Spectacle
Arcane
- Joined
- May 25, 2006
- Messages
- 8,363
It's going to be Skyrim in space.
It's going to be Skyrim in space.
Oh, they love it.It's really not hard to understand. [Skyrim is] a big open world where you can go wherever you want whenever you want. Show it tosomeone[a retard] who isn't a jaded cunt and they're going to love it, flaws be damned.
EA is a publicly traded company.Just a thought, but: What exactly prevents a publisher from lying about sales? We all know that from a macro point of view that more people are interested in something the more they think other people are interested in something.
I'm not actually imaging that it's happening since you could be sure that, done consistently, it would leak out eventually or someone would notice inconsistencies, just curious what you guys thought of the possibility.
Just a thought, but: What exactly prevents a publisher from lying about sales? We all know that from a macro point of view that more people are interested in something the more they think other people are interested in something.
I'm not actually imaging that it's happening since you could be sure that, done consistently, it would leak out eventually or someone would notice inconsistencies, just curious what you guys thought of the possibility.
Does the publicly-released information to shareholders go all the way to specific sales numbers? Does anyone have an example?
Lying on the whole isn't illegal at all, so long as they aren't specifically lying to the shareholders in a document that they are required to tell the truth in.
If I remember when working for Intel, all finance undergoings in the corporation are audited on an annual basic by a third party company.
I am not sure if the information gathered during that will be given to both shareholders and the taxation department. Didn't ask.
Does the publicly-released information to shareholders go all the way to specific sales numbers? Does anyone have an example?
Lying on the whole isn't illegal at all, so long as they aren't specifically lying to the shareholders in a document that they are required to tell the truth in. Heck, don't even have to technically lie, simply say something like "projections are that we will sell 9 million copies by the end of 1st Qtr 2015", because ultimately you can project anything.
They don't release sales numbers to shareholders.Does the publicly-released information to shareholders go all the way to specific sales numbers? Does anyone have an example?
Lying on the whole isn't illegal at all, so long as they aren't specifically lying to the shareholders in a document that they are required to tell the truth in. Heck, don't even have to technically lie, simply say something like "projections are that we will sell 9 million copies by the end of 1st Qtr 2015", because ultimately you can project anything.
They don't release sales numbers to shareholders.
EA sometimes releases specific sales numbers to investors - it depends on how a product has done.They don't release sales numbers to shareholders.
They definitely cannot lie about how much revenue something brought in (though there are creative accounting practices). Lying about units shipped would be more of a grey area. Another thing is that publishers really like to use the units shipped metric instead of units sold. Ship 10 copies to a store today and sell 8 of them in 6 months of 75% off, but hey you "shipped" 10 units!
they try to give rounded numbers for units shipped.
We learned from the Amalur debacle that for a AAA game 3 million sales are not considered to be very profitable, though of course this can vary from company to company and publisher to publisher. Bioware is much more experienced than the Amalur crew was, and they had all the funding they needed. Still, the figure of 3M does tell us that sales would likely need to be higher than that for the game to be considered a hit and a sequel to be greenlit.
It's certainly possible digital sales exceeded sales of the physical copy, because most software sales are digital now across the world. Until any other information is released/leaked the best way to figure out if the game was considered succesful is to monitor fan reaction, layoff's hiring at the development studio and whether a sequel is greenlit or not. Quarterly statements released by EA in March and half yearly in June should also tell us something. They won't specifiy sales of any particular product, but by comparing figures with past years we should be able to decipher something.
I am willing to do this as I deal with financials in my day job, as long as someone reminds me come quarter end.
I really feel schadenfreude every time I see some bad news for Bioware and isn't even because they gone popamole, they weren't the only RPG developerd that did, but because of their sheer arrogance on their mediocrity and a blindness to their own faults that is impressive but unfortunately I don't think EA will do the death blow yet even if DA:I sells less than 5 millions. ME 4 still can sell something and it isn't that EA has a huge number of profitable popamole franchises.
At one time I think EA had like 5 studios branded Bioware. They've backed down a lot from that now with just the two studios, but I doubt DA3 has done bad enough to limit them in any way.EA even slapped BIOWARE on their Command and Conquer studio, right? It's like Bioware's rep is a cure-all for rep amongst mainstream gamers. But then came along DA2 and ME3. Thank god for small blessings.
At one time I think EA had like 5 studios branded Bioware. They've backed down a lot from that now with just the two studios, but I doubt DA3 has done bad enough to limit them in any way.