Game News Oblivion sells like hotcakes!

[vazquez595654]

Fucking Goebbels...

A what?

 

[Nutcracker]

Considering half the people on this site will have bought the game (or even preordered)...you are part of the problem. Your cash is now in Bethesda's pockets...and they will take that as a sign of tacit approval of the game. They dont give a fuck what a few people on the internet think. Money talks, bullshit walks. Just don't buy their crappy product, and if you have already - return it.

The long-awaited Oblivion represents the quintessential role-playing experience for the next-generation of gaming, inviting gamers into the sprawling environments of Tamriel, the most vibrant game-world ever created. With a powerful combination of free-form gameplay, unprecedented graphics, cutting edge AI, character voices by well known actors, and a masterful musical score, gamers can choose to unravel Oblivion’s epic narrative or simply explore the vast landscape in search of their own unique challenges

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Excuse me while i vomit. Oblivion may have some positives, but there are so many basic and gaping flaws in the boxed game that it is absolute rubbish to make such claims. The game could have been great. Solid RPG mechanics combined with the immersion of a graphically excellent world with realistic physics could have led to a masterpiece of computer gaming. Instead what we have is some kind of "RPG for Dummies". The irony is that after a month of fiddling with the CS, the modding community has done a better job than Bethesda of making a decent RPG.

 

[Haris]

Actually not many read all the bashing about Oblivion here but it sure seems like its a damn popular game to anyone that just glances over the forums for a while considering that every other post is about it or something.

 

[Cimmerian Nights]

Fucking Goebbels...

A what?

3rd Reich's Minister of Enlightenment.

 

[Dhruin]

Morrowind in all versions plus expansions sold over 4M copies according to a Bethsoft press release a little while ago. No idea what the specific breakdown is. I've heard people claim it sold much better on PC, and others say it sold much better on Xbox - never seen anything official either way.

 

[Old Scratch]

Considering half the people on this site will have bought the game (or even preordered)...you are part of the problem. Your cash is now in Bethesda's pockets...and they will take that as a sign of tacit approval of the game. They dont give a fuck what a few people on the internet think. Money talks, bullshit walks. Just don't buy their crappy product, and if you have already - return it.

Despite its problems, its worth the $50 to me though. Hell, it's probably worth the money if you even moderately enjoy action games and pretty graphics.

Besides, all that money will give them a springboard from which to launch Fallout 3 and make us a fanstastic sequel! :twisted:

 

[elander_]

I don't remenber seeing anyone trying to stop Oblivion from selling. The general opinion is that Oblivion is a shity rpg but it may be fun in other areas.

I asked for a game shop owner to let me try the Oblivion xbox version. After playing for 4+ hours then i come to the shop a second time and asked to play with another char. I can confirm most of the criticism was true. The hugly terrain lod textures; npcs faces with texture problems; the clumsy xbox interface; boring and simplistic combat; characters without personality; idiotic pre-scripted quality ai; lack of consequences; combat focused; you can do anything easly or with enough money; lack of chalenge; repetitive, small and boring dungeons. In resume Oblivion is a toy rpg for xbox little kids or the casual gamer that only played one or two games in his life.

Still the game compels us to explore the world and try all the different equipment and spells. This lasts for the first hours but once you start to realise how everything you do is irrelevant and repetitive and how the characters you talk to have the inteligence of an amoeba then Oblivion charm quickly goes away. The only thing that could hold this up are some guild quest lines like the thieves guild and the assassins guild. Strangely enough made by a dev that didn't make Morrowind quests.

The new rpg system deserves a special word. They babled all the time how this system was more friendly and prevents players from making bad choices. Well it looks like it is exactly the oposite. One example it's very easy to raise alchemy so if you keep raising it you will level up much faster than you can with your combat skills. Since Oblivion is so much focused in combat this means you will be spending a lot of time collecting ingridents, drinking potions and fighting very hard leveled enemies even at lower difficulty settings. Some people complain about the difficulty of the game simply because the game only provides content to roleplay a fighter of some sort. Be it a wizard with a rocket launcher wand or a super sniper thief Oblivion penalizes by a LOT anyone who doesn't raise their combat skills to a level where role-playing becomes impossible and you have to create a new char.

For some reason Daggerfall used a system of 2 primary + 3 major + 3 minor skills to define each class where this problem would never happen. For same reason Oblivion developers failed to grasp it's purpose and they also failed to grasp how leveled items and leveled enemies were implemented in Daggerfall otherwise there would not be so much whinny kids complaining that leveled things breaks economy and removes big rewards in Oblivion. And most important Daggerfall provided an endless source of role-playing material so that different classes could role-play and level up, like a pnp game master feeding quests adequate to your character while maintaining the experience concistency. This is something that distinguish a true rpg from a fake. Oblivion can't keep it's concistency and immersion even if the player chooses to role-play a fighter. The class for wich Oblivion was created. How sad.

