The sales thread

[Melusina]

 

Obs have done a decent job making Deadfire newbie friendly. There is not much more they could do. W3 isn't any better from that perspective, so I doubt that has much influence on sales.

Something I don't quite get though... POE appears to be selling really well, on steam and gog. Not entirely sure what the heck is up with that. I'm happy that's its selling but.... why???

People have waited for PoE2 reviews, it's a stunning game, so they're buying them both together for on giant playthrough?

 

It was sale recently for Tyranny and POE1 on humble and gog. It appears there's sale on steam now for those titles.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Melusina

[wih]

Obs have done a decent job making Deadfire newbie friendly. There is not much more they could do. W3 isn't any better from that perspective, so I doubt that has much influence on sales.

Something I don't quite get though... POE appears to be selling really well, on steam and gog. Not entirely sure what the heck is up with that. I'm happy that's its selling but.... why???

 

You have never played PoE, but hear praises about PoE 2. It is a second installment, which already says it is a serious thing. You would want to try it, but it has just released, is at full price and there are bugs. Meanwhile PoE: Definitive Edition is  rock solid after years of support, is cheaper, has much more content because of the DLCs and is on sale. And you will be able to import your PoE save into PoE 2 eventually. What will you do?

[rheingold]

 

Something I don't quite get though... POE appears to be selling really well, on steam and gog. Not entirely sure what the heck is up with that. I'm happy that's its selling but.... why???

On Steam at least it, and the two White March DLCs, at 40% at the moment. If you want to play Deadfire but have heard it's currently buggy and untuned and you haven't yet played PoE why not take advantage of this deal? That might explain the upturn in sales.

 

Yeah, could be a number of reasons. Just one minor concern. Obs have taken a different direction with Deadfire - more of a sandbox, less tight narration.

I am a tad disappointed, (I am really enjoying the game but don't think it's as good as the first) so hopefully if large numbers of people are going to play Deadfire if they enjoy the first game, they might be a bit disappointed... Not necessarily great news for a sequel.

And it won't really work the other way, if they didn't like POE it's unlikely the majority of them would then try Deadfire.

[Ashen Rohk]

<- Witcher 3 was my first of the series, easy enough to pick up and enough to make you want to revisit the others. I enjoyed HoS with Shahn, even though I'd never met her before, Iorveth was cool too without being the villain from TW2.

[flamesium]

 

 

You still haven't actually proven your original point that you can jump into the Witcher games at any point and that it's partly responsible for their success.

It’s self-evident. Millions of new people can and have jumped into the franchise at each successive installment. If they hadn’t felt able to do so they wouldn’t have and it would have sold less.

 

If you want to think it’s a coincidence that all of the most successful studios and franchises deliberately make each new game welcoming to new players and don’t require the player to have intimate knowledge of the preceding installments I’m ok with it. I can’t prove that it isn’t.

 

Likewise I can’t prove that having Deadfire revolve around the continuation of an on-going philosophical discussion about the nature of faith in a world with a convoluted quasi-sci-fi reincarnation system will put off new players, but I’m pretty comfortable saying that it will.

 

He asking you to explain how having no idea who Triss, Yen, Vernon Roche, Ves, Zoltan, Dandelion, Philippa, all the other Witchers and more are and being totally ignorant of The Witcher 1 plot (TW3 plot is a direct continuation of it) means that TW3 is accessible while not knowing who Edér, Aloth, Pallegina and Caed Nua are is a real accessibility problem for POE2.

 

 

Thinking you need intimate knowledge of Zoltan and Dandelion's activities to follow a Witcher game is like thinking you need intimate knowledge of Q and Moneypenny to follow a James Bond movie. How much can they or their relationship to Geralt even be change between TW1 and TW3? Takes about 5 seconds of explanation to show or tell a new player everything they need to know about them: Geralt's reliable friend, Geralt's annoying dandy friend. It's no harder a task to explain them in TW3 than it was in TW1 when your own fully established character already knew them -or at least they knew him- and they had to be explained to the player.

 

The Watcher's companions can be alive, dead, or have fundamentally different belief systems based on your actions during PoE1 and they're going to be glued to your hip for 80 hours.

 

I think the nature of your own character and the world are the bigger stumbling blocks for Deadfire re new players though. 'Gruff Monster Slayer for Hire' and 'Medieval setting with monsters in it' don't take a lot of explaining. The nature of Eora is so convoluted that they've spent two games explaining it and I'm still not convinced the writers even understand it themselves.

[flamesium]

 

No one (as far as I understand it) is saying one can't enjoy the Witcher 3 without having played the previous two...

^ he gets it.

 

 

"You do realize that Witcher games can't be joined part-way through, right?" - also Tagaziel

[ChronoTravis]

Even though I prefer PoE 2 a bit more than DOS:2 and I think it one of the be greatest RPGs of all time, it lacks two features that make DOS:2 popular: multiplayer and modding. Obsidian might just have to break down and move that direction for their next game. People love playing DOS:2 with friends and hosting DnD-style games with it. Also, moddng will extend the life of that game.

[Gairnulf]

I'll start by saying I haven't played beyond Deadlight, because from the start it was obvious the game will benefit a lot from the first patches and I didn't want to spoil it for myslef by playing unpatched. Plus, there was enough work to do on the JSON editor to keep me busy.

