That’s some fuzzy math. They’re comparing an online-only spinoff sales figures to Fallout 4. They’re also only able to track physical sales, and Fallout 4 was released in 2015. The trend of digital sales has only increased since then (and again, this is an online game. I would not be surprised if digital sales were a bit higher as a percentage for those).
I would be very surprised if Bethesda expected this to move units like a direct sequel to Fallout 4 or Skyrim.
You know those ratings systems are flawed. They don’t take into account households that have more than two television sets!
That got a good laugh out of me, thanks for that. :)
I still stand by my statement, though. Tracking physical sales in 2015 for a sequel to Fallout 3 versus physical sales of an online-only multiplayer game in 2018 is going to be inaccurate. I realize that’s all they’re able to do, but I don’t think the sky is falling for Bethesda or anything. I would certainly hope the had a smaller sales target for this than Fallout 4!
You’re probably right, but I doubt they expected it to sell 80% fewer copies.
IMO they should have held it until February and shipped a much cleaner game. I’ve been watching a lot of streamers play and they are constantly hitting all kinds of bugs, small and large.
I don’t hold it against Bethesda for trying something new and going multiplayer only, but rushing an incomplete game out for the holiday season should be punished.
Yeah, a few more months in the oven certainly would have helped. Of course, I level those complaints at all of Bethesda’s releases, it seems like. So maybe they’re just staying true to form? ;)
Publishers can’t help themselves, though, they gotta get that sucker shipped before the holidays.
Another 50GB for the update.
It’s the start of the holiday season in the USA. A lot of the core audience, people in high school and college, are looking at a lot of free time over the next couple of months. Money is freer, too, due to the frenzy around Black Friday and the general holiday tendency to loosen purse strings. February sucks to sell anything in, except fuel oil.
That’s old school thinking. There’s plenty of money for the top-selling games, but the rest get overlooked.
And February is fine. If it’s a choice between shipping an unfinished, buggy game in November vs. a (probably) finished less-buggy game in February, I would choose February every time.
Or they could have picked March, which is more and more popular. Farcry 5 shipped in March this year and was huge.
This thing looks like a bomb in every way (no pun intended). I hope that some good comes out of it:
Too bad that the new Elder Scrolls and Starfield are both slated to use this same engine.
Yeah, that’s…eesh.
This video has gotten 1.6 million views in 36 hours since it hit Youtube. Is it fair? Probably not. Open world games have some glitches and jank. We expect that. But it also hits hard on the fact that this game seems to have some very fundamental design flaws at its very core, too.
And, as the folks at EA/Bioware who worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda can tell you: sometimes perception, whether fair or not, ends up being reality.
0 voters
Only way to settle this since Bethesda marketing is unable to do so themselves.
;)
This is very true. It’s very difficult, nearly impossible, to re-launch a game after the initial expectations are set. At this point it almost doesn’t matter if Bethesda “fixes” the game. Games that suddenly show a hockey stick of sales are unicorns.
It does happen though. Rainbow Six Siege was written off for dead but Ubisoft kept at it and resuscitated it.
I imagine the sales people at Bethesda already know about what the game will sell in its first year based on the first week of sales, since sales models are so mature these days. That’s why you’re seeing price drops already, and why you’ll see them right after black Friday at retail, probably.
Sheesh. I guess the Bethesda launcher can’t do delta updates.
As for the launch versus polish question, they should have done a hybrid Blizzard thing and allowed pre-purchasers in on the “beta”, made the beta six months long, enable microtransactions, and promise no full character wipes short of major exploits/dupes. Then everybody would be much more charitable because “hey, it’s still in beta”. Even though it really isn’t.
Imagine being able to separately CRC your files. Download a list of files and CRC, and only ask for download the ones that have different CRC.
Or doing the above, but on blocks.
Err yes, I am aware of what delta updates are.
You and me, both. But game console developers have barriers to it, apparently.
Maybe the files have to be “baked” with some randomness in them, like encryptation?
Is possible that their “resource compiler” generate a completely different binary each time, making binary deltas useless.
Occam’s Razor. More likely their updater can’t do deltas.
Give me 6 guys that don’t know how to write code. And 3 hours. I had them learn C and write a updater with binary deltas.
I can’t grasp this. If you are writing a updater, and you are not writting deltas on it. What the hell you consider more important use of your time programming it?
I haven’t watched the video yet, but it’s been pretty interesting seeing the public perception of the game versus playing the actual game.
I didn’t follow a lot of the marketing building up to release and most of what I saw was just confusing. I still didn’t understand what the game was until @Teiman shared his hands-on. Because of that, I went into this game with no expectations… or maybe it was really low expectations.
In any case, playing the actual game blind? It’s been fine. I’m having fun. Doesn’t seem any more buggy then 90% of other new releases I’ve played over the past couple years. I’m engaged, it’s more Fallout 4 exploration in a new map that happens to have the occasional other person in it. Yesterday I had a chance to try it out with a friend, and that was also fun. It was Fallout 4 exploring with a buddy, which is exactly what I’ve been wanting.
Because I’m isolated, the public reaction of others – especially those on the sidelines – has been kind of interesting, and maybe a bit baffling. I’m sitting here just playing away at the game wondering what all the fuss is about?