PoE Sales?

[anameforobsidian]

ok, so according to people so far, there are 250k Steam sales, which account 80% of total sales, which means 100% is 312k. 

 

 

Steam and GOG's cut seems to be 30%. The price is currently $45.

 

 

So 312,000 * 0.7 * 45 is $9,828,000 in terms of total revenue so far, or we might as well call them profits since the development's been paid by Kickstarter.

 

Now the average salary in California where OE is located is $51,900

 

So 9829000/51900 is 189, so its enough to pay a staff of 190 a years worth of salaries, or a staff of 60 three years (my estimate for the manpower needed to make another game). Sounds good to me

 

Incidentally does anyone know the full-time staff size for POE?

 

I would not go off average salary.  These are skilled professionals, so it's likely to be higher in the case of everyone who isn't a tester.  Also, I think both 190 and 60 are waaaay too high.  Most of time it seemed like 20 or 30 until they were doing full production.  Also, the next game will be quicker to make if it has the same amount of content.  A lot of the stuff they did in this game are now solved problems for the next game.

Edited April 14, 2015 by anameforobsidian

[AncientToaster]

The paychecks of people we don't know are none of our business.

 

I'm surprised that it took this many posts for someone to say this.

 

Why are we discussing this at all? Let's return to whining about the game.

[STiAT]

They did take a risk doing this project with Kickstarter, as we did. They may got other investors to pay off too. Maybe they did great profit, maybe they did not. Maybe they get the cash-back or even profit of the sales now, maybe they don't.

 

The deal was, we pay them for the game to be produced, they produce it. We showed, they showed and delivered. It's fine. Keep it by that, finances of them is up to them. I certainly hope they could make profit on the title, if not - it was not my risk to take but theirs. If they did profit, we'll see more games of them, and I certainly hope we will. If they made a bonus - they'll need it to design the next game. It's cool, and as we all know, hardly anyone can afford to live on nothing for a few month out of idealism, especially not having a life, kids and pills to pay, being professionals who got other options.

 

I just hope this was a profit for them, and not a bad experience. I'm playing on Linux, so you'd think I'm all about getting everything for free. I'm not. I'm willing to pay content creators and I do so, hard and good work must be paid. And I'm not using Linux because it's "free" as in "free beer", idealism for some part, for another that I can change what I want to change.

 

And yes, I'd be willing to pay for my Linux System, but the Linux ecosystem depends on the thing called "Support". If you need support, you pay. If you don't, handle yourself (and I can). And I think I donated more to Linux projects than I'd have spent on Windows licenses, it's not rational, it's idealism.

 

With all the positive reviews, I doubt they made a negative overall though, but what's it for real, only they know.

Edited April 15, 2015 by STiAT

[Einherjer]

They did take a risk doing this project with Kickstarter, as we did. They may got other investors to pay off too.

 

This. The $1.1 million dollar goal was probably set so they could prove to investors that a demand for a game like PoE was there. We don't know how much they got from investors so it's impossible to guess how much of a success this was. I hope it was.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Einherjer

[Atheosis]

There's more than just Steam around too.  Direct2drive, Good old Games and Gamersgate are some where the game is also sold digitally.  Isn't there even physical versions too?    Combine all that and we're probably approaching 750k to 1 million sales

 

More likely it's around 300-350k.  I fully expect the game to hit a million eventually but I doubt it goes much over.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Atheosis

[kozzy]

Paradox said at one month after Cities Skylines came out that it has sold 1 million. Maybe a number for Pillars comes from Paradox after one month aswell? Hope it sells well!

[Elerond]

Paradox said at one month after Cities Skylines came out that it has sold 1 million. Maybe a number for Pillars comes from Paradox after one month aswell? Hope it sells well!

 

Cities: Skylines is Paradox's game where PoE is Obsidian's game. So I would guess that it is Obsidian if anybody that will release sale numbers for PoE.

 

It should be also noted that Paradox has been quite open with C:S's sales numbers as they are record numbers in their company's history they have released several sales figures already for it.

[Marceror]

 

 

According to Steamspy, 308K people own the game on Steam, and according to Steam achievements, 16% of owners are backers. So, very very roughly, that looks like about 250K Steam sales.