 

This means I can't speak at length about the game's qualities or story, but the little I saw won me over completely, and I think the game is overall a big improvement over PoE. The increase in complexity and readability of mechanics, and in freedom/exploration of gameplay at the same time, the addition of multiclassing plus the ship system is just a huge boost. This is now much more than an IE games revival/clone. There is much I would like to change about the combat and abilities balance, but that's what modding is for.

 

All reviews of Deadfire I have seen so far seem to be very positive, and I think that's well earned by the game, yet the sales numbers don't seem to be that great. I wonder why is that? Are people waiting for patches/DLC? Does the price feel too high for people who haven't backed/preordered?

[Sedrefilos]

The game sells it's 756,876th copy as I type.

 

Kidding of course. How do we know what the sells are?

[flamesium]

I think it’s struggling to appeal beyond the group of people who played and finished PoE1, as expected.

 

It’s hard to tell exactly how well it’s sold, but the player data on Steam Charts isn’t encouraging imo, assuming it’s at all accurate. The peak player number for the last 24 hours and (all-time peak):

 

Deadfire: 8,714 (22,639)

Pillars 1: 5,487 (41,787)

Divinity: OS 2: 11,576 (93,350)

 

I suppose the best news there is the shot in the arm Pillars 1 has received. Given the rate at which people bounce right off of Pillars however, I don’t know if we can assume they will finish it and go on to purchase Deadfire.

[Slotharingia]

No idea what the sales are, but i see it as a problem that while Deadfire potentially appeals to a much wider audience, that aspect is in conflict with the story making hardly any sense to new players. It's also exspensive, which is going to be off putting to newcomers. I like very few games and while I wanted to buy POE for ages, I eventually only bought it once it was on sale.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Slotharingia

[Gairnulf]

Concurrent players will jump after the first big patch, but the number of owners seems weak.

[fortuntek]

I would imagine all-time peak is most likely to jump after the biggest sale discount

[wih]

It seems to me that not only PoE, but also Tyranny profited from Deadfire. It was on sale and stayed on the first two pages of steam top sellers for several days.

[Sarakash]

It seems to me that not only PoE, but also Tyranny profited from Deadfire. It was on sale and stayed on the first two pages of steam top sellers for several days.

 

Yeah, I noticed that as well.

[flamesium]

I would imagine all-time peak is most likely to jump after the biggest sale discount

 

Peak is almost always always on release for something like this, short of exceptional circumstances.

[Wormerine]

 

I would imagine all-time peak is most likely to jump after the biggest sale discount

 

 

Peak is almost always always on release for something like this, short of exceptional circumstances.

An exceptional circumstance could be that it is an Obsidian game. From all the Obsidian fans I know, I was the only one who jumped unto it. Most of them are waiting for patch or two. I waited for a bit with PoE1 as well.

[wih]

 

 

I would imagine all-time peak is most likely to jump after the biggest sale discount

 

Peak is almost always always on release for something like this, short of exceptional circumstances.

An exceptional circumstance could be that it is an Obsidian game. From all the Obsidian fans I know, I was the only one who jumped unto it. Most of them are waiting for patch or two. I waited for a bit with PoE1 as well.

 

 

I also think that many fans are waiting to buy, but it will be hard for us to notice when they do, based on the peak stat alone. Simply because the playthroughs of the new buyers will be spread over time and won't coincide with those that have played it on release. Maybe the DLCs will cause a new spike though - with luck and some good marketing.

[Yosharian]

I bought it, that's the important thing.

[fortuntek]

I wish I had the patience to wait until the first patch or two before playing like some people, but between the beta and my third playthrough already I am like an addict here (I've put 150 hours or so in since release and that's balanced around a 9-5 job and family life, sooo...)

[flamesium]

 

 

I would imagine all-time peak is most likely to jump after the biggest sale discount

 

Peak is almost always always on release for something like this, short of exceptional circumstances.

An exceptional circumstance could be that it is an Obsidian game. From all the Obsidian fans I know, I was the only one who jumped unto it. Most of them are waiting for patch or two. I waited for a bit with PoE1 as well.

 

They won't all happen to jump in at the same time though, so while patches might cause sales to pick up in general there's no chance it would be enough to overtake the release peak. According to SteamCharts, Pillars 1 achieved ~42k peak around launch, then the second highest peak was ~8k during the recent Deadfire-release sale.

 

Exceptional circumstances would need to be something like a huge, unexpected piece of media coverage, or say a 90% off sale (at which point the sales spike wouldn't really matter). Or maybe the addition of an unexpectedly successful multiplayer component, which doesn't seem likely.

[Aotrs Commander]

Of course, it being crowd-funded means that a lot of the sales were pre-done, which I imagine has some impact on the sales figures, and of course there's also that it's on Gog. So unless OBS tells us ore directly, we can only infer to a degree.

 

I'm not sure how much of a kickstarter like this one essentially makes its money back with the crowd-funding to start with and whether or not release is essentially "extra" or not.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Aotrs Commander

[flamesium]

I expect they spent far more making Deadfire than they raised from the Fig campaign. They also added full voice acting during development which won't have been cheap. They'll be needing decent sales to break even I would think.

 

With a publisher involved Obsidian won't be carrying all of the risk though.

[Gritino]

It seems to me that not only PoE, but also Tyranny profited from Deadfire. It was on sale and stayed on the first two pages of steam top sellers for several days.

Funny. I've been wanting to play Tyranny now that I've started playing Deadfire. I guess I'm not the only one.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

If you liked the game, tell your friends to buy it, or buy them copies.