Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[Perkel]

60 bucks plus 20 buck season pass. Even if they sell around same amount as Pillars they will get decent money.
And that does not give as any idea about console sales (PoE1 was released on consoles) and undobtly PoE2 will also be released on them.

 

[Sentinel]

is it 60 bucks in the US?
it's 45€

 

[Elex]

Now Obsidian's stuck doing what Bioware did after Dragon Age II and what McComb did after Tides of Numenera: say "Yeah, well the CRITICS love it."

• critics love it
• muh marketing
• poor release window
• plebs can't into incline
• sales are inverse to True Quality™
• people are waiting for complete edition
• its got legs
• muh MCA
• sales don't matter

Am I missing any?

umm tiepid twitch presence?

 

[Shadenuat]

I wonder if I'm the only person who would instantly get turned away from the game by such a blatantly arrogant, crude and sellout marketing like this picture above. It's just so terrible in every way. It's also dumb because even casual youtube "critics" made all gamers wary of ratings by the press and 9/10's.

 

[Elex]

From what I recall only a small percentage of PoE owners bothered with completing White March in the first place, so these DLCs won't really do shit until a Complete Edition is out. If this is an actual flop, that "The Outer Worlds" game is the last card for Obsidian. But honestly, they'll break even if I'm to guess.
Until the company comments further, I don't think there is much to say.

just check steam achivement, i think is around 10%

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

The reason why PoE 1, WL2 and even non-Kickstarter titles like Blackguards sold relatively well is because they came out at a time when the cRPG 'revival' was getting a ton of attention from the press. This, coupled with the Kickstarter craze of 2012-2013, convinced a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be interested in these game to try them out.

That's reasonable, but steam still induces players to consumerism. People buy more games than they have time to play because they are moved by an impulse in the heat of the moment. So you can expect games selling more and more overtime. Obviously there is a limit, but is nowhere near the limited to the numbers of the Kickstarter craze. It's a bizarre idea to suggest that studios can live out of players' impulses on steam, but is plausible.

 

[J_C]

I wonder if I'm the only person who would instantly get turned away from the game by such a blatantly arrogant, crude and sellout marketing like this picture above. It's just so terrible in every way. It's also dumb because even casual youtube "critics" made all gamers wary of ratings by the press and 9/10's.

Now where have I seen this before?

 

[J_C]

A week after release and Steamspy is estimating sales are in the 100-200k range.

Comparing my game's number with SteamSpy....hey, whatdoyouknow, SteamSpy numbers doesn't mean shit anymore!

 

[Tigranes]

I wonder if I'm the only person who would instantly get turned away from the game by such a blatantly arrogant, crude and sellout marketing like this picture above. It's just so terrible in every way. It's also dumb because even casual youtube "critics" made all gamers wary of ratings by the press and 9/10's.

I agree - if anything, universally high scores tell me the game is well polished but possibly casualshit. But sadly people are retards. Even many Codexers will happily slag off reviewers when they don't agree with their content, but then obsessively check IGN and all the other retardomags to seek validation for their views. Same thing with using sales figures to prove a game is great/shit, as if the masses who buy Call of Duty are relevant to judgments of quality.

I wonder how much of this is the Vince rule of 'sequels always do a lot worse'. You can imagine a huge amount of people that went batshit crazy when POE1 was first announced, as the first (and possibly last) comeback of a kind of game they long believed was dead forever. Now, people aren't paying for that, they are paying for just another old school-ish RPG amongst a pretty wide range of competition. I think the runaway success of DOS1, and the pretty high sales of POE1 (which I thought was far beyond what the game's niche and ultimate quality merited), might have raised expectations.

Here's hoping all the voice acting and console ports don't end up leaving a big hole in the accounts? I still don't know if Deadfire is good, not far enough into it, but I would mourn the death of any studio that actually tries to make RPG games (even inxile, who I am not excited by at all at the moment, for exmaple).