 

 

That's $7.8m before Paradox's cut.  Not bad for pure profit.

I guess ole Feargus gets to buy himself a private island in Fiji after all!

I hope Obsidian makes millions and millions and millions off this game. I also hope there will one day be a backer party on Fear Island!

[sparklecat]

 

The paychecks of people we don't know are none of our business.

 

I'm surprised that it took this many posts for someone to say this.

 

Why are we discussing this at all? Let's return to whining about the game.

 

Presumably because we're all very hopeful that they made enough to produce PoE2.  For my part, having been in on this since day 2 of the Kickstarter and having contributed feedback, suggestions, and bug reports, I suppose I also feel a bit... possessive of PoE, in a way.  It'd make me happy to hear it did well beyond what it means for Obsidian, in a LOOK I VERY SLIGHTLY HELPED GET THAT MADE AND EVERYONE THINKS IT'S GREAT AND WANTS TO BUY IT sense.

Edited April 15, 2015 by sparklecat

[Zoraptor]

Cities: Skylines is Paradox's game where PoE is Obsidian's game. So I would guess that it is Obsidian if anybody that will release sale numbers for PoE.

 

For these purposes PoE is Paradox's game as well, since they are the 'publisher' they have direct access to/ from the portals rather than Obsidian* same as for C:S which was made by an independent company as well. Though that doesn't mean that Obsidian certainly won't be the ones to release the figures, if it happens, but if they do they'll have got them via Paradox.

 

*take with a grain of salt as unfortunately I cannot for the life of me remember who actually said this, except it was someone at Obsidz. And finding something that specific is what search engines are terrible at.

[trashmyego]

The first time Pillars is part of a Steam sale, the ownership numbers will take a pretty big jump. And this should continue with each seasonal sale for the rest of the year. But in any case, the game is making healthy numbers and an expansion is still on the way. By the end of the year, seeing ownership well above half a million wouldn't be out of the question, nor would numbers higher than that. I doubt there's much worry over whether or not they can do a sequel, but about polishing and preparing the current release for more content. I just hope they do another kickstarter for the sequel, even if only to raise funds for more extensive QA before release, because seriously... QA. 

[FalloutBoy]

Now the average salary in California where OE is located is $51,900

 

 

I assure you that the average salary on the PoE team is closer to double that. Then when you add payroll taxes and insurance, you can probably double it again and be pretty close to the actual average cost of an employee at a commercially-viable game development studio in California.

[Arsene Lupin]

Obsidian really hasn't been very transparent with regard to their development budget. Ideally, a Crowdfunded game never has to face the hurdle that games published the traditional way do--they don't have to sell a certain number of copies in order to recoup the development investment, because that development was paid for in advance. 

 

But in practice things can be pretty messy.

 

Larian Studios -has- been fairly transparent, and some of the things that Swen Vincke has said about Divinity: Original Sin are a little scary. Basically, yeah, they used the crowdfunding campaign to help draw in additional investors--and to secure loans. And they sunk all of their capital into the game. The release date for Divinity: Original Sin was actually determined by Larian waiting until the last possible moment they would need to repay those loans. Thankfully, DOS was a roaring success and Larian was able to repay its loans and expand... but that could very easily have not been the case.

 

Pillars of Eternity has clearly be successful... but we don't really know what it cost for Obsidian to develop it; nor do we know whether or not it has been sufficiently successful to justify further games of a similar nature.  Nor do we know if Obsidian even -wants- to develop more games of a similar nature, or would rather keep trying to appeal to the mass audiences they got with FNV, KOTOR2, and South Park.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Arsene Lupin

[Marceror]

I know Obsidian wants to continue to pursue the mass audience route. That's their bread and butter.

 

The hope is that keeping games like PoE going is both financially viable and something they want to continue doing. Based on developer comments they do want to keep this going. I can't speak to the financials, but I sure do hope that the success we are seeing is more than sufficient to justify continuing.

[Bryy]

Everyone needs to stop acting like "mass audience" and "sales" are somehow different goals for a for-profit company.

[Tigranes]

Obsidian really hasn't been very transparent with regard to their development budget. Ideally, a Crowdfunded game never has to face the hurdle that games published the traditional way do--they don't have to sell a certain number of copies in order to recoup the development investment, because that development was paid for in advance. 

