PoE Sales Analysis Thread

[Mustawd]

That's just an age thing. When I was younger, I had more time than money. As a functioning adult, I have more money than time. Since a large percentage of the people buying nostalgic RPGs are probably older, it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of them don't finish the games they buy.

this

 

[Perkel]

stop assuming you need to finish game to enjoy it.
I can't count how many times i played some games for 100h+ hours never finishing them.

 

[Excidium II]

I can't count how many times i played some games for 100h+ hours never finishing them.

How do you live with yourself

 

[Mexi]

How do you live with yourself

Actually, I've done the same. Some of the best games I've played I have never finished. You could sort of count Baldur's Gate in that realm because I've never finished Throne of Bhaal. I keep going back to replay the entire game. Sometimes I don't even get halfway into Baldur's Gate: 2 until I restart another character from Baldur's Gate.

I almost didn't finish Fallout: 2 for that same reason.

 

[Nikaido]

stop assuming you need to finish game to enjoy it.
I can't count how many times i played some games for 100h+ hours never finishing them.

I agree with the fact that you don't need to finish a game to have possibly enjoyed the experience but.. how in the fuck can you spend a 100h on a game without finishing it?

 

[Perkel]

I agree with the fact that you don't need to finish a game to have possibly enjoyed the experience but.. how in the fuck can you spend a 100h on a game without finishing it?

never finished skyrim. Spent 40h playing vanilla and 350h playing requiem with various builds. I don't see any reason why i need to finish it.
Spent over 600-700h on BGT finished it only twice.
Spent about 400h on Factorio and i still trying to finish it:



because journey is what matters not the ending of it

To finish game i really need good story. Sadly story in most games is shit.

 

[Fairfax]

How much profit do you guys think Obsidian made on PoE?

About 480.000 sales now at a price of let's say 40 euro. Let's say 80.000 backers so 400.000 new sales. That makes 16 million euro.

Instinctively I would say about 50% goes to steam, paradox, marketing etc?

Steam takes 30%. Paradox seemed like a distributor rather than publisher at first, but they're listed as a publisher on Steam as well, so they must have their own cut.
Atm that would be ~14.2 million dollars going to Obsidian/Paradox. Worst case scenario, they have more than enough to make the sequel.

 

[Abu Antar]

There's also GOG and whatever other storefront they used. The thing one has to consider, though, is that we can't really count every owned copy as a sold copy and certainly not a full priced copy.

 

[Fairfax]

There's also GOG and whatever other storefront they used. The thing one has to consider, though, is that we can't really count every owned copy as a sold copy and certainly not a full priced copy.

Correct, but the lowest discount price was $30, and the game also has two more expensive editions for $60 and $90. You're also right that we can't consider every owned copy as sold, but steamspy is quite accurate, something that's been confirmed by several developers.

One thing we have to consider is that many of these were backers already and part of the game's budget, so that's 77,000 people who didn't buy the game afterwards. The Witcher 2 had 80% of its copies sold on Steam and The Witcher 3 had about 45% (more copies sold on GOG), but that's the absolute best case scenario for a game on GOG, as it's the developer's own store, the game gets a few extras, loyal fanbase wants to support them, etc.
I'd guess at least 80% activated their copies on Steam, so that's ~62.000 copies out of the equation. That equals $12,500,000 in revenue for Obsidian/Paradox, but that's assuming all copies were standard editions, so if anything, they made much more than that.

Best case scenario, let's assume 20% of the copies were deluxe editions (I'm guessing here, I've seen some similar numbers for physical limited editions, but not digital only), 15% for the Champion Edition and 5% for the Royal one. That would put it at $13,794,684.

On a different note, I'm not sure, but it does seem to me that PoE was funded by Kickstarter/Paypal alone, unlike other crowdfunded RPGs. Wasteland 2 had its budget doubled (3 to 6 million) with InXile's own money, but I couldn't find anything to suggest it was the case here.

 

[Abu Antar]

Correct, but the lowest discount price was $30, and the game also has two more expensive editions for $60 and $90. You're also right that we can't consider every owned copy as sold, but steamspy is quite accurate, something that's been confirmed by several developers.

One thing we have to consider is that many of these were backers already and part of the game's budget, so that's 77,000 people who didn't buy the game afterwards. The Witcher 2 had 80% of its copies sold on Steam and The Witcher 3 had about 45% (more copies sold on GOG), but that's the absolute best case scenario for a game on GOG, as it's the developer's own store, the game gets a few extras, loyal fanbase wants to support them, etc.
I'd guess at least 80% activated their copies on Steam, so that's ~62.000 copies out of the equation. That equals $12,500,000 in revenue for Obsidian/Paradox, but that's assuming all copies were standard editions, so if anything, they made much more than that.

Best case scenario, let's assume 20% of the copies were deluxe editions (I'm guessing here, I've seen some similar numbers for physical limited editions, but not digital only), 15% for the Champion Edition and 5% for the Royal one. That would put it at $13,794,684.

On a different note, I'm not sure, but it does seem to me that PoE was funded by Kickstarter/Paypal alone, unlike other crowdfunded RPGs. Wasteland 2 had its budget doubled (3 to 6 million) with InXile's own money, but I couldn't find anything to suggest it was the case here.

Obsidian had to chip in with their own money. Also, at the tier I backed the game, I got like seven copies of PoE, giving away most of them and selling 2 or 3 copies. Then I bought a few copies for $20 for some other people. But I guess around $13-16 million wouldn't be far off.