 

[elander_]

Besides, all that money will give them a springboard from which to launch Fallout 3 and make us a fanstastic sequel! :twisted:

The problem is that people didn't play Fallout for the graphics and a shity xbox console interface. Besides the charm of Fallout combat was in the turn-base system.

 

[Frau Bishop]

Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. Those funny little countries that keep getting in the way of Germans.

Ah, i thought they were making that one up.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

Well, I certainly don't need to buy the game. Watching the wacky AI vids linked from this site is infinitely more amusing. And cheaper!

 

[DarkUnderlord]

1.7 million seem very important, I heard they sell around 1.5 millions copies of Morrowind (I maybe wrong), so 1.7 in 3 weeks is surprising

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php

Compare Morrowind and Oblivion posts on that board and you will understand the difference in sales.

That doesn't work though because the earliest post in the Morrowind forum is from February 2006... I thought Morrowind was released earlier than that? Like, a few years earlier?

 

[Zomg]

Who knows how many of those sales of Morrowind are as a $10 GoTY or Greatest Hits version? I'd bet PS:T and Fallout are over a million if you include the 5+ years they lived as Walmart bargain bin titles with razor thin profit margins. I'd bet that Oblivion is probably a healthy chunk bigger than Morrowind at the same number of days from release, though I'd assume the hype machine and fandom probably front-loaded the sales a bit.

 

[Dhruin]

*shrug* We don't know. I don't think there's much doubt that Oblivion has outsold MW in the first weeks, however.

 

[DemonKing]

I hated MW (I only finished the main quest because when I moved to Europe I was without an internet connection for a while and I *needed* something to play), but I have to admit that Oblivion is a much better game...it's not much of an RPG, but it's definitely more fun than MW. Also I like the art direction a lot better - MW just seemed washed out in drab browns.

Well, at least it's good that something that isn't a Diablo clone is selling big - maybe it will encourge some publishers to get back into the CRPG business...although heaven help us if the result is a crap load of ES clones.

 

[Section8]

I think Oblivion could sell on the concept alone. It's a pretty compelling idea for a game. So just imagine how much an expansive fantasy world sandbox done right would sell.

 

[Twinfalls]

Goddamit Dhruin you really ought to write up your own review to counter Rendelus ('Morrowind is the greatest RPG ever') fanboy splooge when it splatters the Dot.

 

[Jaesun]

"Shipped" does not mean "sold", right?

Correct.

Well, I suppose it means sold from the perspective of Bethesda. If the resellers can't get rid of it, I doubt they can give it back to Bethesda.

Well, there usually is some kind of return policy for things like that (records, books et c). Not saying it'll be actually necessary for the retail chains to return any games, but without it I doubt chains would order these amounts. This is nothing new, we've heard about numbers "shipped" before and debunked it.

"Shipped" means retail stores bought a certain amount of the game and pays for the amount of games shipped. Bethesda/Publisher get paid for that "shipped" amount. Period. Retail stores do not get to return items. (Unless they recieved a case of the wrong game, the disk's were defective etc..)

It is up to the retailer to sell those copies they bought. They are stuck with the liability of the quantities of the game they bought.

You are correct however in that shipped =! bought.

I buy retail every day so I know a little about this subject.

 

[Twinfalls]

Okay, what do you guys think about this general argument...?

I think this is great news.

Troika died because there was no interest for RPGs among the big publishers. Other RPG developers have been forced to change in order to survive.

The great sales that Oblivion are enjoying should make it easier for RPG developers to get publisher support for their products in the future, because publishers are now realizing that this isn't the small niche-genre they thought it was.

I bet this will open up quite a few doors for Gothic 3 as well.

 

[Zomg]

What's the point? More shitty amusement park games that have to please a complete cross-section of humanity to turn a profit.

 

[Twinfalls]

The point is that it might provide a window of opportunity for solo RPGs with real depth to get decent budgets and support, not neccessarily more Oblivion clones.....

The argument is this: The defining features of Oblivion, from the point of view of publishers, are that it is single-player, is 'non-linear' (they won't actually understand this), has 'depth' (again), has an original game-world (to them, Tamriel etc would be weird as shit), has many of the trappings of PC rpgs, and is a fucking huge financial success.

Yes, we know it doesn't have those things, not really anyway. But does it nonetheless shift some focus back onto what are called 'single player original RPGs' as money-makers again, allowing a canny developer with the right ideals to make something sophisticated, but with the right presentation touches to have broader financial success?

I'm not sure by the way, it's worth considering though.

 

[Kuato]

"Shipped" does not mean "sold", right?

