Bethesda asks players to please buy their singleplayer games

Skyrim’s launch sales were indeed very good, 3.5m physical copies on release out of which only 14% were PC but the game reached 30m sales in 5 years and of those, at least 15m were on PC. That shows that the PC, with its modding community, was the main market that drove the long term sales even on consoles (many of the mods were ported on Xbox).

Instead of adjusting their upcoming games by making them more accessible to modders, Bethesda tried to cash in on the popularity of mods by hiding them behind a pay wall, a huge blunder which caused a major backlash. As for being stuck in the past, I was referring to the changes in the market which explain why most of their recent games had sales well below expectations.The new Wolf, Prey, Evil Within 2 and Dishonored 2 were all good/great AAA games yet something didn’t ‘click’ with gamers.

I think they need to do 2 main things:

  1. Scale down some of these games by decreasing their production costs so that they end up being profitable and we keep getting more them (I loved Evil Within 2 and Prey),
  2. Divert funds towards big projects with huge modding potential (perhaps the next Elders Scrolls)

Considering the costs of AAA games nowadays, even a huge name like Bethesda can’t afford too many missteps.

This sounds impressive, until you remember the game is over six (not five) years old and has been as low as $5 (with the DLC included!) on PC many, many times, and especially thinking back to how many times I’ve heard the “it’s cheaper to buy the game again to get the rest of the DLC than to buy the DLC packs I’m missing” refrain during Steam sales.

Where are you getting your numbers from? Steam spy only estimates 12m PC users not 15 (and since it’s a steamworks game there are no non-steam players). VGCharts shows 360 version as getting 8.87m global sales and the PS3 as having 6.48m sales. So to say that PC is so much higher than the other platforms is pretty dubious. Yes it’s higher but it still had massively high sales without mod support, and PS3 + 360 outsell PC.

There’s two Skyrim editions on Steam, standard and Special Edition. They total over 18M copies. There will be some overlap between the two since at one point everyone with standard edition + all DLC got the Special Edition for free. But it won’t be 100% overlap, 15M seems like a decent guess.

I didn’t buy Skyrim on PC for the mod support. I bought it because it’s an awesome game.

LYNDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

This whole part of the discussion though is ZeTh1 claiming that people only bought Skyrim for modding, so looking at SE muddles that. You can show with non-SE that Skyrim sold more without modding support than it did with modding support and lived a long and profitable life before consoles got modding support in SE.

Lynda Carter can lasso me anytime.

By coincidence, I finished Prey just 15 minutes ago. I consider it one of the finest gaming experiences I have ever had. Gameplay mechanics and writing were just top notch.

I just fired Fallout 4 back up after taking a break upon finishing all the DLC (Far Harbor and Nuka World). I decided to add War For The Commonwealth to my mods just to see if it could spice up the game as I wandered around a map covered with icons. Mission accomplished. I am having a blast with a fire fight around every corner. It really freshens up the whole experience and I have actually come across a few unexplored places which never ceases to amaze me.

http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/single-player-games-arent-dying-bethesda-wont-let-them-w513692

“We don’t really talk about numbers, but in general I think this year we have done a number of single-player things - Wolfenstein, The Evil Within 2, Prey, Dishonored 2 - some of those have done pretty well, at or above as we expected them to, and some have done not quite as well as we expected or hope,” he says. “I’ve seen the thoughts and comments around single-player. We’re aware of the concern."

I love Bethesda. I buy most of their games and play the shit out of them. Most are replayable too, IMO.

Skyrim - 333 hours played
FO4 - 231 hours played
Prey - 70 hours played + about to replay

Loved Dishonored, Oblivion, Dishonored 2, TES Online.
Still yet to play Doom or Wolfenstein 2, but I’m sure I will.

I can’t think of a single game I’ve bought from Bethesda that I didn’t like.
Oh, and I love Lynda Carter too.

Only issue I had was the “paid mods” and Creation Club fiasco. Otherwise, solid company.

If they (or Obsidian rather) made an FNV2 using the FO4 engine I would buy it.

I’d have bought Skyrim for the 6th fing time if they had put it on sale for Switch this week along with every other digital platform. No, I won’t pay 60 flipping dollars for it.

After how Wolfenstein 2 sold before getting steep price cuts, the next Wolfenstein sounds like it will feature a multiplayer component, which is unsurprising.

Work with other engineers to architect and refine game systems and online features related to online games (client-server networking optimization, integration with backend services, etc…)

https://jobs.zenimax.com/requisitions/view/1719
This leaves Arkane Lyon and maybe Tango as the only ZeniMax studios without open multiplayer jobs. Bethesda, ZeniMax Online, Battlecry, Arkane Austin, id, and now MachineGames all have online/multiplayer postings.