 

[Fairfax]

Obsidian had to chip in with their own money. Also, at the tier I backed the game, I got like seven copies of PoE, giving away most of them and selling 2 or 3 copies. Then I bought a few copies for $20 for some other people. But I guess around $13-16 million wouldn't be far off.

That's true, several tiers got multiple copies of the game. As for the budget, I didn't know about that, but they made 4.3 million including PayPal, I doubt it was as much of their own money as Wasteland 2. If we assume the same budget of $6 million, that's 2 million out of their own pocket that were no problem to recover.

Ok, so let's assume on everage that each backer got 3 copies of the game (between the single copy backers and the ones with a bunch): that's 186,000 Kickstarter copies on Steam.
Using the same 15/5% cut for the deluxe editions, they'd get $9,498,084. Considerably less, but still a good profit on steam alone.

 

[Spectacle]

The Witcher 2 had 80% of its copies sold on Steam and The Witcher 3 had about 45% (more copies sold on GOG), but that's the absolute best case scenario for a game on GOG, as it's the developer's own store, the game gets a few extras, loyal fanbase wants to support them, etc.

The GOG version of Witcher 3 came bundled with the 900 series from nVidia, I would guess that those are the majority of the GOG owners, unless GOG suddenly got a lot more popular. I would also guess that did nVidia not pay full price for the bundled Witchers.

 

[Fairfax]

The GOG version of Witcher 3 came bundled with the 900 series from nVidia, I would guess that those are the majority of the GOG owners, unless GOG suddenly got a lot more popular. I would also guess that did nVidia not pay full price for the bundled Witchers.

I only meant to show how it'd be split in the absolute best case scenario for GOG, and the previous game in comparison. The Witcher 2 also had exclusive bonuses on GOG and the fanbase/developer's own store thing was still. My point is that it's highly unlikely that more than 20% of PoE's backers redeemed GOG copies instead of Steam ones. But then again, Abu Antar reminded me that high tiers got multiple copies, so it's hard to tell.

 

[SniperHF]

If you are looking at TW2 steam numbers you probably should consider that the GOG number was likely higher near release. Steam Sales for $5 get way more eyeballs than gog sales for $5.

 

[Fairfax]

If you are looking at TW2 steam numbers you probably should consider that the GOG number was likely higher near release. Steam Sales for $5 get way more eyeballs than gog sales for $5.

It's from Nov/11. Game wasn't available for $5 yet.
~16% through GOG, actually.

 

[Perkel]

I think you people forget one critical thing.
Most of development was sponsored by people.

We are not talking here about "if they are profitable" We are talking here about serious money for Obsidian from project that they didn't need almost anything to invest inn, that kept them afloat for a time and finally it created new IP for which they can create sequel and sell even more copies.

We are talking here:

- 4mln from kickstarter (- kick % and other costs)
- current sales
- staying afloat
- new IP which in shitty time can be sold for few mln
- new sequel possibility which is guaranteed to sell even more coppies
- technology and experience gained which will reduce time and price of sequel
- possible expansions from which we know of one
- they can again go for new IP kickstarter

IMO it is their best profitable project if you account all things that not only granted them direct money but painted new future for studio that doesn't look like sucking corporate long ass dick scraping barrel for money.

 

[Infinitron]

PoE has shot up the rankings on GOG, and is now the 274th best-selling title ever there. Neck to neck with D:OS at 271st. Dragonfall is 289th, and Wasteland 2 is far behind at 378th.

 

[Roguey]

Damn shame there are so many people into party-based fantasy ar-pegs who don't have any interest in party-based ar-pegs with different settings.

Though it could be a ~features~ thing. No one's ever tried to make a sci-fi Baldur's Gate (or a sci-fi Ultima 7-with-better-combat). DF is turn-based cyberpunk ME2, and Wasteland 2 is a sci-fi Storm of Zehir minus trading (also better than SoZ, though I dunno what the sales on that were, plus it wouldn't even be fair to compare a full game to a second expansion pack).

 

[Lhynn]

How do you live with yourself

 

[Sensuki]

(or a sci-fi Ultima 7-with-better-combat)

Heh. Funny you should mention this exact thing. You never know what the future might bring.

 

[Roguey]

Heh. Funny you should mention this exact thing. You never know what the future might bring.

Haha, Whalenought doesn't exactly have the best sales record so far and that was a fantasy game (albeit a different flavor of fantasy and art-style than what most ar-peg players like). ^_^

 

[Sir Dupre]

As of today it has surpassed Original Sin saleswise on gog, Champion & Royal Editions not included. Not bad at all.

http://abload.de/img/poegeneralmas40.png

 

[Blackguard]

As of today it has surpassed Original Sin saleswise on gog, Champion & Royal Editions not included. Not bad at all.

http://abload.de/img/poegeneralmas40.png

That's actually pretty surprising considering D:OS has sold almost twice as much on Steam according to Steamspy (D:OS Owners: 864,163 ± 23,707 and PoE Owners: 456,774 ± 17,250)

 

[Roguey]

And that GOG number for D:OS is roughly ~200,000 since Swen said they've already hit a million.

 

[Bubbles]

As of today it has surpassed Original Sin saleswise on gog, Champion & Royal Editions not included. Not bad at all.

http://abload.de/img/poegeneralmas40.png

Not surprising considering that PoE had more than three times the backers of D:OS, and backers tend to be more GoGnardy than the general public.