Correct.

Well, I suppose it means sold from the perspective of Bethesda. If the resellers can't get rid of it, I doubt they can give it back to Bethesda.

Well, there usually is some kind of return policy for things like that (records, books et c). Not saying it'll be actually necessary for the retail chains to return any games, but without it I doubt chains would order these amounts. This is nothing new, we've heard about numbers "shipped" before and debunked it.

"Shipped" means retail stores bought a certain amount of the game and pays for the amount of games shipped. Bethesda/Publisher get paid for that "shipped" amount. Period. Retail stores do not get to return items. (Unless they recieved a case of the wrong game, the disk's were defective etc..)

It is up to the retailer to sell those copies they bought. They are stuck with the liability of the quantities of the game they bought.

You are correct however in that shipped =! bought.

I buy retail every day so I know a little about this subject.

sounds like retailers got duped are there even enough xbox 360s out there to provide enough demand.


from http://gamedesign.uw.hu/gamedesign0119.html

Publishers have very important relationships with the wholesalers and retailers who comprise the distribution chain. Without these relationships, a publisher would not be able to sell enough products to pay back all the costs they incurred in the production of the game. Getting the game onto the shelves of large chains like Wal-Mart, Target, and Babbages is a must, and that process costs more money. Here is a breakdown of the costs involved in distributing a typical console game:
Retail price of $50.
Wholesale price (the amount retailers pay publishers for the title) = approximately 64% of the retail price or $32.00 per unit.
Cost of goods incurred by publisher = approximately $5.00 per unit.
Co-op advertising costs incurred by publisher = approximately 15% of wholesale price or $4.80 per unit.
Marketing costs incurred by publisher = approximately 8% of wholesale price or $2.56 per unit.
Return of goods contingency estimated by publisher = approximately 12% of wholesale price or $3.84 per unit.

If you subtract the cost of goods ($5.00), the coop advertising costs ($4.80), the marketing costs ($2.56) and the return of goods contingency ($3.84) from the wholesale price ($32.00), you’ll find that the publisher reaps about $15.80 per unit sold or approximately 32% of the retail sale price. This is less than most people imagine. "

Ive also heard that retailers can charge Publishers for shipping costs of the unsold units if it winds up being a great number of potential returns then I think thats where certain bargin bin price point drops happen I guess thats when then return of goods contingency kicks in .

 

[Old Scratch]

Okay, what do you guys think about this general argument...?

I think this is great news.

Troika died because there was no interest for RPGs among the big publishers. Other RPG developers have been forced to change in order to survive.

The great sales that Oblivion are enjoying should make it easier for RPG developers to get publisher support for their products in the future, because publishers are now realizing that this isn't the small niche-genre they thought it was.

I bet this will open up quite a few doors for Gothic 3 as well.

I think that would be the best case scenario, but probably not what will happen. If anything, we'll end up with a bunch of Elder Scrolls clones, which for me is preferable to simple Diablo clones at least. Still doesn't get us much closer to real computer role-playing games though.

It could very well draw more attention to Gothic 3, which would be a positive effect IMO. Pirahna Bytes is worthy of a bit of respect after the first two games.

The thing about Oblivion selling so well that baffles me--marketing aside--is why didn't Bloodlines have at least decent sales? The two games have a similar commercial approach in many ways: fancy graphics and technology for their time, lots of NPCs, action combat systems, talking heads, first-person and third-person perspective, familiar settings. VTM: Bloodlines was a much deeper, more atmospheric game in almost every aspect IMO. Plus Bloodlines didn't skimp on the RP elements.

Starting to wonder if RPG fans are only interested in fantasy settings, or maybe M rated CRPGs are too hard to sell.

 

[Twinfalls]

PBytes deserve a shitload of respect for the first two games!

Re Bloodline's sales, Oblivion had the benefit of it's predecessor being released on the Xbox.

Morrowind and Oblivion also offer a 'huge', 'go-anywhere' game world with dress-up LARPing support. This is a huge drawcard. This is what RPG makers who want big budgets and sales need to have as a starting point, from what I can gather.

 

[Kuato]

PBytes deserve a shitload of respect for the first two games!

Re Bloodline's sales, Oblivion had the benefit of it's predecessor being released on the Xbox.

Morrowind and Oblivion also offer a 'huge', 'go-anywhere' game world with dress-up LARPing support. This is a huge drawcard. This is what RPG makers who want big budgets and sales need to have as a starting point, from what I can gather.

Dont forget that Oblvion is good old fashioned "teen" fun, a sporting rating for walmart and other big retailers, now just try to imagine Fallout 3 with teen rating.

 

[kris]

Awesome, now we will get another game like this and now everyone understand that you don't sell a game by design, let your marketing department sell it.