 

But in practice things can be pretty messy.

 

Larian Studios -has- been fairly transparent, and some of the things that Swen Vincke has said about Divinity: Original Sin are a little scary. Basically, yeah, they used the crowdfunding campaign to help draw in additional investors--and to secure loans. And they sunk all of their capital into the game. The release date for Divinity: Original Sin was actually determined by Larian waiting until the last possible moment they would need to repay those loans. Thankfully, DOS was a roaring success and Larian was able to repay its loans and expand... but that could very easily have not been the case.

 

Pillars of Eternity has clearly be successful... but we don't really know what it cost for Obsidian to develop it; nor do we know whether or not it has been sufficiently successful to justify further games of a similar nature.  Nor do we know if Obsidian even -wants- to develop more games of a similar nature, or would rather keep trying to appeal to the mass audiences they got with FNV, KOTOR2, and South Park.

 

Swen didn't tell us all the details about D:OS funding until some time after release in a postmortem. Hopefully we'll get similar info on POE too. (One thing that can be trickier is that Larian at that point was basically everything on D:OS, while Obsidian's workforce, incomes, expenditures, etc. are all divided across multiple projects and funding schemes.) 

 

We should at least get sales numbers & Paradox' cut, once the dust has settled, I'd want to see that.

[Marceror]

To clarify, it would be more accurate to have said that Obsidian wants to continue to pursue developing games using the traditional publisher model, which in theory at least means developing games that have greater mass appeal than a nichy title like Pillars.

 

EDIT - the above post was in response to Bryy's previous post, which ended up on a different page and with another post in between. I thought it would help to point that out to ensure that the context of my post was clear.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Marceror

[Sven_]

There's different kind of publishers. Maybe things look a lot worse in the US, in particular regarding PC games, but there are a lot of publishers specializing on niches. Posted this somewhere else, but heck, there are some that do barely anything but point&click adventure games. naturally, they all run on very small budgets, which in some areas is easier to do than in others. The difference between say Europe and Canda/US appears quite large on average, but then the US arguably also has a far bigger pool of studios as well as top talent in games development.

 

A Pillars 2 is pretty much seriously considered anyway. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2880098/obsidian-apparently-greenlit-a-sequel-to-pillars-of-eternity-and-the-game-isnt-even-out.html It's also worth reminding, apart form a design / target audience point of view*, in parts it was getting burnt on a multi-million project that made Obsidian seriously consider doing that Kickstarter in 2012 in the first place. I can happily enjoy both New Vegas as well as Pillars. However, naturally, it was the latter approach that had gone missing.

 

*

 

Avellone is "tired of designing content and interactions that caters to consoles and console controllers." "Those limitations affect RPG mechanics and content more than players may realize (especially for players who've never played a PC RPG and realize what's been lost over the years), and often doesn't add to the RPG experience," he told me.

(http://kotaku.com/5942307/the-people-behind-fallout-and-planescape-are-making-my-dream-rpg)

[Bryy]

It's also worth reminding, apart form a design / target audience point of view*, in parts it was getting burnt on a multi-million project that made Obsidian seriously consider doing that Kickstarter in 2012 in the first place. 

That's because they needed the money, not because they said "well, F publishers".

 

If they didn't need Kickstarter, they wouldn't use it.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Bryy

[Monte Carlo]

The paychecks of people we don't know are none of our business.

 

Er, yes it is. The Kickstarter 'making of' doc explicitly features employees discussing the prospect of closing the company if something didn't turn up. They made the commercial realities behind the project part of the story. Not us.

 

Now I'm extremely happy something did turn up and folks at Obsidian have jobs. So, it seems, do most people in this thread. People are vicariously enjoying the success of a project they backed by a company they admire.

 

So chill out. It must get saddle sore, up on that high horse sometimes.

[Ramireza]

Paradox said at one month after Cities Skylines came out that it has sold 1 million. Maybe a number for Pillars comes from Paradox after one month aswell? Hope it sells well!

 

Well, PoE´s sales should be 350k units at the moment :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/291650 + GoG + Retail + Rest

 

Maybe they reach 400k by the end of April, but surely not more. Text heavy cRPG´s are much more niche then City managment Games.

