PDXCON 2019

You need to stop listening to those voices, man. They’re no good for you :-P

Stellaris was the fastest selling Paradox game at launch. It’s been one of their top five selling games every quarter since release. The only other games that have been consistently in the top 5 during that period were Cities: Skylines and HOI4. The company as a whole has been very profitable during the last six years (when Stellaris development would have started), and grown by a factor of 6x during that time.

There is no way at all that Stellaris has made a loss to date.

I can’t verify this but I had heard that Stellaris is their biggest franchise. That’s probably part of why it got a console edition, and maybe even a Switch or mobile edition if that teaser is anything to go by. I don’t think they would be pushing it like that if the game was losing money.

Yeah Stellaris isn’t the loss leader, Stellaris is the cash cow. If you said they are in the red on Imperator I could believe that.

So, just like Creative Assembly, these guys who works mostly on historical games, see their biggest cashcow be pure makebelieve? I guess we all know what that means.

WARHAMMER REALTIME GRAND STRATEGY! ^

cough

ffty. :)

Stellaris is one of their big money makers, that’s why they keep having more and more content coming out for it, for one thing. Don’t they have another big expansion coming?

Yeah, just looked and they’ve already done 4 or 5 diaries for an upcoming expansion.

For myself, I’m hoping to get an announcement on the 2019 DLC for Planetfall!

Hoping for that as well. They’ve been pretty quiet about it other than saying they’re working on it. The convention seems to be a good time to unveil it.

I heard it was not the lack of sales, but the initial and on-going spend. However, my source could also be FUBAR.

Your source doesn’t know how to Google, I guess.

It’s interesting, if you take the idea of Stellaris as the biggest franchise at face value, as quite often Hearts of Iron 4 is the most played game out of all them (bar exceptions like when the other games get new expansions)

At least, this was the case as of PDXCon 2018 when Podcat shared some data on that with us. Might have changed now but every time I care to look (not often) HoI4 player numbers are usually pretty high.

Stellaris is also the one most likely to be well received on platforms other than PC though. CK2, for its mainstream appeal and the game that put Grand Strategy on the map, wouldn’t translate well for a console or Switch/Mobile audience I don’t think. It’s too visually busy where at least Stellaris can shift focus onto the visuals a lot better and was a newer game (thus benefited from everything learned from EU4 and CK2).

It’s a bit moot to say, but I reckon Stellaris would have gone to Console even if it wasn’t the one that earned the most money.

More Stellaris teases:

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I don’t think mobile Stellaris is a bad idea, but I really hope they have more up their sleeve for the convention. The types of gamers that attend pdxcon would not care one iota about a mobile port.

What would CK3 even look like? I’m not a game designer, but I have no ideas on how they could improve the fundamental mechanics in the game (beyond warfare), it’s pretty perfect. I would love to see them announce CK 2.5 which takes all the content and features of CK2 with all its DLC and ports it into the imperator map, a cleaner UI, and maybe change how battles work.

Don’t you guys have phones?

They’ll be announcing the new expansion along with whatever the other thing is.

I detest phone gaming. And worry if PDX goes down that rabbit hole they may never come out!

Just in case:

I do, and also have a console buried in a closet somewhere. I have no qualms about developers building games for either of those things, and hope everyone using those devices to play games have alot of fun.

Yet I have very little interest in using either of them to play games, and my point was just that there might not be a whole lot of crossover with PC GSG fanatics and mobile gamers. If Paradox want to expand their demographic by making mobile games I think that is a fine idea, but I wouldn’t expect thunderous applause at the convention.

Okay, to be crystal clear I am making fun of high end PC and console games being converted into mobile versions. The “don’t you have phones” is making fun of the idiotic statement that was made by Blizzard at the incredible decibel level of booing that was thrown their way at this announcement. I also dislike mobile gaming, and would be disinterested (to say the least) in a mobile version of Stellaris. Though I very much doubt that’s going to be a thing.

Oh, my mistake, I guess I will wear the Qt3 dunce hat for the day!

That video clip was something else.

Paradox’s attempt to steal PDX from Portland, OR continues to drive me nuts.

And here I am wondering why Bruce keeps inviting people around to play Paradox games!