 

[ilitarist]

I sure hope it didn't sell well. I'll be permitted to like it then!

 

[Bocian]

Why the fuck should anyone buy this right now?

Chris Avellone Do you mind sharing your outlook on how well do you think Deadfire will turn out? Taking into consideration your knowledge of the team working on it and what you think they learned from how PoE ended up.

I have no idea, but based on Obsidian's track record, I wouldn't buy any game from them until the first expansion/DLC came out.

Not trying to be a dick, but it's true - they don't have a great track record of launching a title. I prefer to give it a few months (which also lets me hear how good the story is).

 

[Bonerbill]

A week after release and Steamspy is estimating sales are in the 100-200k range.

Comparing my game's number with SteamSpy....hey, whatdoyouknow, SteamSpy numbers doesn't mean shit anymore!

Yep. No point in relying on steamspy because it's highly inaccurate at the moment.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

So the kickstarter craze and impulse buyers boosted sales of the first game, but now the craze ended.

The sequels curse meant that people who didn’t like the first game did not buy the second.

They can still sell a lot of units overtime with impulse buyers, but this is not important if you have big payroll and operating costs.

If Avellone’s testimony is to be believed, the owners are not reinvesting their profits in development expenses and payroll, which means that they will need another publisher to keep things going.

The numbers indicate that they are close to break even. I think that they already made some profit given the avg price, but I don’t know how was their agreement with the publisher.

Yep. No point in relying on steamspy because it's highly inaccurate at the moment.

It's the second time I heard this. Care to post a link? Thanks.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

LOL at these tags, Roguey. Avellone's revenge. Pillars of Eternity: Dead. Sawyer's gone senile. Schadenfreude.

 

[Roguey]

A week after release and Steamspy is estimating sales are in the 100-200k range.

Comparing my game's number with SteamSpy....hey, whatdoyouknow, SteamSpy numbers doesn't mean shit anymore!

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...dually-coming-back.121203/page-5#post-5580727

I wouldn't really say hundreds of thousands is a "small title."

 

[Jokzore]

It's the second time I heard this. Care to post a link? Thanks.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018...ting-down-blames-valves-new-privacy-settings/
https://www.slashgear.com/steam-spy-may-die-as-valve-rolls-out-new-privacy-policy-11527100/

Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin notes that this new security update hides user libraries by default – something Valve doesn’t mention in its blog post – and that as a result, Steam Spy can no longer function properly.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Ok, thanks Roguey and Jokzore. So all this discussion is for nothing.

 

[Roguey]

Ok, thanks Roguey and Jokzore. So all this discussion is for nothing.

Which discussion are you referring to? Because Steamspy is accurate if you're dealing with titles that sold more than 100k, e.g. http://steamspy.com/app/291650 http://steamspy.com/app/240760 http://steamspy.com/app/272270 http://steamspy.com/app/362960

Last time I checked, those are all in the ballpark of accuracy (though PoE is far closer to 1 million than 2)

 

[Jenkem]

because they lied about the product and said there would be sea shanties and there are clearly not so obsidian can burn for all I care fuck feargus hope he crashes his car into josh sawyer's bike

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Which discussion are you referring to? Because Steamspy is accurate if you're dealing with titles that sold more than 100k, e.g. http://steamspy.com/app/291650 http://steamspy.com/app/240760 http://steamspy.com/app/272270 http://steamspy.com/app/362960

Last time I checked, those are all in the ballpark of accuracy (though PoE is far closer to 1 million than 2)

Ok, thanks.

 

[LESS T_T]

Valve's Steam weekly top seller list based on revenues (not counting microtransactions).

There are two PoE 2 entries, one is pre-release sales and the other is post-release one. There's no way of knowing which is which.

#10 - Far Cry 5
#9 - Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
#8 - Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia
#7 - Stardew Valley
#6 - The Forest
#5 - Frostpunk
#4 - Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
#3 - Conan Exiles
#2 - Grand Theft Auto V
#1 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

One thing to watch: how long and high PoE 2 will remain in the chart next weeks.

