with an inventory that labels itself as an RPG.
 

Jarmaro

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
1,466
Location
Lair of Despair
I still have hope. Maybe it will be like skyrim, decent and enjoyable exploring with little better plot served in film-like style.
Of course I don't say it will be even 8/10 then.
 

ThoseDeafMutes

Learned
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Messages
239
First male bisexual romance from Bioware was the eminently forgettable Sky from Jade Empire. ME3 apparently sold "close to" 6m according to EA's CIO, and those are the first lifetime sales figures I've seen for a Bioware game in a long time. Usually they stop reporting around 3m, and we didn't get any numbers at all for DA:I. This is with TW3 at "nearly" 10m sales as of last July, Skyrim up around 30m and the execrable FO4 over 20m. Bethesda's appeal obviously extends well beyond the core audience, but I'm all ears for alternate theories as to why Bioware is being lapped badly by CDP.

The biggest industry trend this generation has been towards making everything an open world game and cramming them with content. Witcher 3's sales are stratospheric compared to 2, and the biggest kids on the RPG block remains Bethesda for whom open worlds is their bread and butter. Inquisition was a step in this direction but only a half measure. It was a shit open world that TW3 and FO4 beat out in terms of both ease of use, fun and world design. Enough to win GOTY awards in 2014 but then gets instantly stomped as soon as the big games came out the following year.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
I don't think the issue is that BW can't make her conventionally attractive. It's that they don't want to.

I find that somewhat interesting actually. Also the nerd rage it's provoking here and elsewhere. Especially as it's certain to have face customisation so you can craft your very own Melania clone.

It's true that it's easier to model beautiful faces than not conventionally attractive faces which nonetheless feel "right" (and/or not repulsive - which is important for the player model). If done well, those efforts are much more memorable / recognizable.
 

ThoseDeafMutes

Learned
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Messages
239
Witcher 3 is on steam.

Mass Effect 3 is not.

Mystery solved.

Most sales in both cases came from consoles. In Witcher 3 that's where most of the new sales over the previous entries would have come from, at any rate, since W3 launched day and date on consoles while W2 was PC exclusive until it got a late 360 port but was never on PS3.
 

Drakron

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Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
6,326
Most sales in both cases came from consoles. In Witcher 3 that's where most of the new sales over the previous entries would have come from, at any rate, since W3 launched day and date on consoles while W2 was PC exclusive until it got a late 360 port but was never on PS3.

I have serious doubts about that, it sounds the same shit I been hearing since PS2 era and when you have what were system sellers not even breaking the PS2 era records you start to wonder exactly are those sales because they arent advertising breaking 1m sales in specific platforms, in fact it was only on Steam that FO4 retained its first place as in all other systems it had a 80% drop and this been a constant in the current and last generation, games have bombastic launch with gazillion shipped. the most successful launch ever of all times and the 80% drops the following week.

To me you still have marketing believing in the PS2 era of gaming that is long gone, the last 2 generations seen a decline on console gaming with even traditional console developers making PC ports in a attempt to recover development costs.

Also whatever you like it or not, Steam is a major digital retailer as Origin is that POS people have to install to play EA games ... of course not being on Steam cost ME3 sales, EA was willing to lose to promote their own digital distribution system.
 

ThoseDeafMutes

Learned
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Messages
239
Most sales in both cases came from consoles. In Witcher 3 that's where most of the new sales over the previous entries would have come from, at any rate, since W3 launched day and date on consoles while W2 was PC exclusive until it got a late 360 port but was never on PS3.

I have serious doubts about that, it sounds the same shit I been hearing since PS2 era and when you have what were system sellers not even breaking the PS2 era records you start to wonder exactly are those sales because they arent advertising breaking 1m sales in specific platforms, in fact it was only on Steam that FO4 retained its first place as in all other systems it had a 80% drop and this been a constant in the current and last generation, games have bombastic launch with gazillion shipped. the most successful launch ever of all times and the 80% drops the following week.

To me you still have marketing believing in the PS2 era of gaming that is long gone, the last 2 generations seen a decline on console gaming with even traditional console developers making PC ports in a attempt to recover development costs.

Also whatever you like it or not, Steam is a major digital retailer as Origin is that POS people have to install to play EA games ... of course not being on Steam cost ME3 sales, EA was willing to lose to promote their own digital distribution system.

