Was Fallout 76 a small slip or it will impact future of Bethesda?

[hexer]

From what I remember, Fallout 4 was a huge commercial success for them.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah, all they have to do is churn out mediocre stuff and the masses will chow down on it like they're at an RPG All-You-Can-Eat. Who gives a shit about gamers who have actual taste when there's legions of mindless consolefags out there who'll play anything.

 

[Funposter]

From what I remember, Fallout 4 was a huge commercial success for them.

It shipped the most units in its first year of any Bethesda game, but they have still yet to release sales figures for it while they mention Skyrim's 30million every chance they get.

Infer from this what you will.

 

[Wunderbar]

From what I remember, Fallout 4 was a huge commercial success for them.

It shipped the most units in its first year of any Bethesda game, but they have still yet to release sales figures for it while they mention Skyrim's 30million every chance they get.
Infer from this what you will.

that doesn't mean it was a bomb.

 

[Funposter]

From what I remember, Fallout 4 was a huge commercial success for them.

It shipped the most units in its first year of any Bethesda game, but they have still yet to release sales figures for it while they mention Skyrim's 30million every chance they get.
Infer from this what you will.

that doesn't mean it was a bomb.

Hence the word "relative" in my previous post. I'm sure it was profitable, but I'm positing that it made nowhere near as much as Bethesda/Zenimax were hoping and that they had based their roadmap for following years based around the idea that it would have the same reception and success as Skyrim. This is very common. Look at Square Enix back around 2012, labelling games like Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider as abject failures because they didn't cross some magical threshold of 5 million copies, or how Dead Space 3 required 5 million copies sold in order to break even, which was more copies sold than the previous two entries combined. Fallout 4 probably had a higher advertising budget and team, with a longer development cycle, than any of those games. Put it this way, a movie like Batman v Superman can make $870 million off a budget of $300 million, and the studio can still consider it a failure. Why? Because the next year was budgeted in such a way that Batman v Superman was meant to make twice that much. All of a sudden the studio is $800 million short.

Again, I am not suggesting that Fallout 4 was a bomb. What I am suggesting is that it was nowhere near as successful as executives and accountants at Bethesda/Zenimax needed or wanted it to be.

 

[Wunderbar]

Funposter comparing it to Batman v Superman is wrong. Some of previous Batman films made over billion dollars, naturally BvS was expected to make at least the same amount now that Batman is teamed up with Superman.

None of previous Fallout games managed to reach 30m copies sold, not even 20, not even 15. And i doubt Fo4's production and advertisement budget was that big to consider it an underperformance.

 

[Funposter]

None of previous Fallout games managed to reach 30m copies sold, not even 20, not even 15. And i doubt Fo4's production and advertisement budget was that big to consider it an underperformance.

This isn't a Fallout game, it's a Bethesda game. It's Skyrim With Guns™. It was supposed to build on the success of Skyrim and Bethesda as a brand in the same way that Fallout 3 built off Oblivion, and Skyrim built off Fallout 3. The figures for this are a little bit all over the place, but the timeline goes something along the lines of 9.5 million -> 12.4 million -> 30 million. Take the next source with a grain of salt (the FO3 figures being different is a tip off) but there's an estimate of 14.91 million sales for Fallout 4 as of Feb 2019. This put it behind the amount of copies sold by Skyrim in the same period of its release cycle despite Pete Hines' insistence to the contrary (without providing concrete figures, I might add). So the current trajectory is an estimated 9.5 million -> 12.4 million -> 30 million -> 14.9 million. That's not good, and the estimated sales figures for Fallout 76 take the ball and run with it in the "not good" department, being absolutely disastrous by comparison.

I have to make the assumption that Fallout 4 had an even bigger advertising budget than any of the previous games when you take into account the TV spots and licensed music which cost $14 million, more than any game in the same release period apart from Black Ops 3 which went on to sell 26 million copiesaccording to various sources and the free-to-play app developed alongside it.

But this is all guesswork. Bethesda are a privately owned company and have to obligation to release this information, which leads to totally bullshit figures from various sources and spin from marketing execs like Pete Hines.

 

[Butter]

It would be madness for them to assume they could repeat Skyrim's success with FO4. 9.5, 12.4, 30!! is a huge jump. Any sane person would congratulate them but then advise them to not expect such an anomaly the next time out.

 

[Funposter]

It would be madness for them to assume they could repeat Skyrim's success with FO4. 9.5, 12.4, 30!! is a huge jump. Any sane person would congratulate them but then advise them to not expect such an anomaly the next time out.

Marketing execs operate on a different plane of reality to you or I. Refer to the previous post about Square Enix and EA in 2012/3.

Edit: Also some anecdotal evidence re: Fallout 4's sales. Not long after release (like, less than a year) friends and I would see it on sale in game stores for like $25-30 AU. Now maybe this is just the death of brick and mortar stores, but I don't think any of us saw such drastic drops in the price of physical copies of Skyrim during the same timeframe after launch. It was like they'd had way too many copies of the game shipped to them and were trying to clear stock out of the store in time for newer releases.

 

[Wunderbar]

It would be madness for them to assume they could repeat Skyrim's success with FO4. 9.5, 12.4, 30!! is a huge jump. Any sane person would congratulate them but then advise them to not expect such an anomaly the next time out.