For comparison:
Battletech - #3/#6 -> #6 -> out
Frostpunk - #2 -> #3 -> #5

 

[Sigourn]

Hear hear, Obsidian. The steps towards making a successful RPG:

- Have an interesting, memorable setting.
- Have good, mature writing. No retarded *makes fart noises in your ear*, no playersexual companions.
- No romances, for that matter.
- Turn-based combat.
- Highly polished game, from beginning to end. None of this "night sky from the very beginning of the game looks low res and blurry". I seriously cringed when I saw that: it's literally THE first thing the player sees once he presses New Game.
- Don't make it a direct sequel to a mediocre, forgettable RPG.

This again proves that an isometric, turn-based Falliout: New Vegas would have been the RPG to end all RPGs.

 

[J_C]

A week after release and Steamspy is estimating sales are in the 100-200k range.

Comparing my game's number with SteamSpy....hey, whatdoyouknow, SteamSpy numbers doesn't mean shit anymore!

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...dually-coming-back.121203/page-5#post-5580727

I wouldn't really say hundreds of thousands is a "small title."

Until I get confirmation from some developers that the SteamSpy data is at least somewhat accurate, I wouldn't trust in that Sergey dude from SteamSpy. Pillars of Eternity 1: between 1 and 2 million? Wow, that is one accurate service. Skyrim: between 10 and 20 million. Wow, even better. GTA5: again, 10-20million. Hey, I don't need SteamSpy for this, I can come up with data myself. Let's see, I say that pillars 2 is somewhere between 0 and 1 million. It is not inaccurate for small titles, it is also inaccurate for big titles.

 

[Morality Games]

And of course no one is thrilled when a sequel, particularly the first Black Isle/Obsidian sequel not constrained by a slamdunk schedule or budget, doesn't outperform or even match its predecessor.

Aside from the fact that Pillars of Eternity II is going to keep selling for years and eventually ship over a million on Steam alone (I was handily correct about that when everyone said I was wrong with PoE1), there is zero expectation early sales would be as strong as during the Kickstarter fever (which rode the anger of the Mass Effect 3 ending) and any suggestion that it should or was expected to be isn't credible analysis.

I have no idea why everyone has collectively chosen to lose all sense of reason and perspective. This is a genre that died because it has long lifetime sales instead of Day 1 sales.

A week after release and Steamspy is estimating sales are in the 100-200k range.

Comparing my game's number with SteamSpy....hey, whatdoyouknow, SteamSpy numbers doesn't mean shit anymore!

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...dually-coming-back.121203/page-5#post-5580727

I wouldn't really say hundreds of thousands is a "small title."

Until I get confirmation from some developers that the SteamSpy data is at least somewhat accurate, I wouldn't trust in that Sergey dude from SteamSpy. Pillars of Eternity 1: between 1 and 2 million? Wow, that is one accurate service. Skyrim: between 10 and 20 million. Wow, even better. GTA5: again, 10-20million. Hey, I don't need SteamSpy for this, I can come up with data myself. Let's see, I say that pillars 2 is somewhere between 0 and 1 million. It is not inaccurate for small titles, it is also inaccurate for big titles.

If you pledge on Patreon. You get more accurate (or at least, refined) data.

It reads 111,000.

 

[Roguey]

Aside from the fact that Pillars of Eternity II is going to keep selling for years and eventually ship over a million on Steam alone

Given that this happened to D:OS, this is certainly probable. However, greedy Feargus Urquhart wants to grow. Selling another million over time is stagnation, now it's 2 million or bust.

any suggestion that it should or was expected to be isn't credible analysis.

You don't spend a ton of money on full voice acting and dumb down your sequel for casuals without wanting a wider audience than the one you already have. Absurdian's great mistake was not realizing that this is the ceiling. They could have had partial VA and made the strategic elements even more hardcore (or the same) and probably sell a comparable amount.