For The Witcher 3, we have some data but it's unclear how ironclad it was. They suggested 30/70 split for PC/Consoles, with 3/4 of total sales being physical copies across all platforms (for the first 6 million units shipped). Console games tend to have worse tails (except GTA because that series is insane), so I'd expect that may have shifted more like 35:65 by 2017. Pretty insane for a PC game these days, but consoles are major contributors to the game's sales in the high budget space.

https://gamerant.com/the-witcher-3-sales-pc-consoles-125/ << Original source is apparently something dug up by WCCF Tech so reliability of that information is suspect.

The only official word I've seen was that in Poland the PC version was outselling the console versions, but we have nothing rock solid for ww.
 

Rev

Arcane
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
1,180
For The Witcher 3, we have some data but it's unclear how ironclad it was. They suggested 30/70 split for PC/Consoles, with 3/4 of total sales being physical copies across all platforms (for the first 6 million units shipped). Console games tend to have worse tails (except GTA because that series is insane), so I'd expect that may have shifted more like 35:65 by 2017. Pretty insane for a PC game these days, but consoles are major contributors to the game's sales in the high budget space.

https://gamerant.com/the-witcher-3-sales-pc-consoles-125/ << Original source is apparently something dug up by WCCF Tech so reliability of that information is suspect.

The only official word I've seen was that in Poland the PC version was outselling the console versions, but we have nothing rock solid for ww.
http://gamingbolt.com/the-witcher-3...copies-on-pc-than-consoles-combined-developer
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/syst...more-on-pc-than-ps4-and-xbox-one-co-32996940/
http://www.thecountrycaller.com/133...-consoles-pc-gaming-becoming-more-preferable/
http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/395013/The+Witcher+3+sold+more+on+PC+than+on+consoles/
 

ThoseDeafMutes

Learned
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Jul 11, 2016
Messages
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Those are all taken from the exact interview I referenced, Martin's statements were in the context of Poland, he was discussing the development of the Polish games market, and referred to Witcher sales overall not just Witcher 3. If you want to watch the clip in its original form, it's available here. Activate CC if you don't speak Polish. I assume the subtitles have been updated since the original video shipped, because currently it clearly says "Most of The Witcher sales in Poland are for PC, but consoles are selling very well." It's possible the original translation did not make this explicit, and hence the deluge of articles taking it to mean that The Witcher 3's sales on PC exceeded combined consoles.
 

Rev

Arcane
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
1,180
Those are all taken from the exact interview I referenced, Martin's statements were in the context of Poland, he was discussing the development of the Polish games market, and referred to Witcher sales overall not just Witcher 3. If you want to watch the clip in its original form, it's available here. Activate CC if you don't speak Polish. I assume the subtitles have been updated since the original video shipped, because currently it clearly says "Most of The Witcher sales in Poland are for PC, but consoles are selling very well." It's possible the original translation did not make this explicit, and hence the deluge of articles taking it to mean that The Witcher 3's sales on PC exceeded combined consoles.
Your link doesn't work. Anyhow, in the first weeks the game had sold about 4 millions copies and one and a half million was on PC (more than half of those sales on GOG). Later on, it's likely that PC sales went better than consoles, as they usually do in the long run.
In fact, months after the release CDP released a statement in which they said the Witcher series sold about 20 mil copies. Just by looking at Steamspy we can see that TW1 and TW2 on Steam alone are at almost 8 millions, and that doesn't count GOG and retail copies (nor the 360 version of TW2, although I don't think it sold very much compared with the PC one), so we can assume that TW3 probably sold 10 millions copies at best: on Steamspy it's at 2.8 mil and we know that GOG sales were very strong for it and even assuming that Steam eventually got the lead PC version alone should be around 5 mil copies sold, which makes it the most successful platform for the game (confirmed by pretty much every news there is out there, I just linked the first I found in one minute).

Also, consoles suck.
 

Arulan

Cipher
Joined
Feb 13, 2014
Messages
313
The last official statement was 10 million total worldwide last March. Steamspy sits at 2.78 million, and the last number we have of GOG is 1 million from September of 2015. The GOG number has most certainly increased significantly since then. It's likely that PC represents something over one-third of total units sold. That said, because PC is mostly compromised of digital sales, and digital brings in roughly twice the profit of physical, especially on GOG naturally, it's likely the PC platforms represents at least 50% of total profits.

Near its launch, when the breakdown was 30/70, the split between digital and physical was 25/75, that 25% represented 50% of total revenue.
 
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Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,579
Most sales in both cases came from consoles.
A bit unrelated, but PC games (not-F2P) in the last year generated 5.4 billions of revenue, while console games (on both platforms) generated 6.6 billions. And there is also F2P market on PC, which generated 18.6 billions.

I'm just implying that throwing something like "most sales came from consoles" was legit back in 2005-2010. Right now situation is quite different.

 

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