Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[Kyl Von Kull]

Doesn't matter, they rule the casual kingdom while Owlcat rules the grognard grotto, leaving Obsidian and inXile as has-beens without a home (Harebrained [perhaps wisely] abandoned this triple-i space for turn-based "tactical" pastures).

Obsidian has a home: AAA action RPGs (please Tim and Leonard, for the love of god, don't fuck up, amen).

In retrospect, making a labor intensive niche product in the most expensive city on earth may not be the greatest business model. I sort of understand why Feargus was hesitant to do the Kickstarter even when the company didn't have many other options. He knew better than anybody what kind of sales an isometric RTwP RPG generates when it does okay but not great. e.g. Tyranny's doing IWD2 numbers, but it sure as shit didn't have IWD2 costs.

 

[Roguey]

Obsidian has a home: AAA action RPGs (please Tim and Leonard, for the love of god, don't fuck up, amen).

Knock an A off, they're no CD Projekt or Bethesda. They may find themselves in the has-been pile here too, alongside Bioware.

 

[aweigh]

Does BioWare even get anything off Enhanced Edition sales?

 

[cruelio]

I kind of hope Wasteland 3 is a smash hit. I have no real plans to play it, but after two disastrous game launches in a row my underdog sympathy for inXile is really high

They fucking ripped people off twice in a row and they're peppy underdogs? What the fuck is wrong with this forum?

 

[Roguey]

They fucking ripped people off twice in a row and they're peppy underdogs? What the fuck is wrong with this forum?

Can't fault Fargo for being a great salesman, and none of the losers responsible for managing those projects are associated with WL3. We gotta trust in our old pals Ziets, sea, and Zyklon Beekers.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah WL3 has a couple of things going for it in terms of sales potential. One, a genuinely interesting setting for a change. Two, it's gonna have multiplayer. Three, it has Ziets.

Obviously a lot depends on whether they can manage to have a smooth launch - which has never happened so far, and whether they can get the visuals up to par. WL2-grade graphics were dated already when the game came out and in the era of DOS2/Deadfire they'd be laughed out of the market with a game looking like that.

 

[Rev]

Ziets cannot save a game by himself: he's good but pretty much everything else about inXile is rotten to the core, as they already proved time and time again.

 

[Sensuki]

IE-starved crowd still bought and played it. It's the new audience who tried the first game on a hype, hated it and didn't show up for a sequel.

Disagree here. On my steam I think there's close to 30 people that own Pillars of Eternity. Off the top of my head I think 20-25 of those people have played an Infinity Engine game. Only 5 or so of those people bought Pillars 2, and I think 4/5 of those people are Codexers.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Unlike Numenera and BT4, Wasteland 2 turned out pretty decent. Everything I've read about WL3 makes it seem like an improvement over WL2.

 

[Safav Hamon]

and whether they can get the visuals up to par. WL2-grade graphics were dated already when the game came out and in the era of DOS2/Deadfire they'd be laughed out of the market with a game looking like that.

 

[Tigranes]

We'll see when it's actually real.

And this is more representative of the WL2 experience:

 

[Safav Hamon]

What do you mean actually real? That's a real screenshot.

 

[aweigh]

What he means by 'real picture' is that inXile misrepresented Wasteland 2's graphics during the hype phase by publishing pictures showing graphical quality that was not there when the game shipped.

Note that this isn't something only inXile has done; almost every single major publisher does this as well. This is common practice. Ubisoft does it with every single title, except Ubisoft even goes farther by releasing game play videos showing graphics and features of higher quality than what's in the actual released game.

At least inXile only kept it to pictures.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Before you all sing too much of Kingmaker's praises I should note that the concurrent player retention they've had so far is only slightly better than Deadfire's. It's a financial success by having a far more reasonable budget (and Obsidian certainly wouldn't want its metacritic scores or its Steam user scores)

Metacritic score doesn't put stakes in the fridge though...

Streamers won't help you if your game is shit.

But is Deadfire shit?

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Graphics of WL2 are fine.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Before you all sing too much of Kingmaker's praises I should note that the concurrent player retention they've had so far is only slightly better than Deadfire's. It's a financial success by having a far more reasonable budget (and Obsidian certainly wouldn't want its metacritic scores or its Steam user scores)

You are correct on that part. And I do not think that codex measures and actually aught not to measure the quality of a game by its Steam charts digits or metacritics score. That is the job for people from Something Awful. A lot of people here, including me, *genuinely* like the game. Considering what games codex likes uniformly do badly, P: K is a great success on two fronts.

Now with that acknowledged, the only way for P:K to go is up mechanics wise and down storytelling wise. I am of course waiting to be surprised.

 

[fantadomat]

Wasteland 3 will sell like shit on biscuit. Who the fuck will be exited about an inxile game? All of their games were boring mediocre flops. Nobody cares about them at this point.

 

[Elex]

well if pathfinder have “d&d attached to it” poe2 have critical role attached to it.

DnD is long time franchise with thousands of fans that enjoy playing it. Critical role is twitch shit what weed smoking blockheads go to waste their time watching other people play games.

eh critical role is more D&D related that paizo pathfinder.

every time D&D announce something they slap in a video that show matt mercer collaboration.

in the last pubblisher adventure they litterally put matt mercer inside.

 

[frajaq]

Wasteland 3 will sell line shit on biscuit. Who the fuck will be exited about an inxile game? All of their games were boring mediocre flops. Nobody cares about them at this point.

well there's a chance it can sell if the devs scream at the tops of their lungs "ITS A STANDALONE GAME!!! YOU DON'T NEED TO PLAY PREVIOUS GAMES FOR IT!!!" or something.

Also apparently it has coop multiplayer and that was a feature a lot of players liked in D:OS 2, so who knows really?

 

[Parabalus]

Who's the bigger commercial failure, inXile or Obsidian?

 

[Elex]

Before you all sing too much of Kingmaker's praises I should note that the concurrent player retention they've had so far is only slightly better than Deadfire's. It's a financial success by having a far more reasonable budget (and Obsidian certainly wouldn't want its metacritic scores or its Steam user scores)

pathfinder kingmaker is unlayable by bugs, you can easily get stuck until patched.
even after a month of hotfing is hard to complete the game.

that make the player retention even more impressive (and a lot of people is waiting for fix).

 

[Brancaleone]

Before you all sing too much of Kingmaker's praises I should note that the concurrent player retention they've had so far is only slightly better than Deadfire's. It's a financial success by having a far more reasonable budget (and Obsidian certainly wouldn't want its metacritic scores or its Steam user scores)

pathfinder kingmaker is unlayable by bugs, you can easily get stuck until patched.
even after a month of hotfing is hard to complete the game.

that make the player retention even more impressive (and a lot of people is waiting for fix).

That's quite a harsh characterization. Let's say that the typical playthrough looks like a Starship Troopers remake.

I'm pinning the player retention onto the game being bought almost exclusively by Verhoeven fans.

 

[Roguey]

Who's the bigger commercial failure, inXile or Obsidian?

inXile, given that Deadfire is a Tides of Numenera-esque bomb and they haven't had a Bard's Tale IV-level bomb yet.

 

[2house2fly]

I don't know that Deadfire is Numenera level (didn't they have barely 100k players including 70k+ backers?) but it's no doubt going to do less than Tyranny, a game whose publisher just celebrated its 2 year anniversary by releasing a patch which deleted alll savegames

 

[Safav Hamon]

PC game of the year

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/trusted-reviews-awards-2018-3592862