Marketing execs operate on a different plane of reality to you or I. Refer to the previous post about Square Enix and EA in 2012/3.

well, unlike Square's, Bethesda execs weren't caught talking shit about low sales.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

 

[luj1]

Skyrim, Fallout 4 or Fallout 76 weren't slips. They are the lifelong culmination of algorithm-centric game design pioneered by programmer Todd Howard, and - in the case of Fallout 76 - also a marriage with modern MMO and F2P malpractices.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Yeah! Skyrim 2 is going to be awesome!

The thing is, we will buy it.

Edit: so, this is my 1000th message and I'm obliged to buy it now. Fucking Codex.

 

[Rahdulan]

This is what's supposed to save Fallout 76.

Makes you wonder what big brain genius decided to release the update meant to save the game in April. You know, same month both Resident Evil 3 and Final Fantasy 7 remakes are coming out to hog all the attention.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

None of previous Fallout games managed to reach 30m copies sold, not even 20, not even 15. And i doubt Fo4's production and advertisement budget was that big to consider it an underperformance.

This isn't a Fallout game, it's a Bethesda game. It's Skyrim With Guns™. It was supposed to build on the success of Skyrim and Bethesda as a brand in the same way that Fallout 3 built off Oblivion, and Skyrim built off Fallout 3. The figures for this are a little bit all over the place, but the timeline goes something along the lines of 9.5 million -> 12.4 million -> 30 million. Take the next source with a grain of salt (the FO3 figures being different is a tip off) but there's an estimate of 14.91 million sales for Fallout 4 as of Feb 2019. This put it behind the amount of copies sold by Skyrim in the same period of its release cycle despite Pete Hines' insistence to the contrary (without providing concrete figures, I might add). So the current trajectory is an estimated 9.5 million -> 12.4 million -> 30 million -> 14.9 million. That's not good, and the estimated sales figures for Fallout 76 take the ball and run with it in the "not good" department, being absolutely disastrous by comparison.

I have to make the assumption that Fallout 4 had an even bigger advertising budget than any of the previous games when you take into account the TV spots and licensed music which cost $14 million, more than any game in the same release period apart from Black Ops 3 which went on to sell 26 million copiesaccording to various sources and the free-to-play app developed alongside it.

But this is all guesswork. Bethesda are a privately owned company and have to obligation to release this information, which leads to totally bullshit figures from various sources and spin from marketing execs like Pete Hines.

Late capitalism obsession with growth is one of the most self destructive forces in the world. If they didn't have unrealistic expectations to sell more than Skyrim, they could budget more realistically and be profitable. But no, we need to appease shareholders, our true customers.

In Bethesda instance schadenfreude is strong, however the smug disappears from one lips when one realizes that most companies are run like that. Whole economy si being run like that.

 

[DalekFlay]

Wasn't 76 mostly developed by a satellite studio? Or in collaboration at least? That makes the long development time of Star Whatever even more crazy.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

None of previous Fallout games managed to reach 30m copies sold, not even 20, not even 15. And i doubt Fo4's production and advertisement budget was that big to consider it an underperformance.

This isn't a Fallout game, it's a Bethesda game. It's Skyrim With Guns™. It was supposed to build on the success of Skyrim and Bethesda as a brand in the same way that Fallout 3 built off Oblivion, and Skyrim built off Fallout 3. The figures for this are a little bit all over the place, but the timeline goes something along the lines of 9.5 million -> 12.4 million -> 30 million. Take the next source with a grain of salt (the FO3 figures being different is a tip off) but there's an estimate of 14.91 million sales for Fallout 4 as of Feb 2019. This put it behind the amount of copies sold by Skyrim in the same period of its release cycle despite Pete Hines' insistence to the contrary (without providing concrete figures, I might add). So the current trajectory is an estimated 9.5 million -> 12.4 million -> 30 million -> 14.9 million. That's not good, and the estimated sales figures for Fallout 76 take the ball and run with it in the "not good" department, being absolutely disastrous by comparison.

I have to make the assumption that Fallout 4 had an even bigger advertising budget than any of the previous games when you take into account the TV spots and licensed music which cost $14 million, more than any game in the same release period apart from Black Ops 3 which went on to sell 26 million copiesaccording to various sources and the free-to-play app developed alongside it.

But this is all guesswork. Bethesda are a privately owned company and have to obligation to release this information, which leads to totally bullshit figures from various sources and spin from marketing execs like Pete Hines.

Your source for 14.9 million is pretty much a non-source, I'm not going to trust a site that wants me to pay for access to its sources.

 

[luj1]

Fallout 4 was a huge commercial success for them.

And no one should care. The only thing that matters is cult success.

 

[Trojan_generic]

TES6 should have been named Skyrim 69, and it would sell like shiat.
But it does not matter, future belongs to millenials and younger scum playing with Google Stadia because they are too stupid to install a game.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Oh, nobody is playing Google Stadia.

 

[Makabb]

Wasn't 76 mostly developed by a satellite studio? Or in collaboration at least? That makes the long development time of Star Whatever even more crazy.

Yes it was made by some guys who were making a f2p mmo before that was cancelled.