 

My prediction after one year : Somewhat between Wasteland 2 and D:OS : 500k - 600k.

 

D:OS is more "mass compatible" because of the goofy and colourfull look. And its 3D. I cant imagine that Pillars will outsale D:OS and i am pretty sure D:OS 2 or Pillars 2 will do alot worse, because the Retro RPG  hype will be over soon (It will end with TON).

 

People want their handholding grind Arenas, dating sims and "social awareness", not deep and compliated cRPG´s, just compare the Grimrock 1 and Grimrock 2 Sales :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/207170 (Grimock 1 : 871k Sales)

 

http://steamspy.com/app/251730 (Grimrock 2 :90k Sales)

 

And her the Blackguards 1 and 2 Sales :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/249650 (Blackguards 1 : 304k)

 

http://steamspy.com/app/314830 (Blackguards 2 : 9k)

 

It was fun, but dont expect an glorios comeback of the classical cRPG.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Ramireza

[Phoynix]

Actually I didnt even know Grimrock 2 was out... cant buy something you dont know about...

Blackguards was buggy and crap people didnt buy the second because the first sucked.

Wasteland... well havnt had time to play that yet...

 

Paradox said at one month after Cities Skylines came out that it has sold 1 million. Maybe a number for Pillars comes from Paradox after one month aswell? Hope it sells well!

 

Well, PoE´s sales should be 350k units at the moment :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/291650 + GoG + Retail + Rest

 

Maybe they reach 400k by the end of April, but surely not more. Text heavy cRPG´s are much more niche then City managment Games.

 

My prediction after one year : Somewhat between Wasteland 2 and D:OS : 500k - 600k.

 

D:OS is more "mass compatible" because of the goofy and colourfull look. And its 3D. I cant imagine that Pillars will outsale D:OS and i am pretty sure D:OS 2 or Pillars 2 will do alot worse, because the Retro RPG  hype will be over soon (It will end with TON).

 

People want their handholding grind Arenas, dating sims and "social awareness", not deep and compliated cRPG´s, just compare the Grimrock 1 and Grimrock 2 Sales :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/207170 (Grimock 1 : 871k Sales)

 

http://steamspy.com/app/251730 (Grimrock 2 :90k Sales)

 

And her the Blackguards 1 and 2 Sales :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/249650 (Blackguards 1 : 304k)

 

http://steamspy.com/app/314830 (Blackguards 2 : 9k)

 

It was fun, but dont expect an glorios comeback of the classical cRPG.

 

[Manart]

If a vintage hardcore cRPG like this game sell well, then Obsidian should be able to make more of it.

 

The company has been burned so many time by now, I wouldn't blame them for being cautious with their next game. I just hope that the people at Obsidian manage to keep up with producing quality RPG content like they have been producing for the last few years. And in today's industry, they are like the last few people of ye olde RPG days who are still working on new games (Bioware is another).

 

You can blame publishers, other game genres or "social awareness", but at the end of the day, if a company can't make money off doing what they were doing before, then it's natural they turn elsewhere in order to keep running. It's the sad truth of business.

[Bryy]

 

The paychecks of people we don't know are none of our business.

 

Er, yes it is. The Kickstarter 'making of' doc explicitly features employees discussing the prospect of closing the company if something didn't turn up. They made the commercial realities behind the project part of the story. Not us.

Um, well yeah. Budget, finances are a part of any development story.

 

Individual pay, though? 

[trashmyego]

just compare the Grimrock 1 and Grimrock 2 Sales :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/207170 (Grimock 1 : 871k Sales)

 

http://steamspy.com/app/251730 (Grimrock 2 :90k Sales)

 

And her the Blackguards 1 and 2 Sales :

 

http://steamspy.com/app/249650 (Blackguards 1 : 304k)

 

http://steamspy.com/app/314830 (Blackguards 2 : 9k)

 

It was fun, but dont expect an glorios comeback of the classical cRPG.

 

 

This makes no valid point. You're comparing recently released sequels to games that have cycled through numerous sales and bundles over the last two years. Last month you could pick up Blackguards 1 for something like $5. Both of the games came out well before D:OS and its numbers did business you can't just throw away because they don't match the point you're attempting to poorly make.