Josh Sawyer on why modern Obsidian plays it safe

[Oner]

On 2/3/2020 at 1:24 AM, AwesomeOcelot said:

I don't think anyone has released TOW sales data yet. I'd be interested in it considering the Epic bribe so it hasn't released on Steam, and Microsoft's Game Pass. Private Division only said it "exceeded expectations", but considering no one buys games on Epic and a lot of people got the game on a subscription service, both of which meant Private Division got given money regardless of sales.

Funny you should mention sales..

[KaInEvIL]

More like Obsidian going full social justice. Certainly not a good sign. Tyranny would've been a pretty good game if it didn't feel like playing a rushed demo. Reminds me a lot of Tides of Numerera and other scams. I wonder how long this "wokeness" trend agenda infecting every piece of entertainment will last.

Edited February 8, 2020 by KaInEvIL

[AwesomeOcelot]

8 hours ago, Oner said:

Funny you should mention sales..

On its own the 2m figure isn't impressive. A multi-platform FPS RPG should expect those sales. New Vegas sold 5m. PoE sold 700k as a squad-based RtWP RPG only on PC. Tomb Raider at 3.4m was seen as a failure. Factor in that Epic were basically gauranteeing to cover lost sales from not selling on Steam, and game pass, and it looks great.

[ABearIsHere]

Sales are always tied to budget. 2 million is very good for a project that had a relatively quick turnover and relatively (and I mean, relatively! It was probably still rather expensive) low budget as The Outer Worlds. Of course it's not comparable to something like New Vegas, but New Vegas was kind of the perfect storm of being based on a franchise that had exploded in popularity recently, having a relatively low budget, and getting Bethesda's incredibly powerful promotional machine behind it. It's very rare that you get that kind of success and those kind of circumstances.

 

EDIT: I also think it's worth remembering that a lot of people played The Outer Worlds on Game Pass, and Private Division probably received a lump sum of money for that too.

Edited February 8, 2020 by ABearIsHere

[kanisatha]

2M in sales for TOW at this point is very good. It puts it in the same sales category as D:OS2.

[AwesomeOcelot]

The market for all genres is not the same. D:OS2 is a turn-based squad RPG. ~3M sales is the ceiling for such a games. TOW is a FPS-RPG, the ceiling for it is ~15m. It doesn't matter how well marketed or how good a game is, there's only so much market for it. Cyberpunk 2077 is going to put this in perspective.

Who knows how many sales not being on Steam has cost TOW though. Epic paid ~$10m for Control's exclusivity. Doesn't seem worth it, but whatever.

[Jozape]

On 2/10/2020 at 8:39 PM, AwesomeOcelot said:

The market for all genres is not the same. D:OS2 is a turn-based squad RPG. ~3M sales is the ceiling for such a games. TOW is a FPS-RPG, the ceiling for it is ~15m. It doesn't matter how well marketed or how good a game is, there's only so much market for it. Cyberpunk 2077 is going to put this in perspective.

Who knows how many sales not being on Steam has cost TOW though. Epic paid ~$10m for Control's exclusivity. Doesn't seem worth it, but whatever.

Who cares about some hypothetical ceiling? The game is very profitable despite not being on Steam. Also if that 15M ceiling is based on Fallout 4, I would rather they not chase that dumpster fire.