Company News Troika games sales figures

[Vault Dweller]

I do not believe that Mandrew, being a Lead Programmer and not "Chief Finance Officer", had access to these records, and as such, his word can't be taken as being completely reliable.

I thought that his claim that he saw the royalty checks was odd too, unless it was a morale increasing gesture by the management.

 

[Greatatlantic]

Yeah, its not like he needs to keep the company's reputation intact anymore. However, there might be a descrepancy between games sold to distributors and games actually bought be consumers. I'm under the impression developers get royalties for games to the distributors, not copies actually bought, though the two eventually align.

 

[Briosafreak]

I`m in contact with the guys that made that newsbit Rex, NPD stands in thier numbers, but say that they are North America only. actually they don`t take into acount the online sales too, neither the sales from places outside the large outlets and chains, if it`s like i remember, but here is their defense anyway.

I still prefer the numbers from Andrew, i remember a market analyst saying the BG series had sold 500.000 copies based on figures like those in 2003, and we know they sold a lot more than that.

 

[Sol Invictus]

First, it's not like anyone cares about ol' Pete and that comment. You are the only one who keeps bringing it up. Second, ToEE was criticized here and the empty promises were remembered. Bloodlines was heavily criticized as well. I assume you've seen my review, so no double standards there.

I'm was just having a little jab.

I`m in contact with the guys that made that newsbit Rex, NPD stands in thier numbers, but say that they are North America only. actually they don`t take into acount the online sales too, neither the sales from places outside the large outlets and chains, if it`s like i remember, but here is their defense anyway.

Yes, it's possible that it was only North America that they counted, but that accounts for most of the market anyhow, and reflects how well the game did everywhere else, too. As I understand it, Arcanum sold moderately well in countries like Poland, while TOEE more or less tanked (despite having a limited collector's edition) after a first few weeks of good sales, due to word of mouth on the lacklustre state of the game. Bloodlines didn't sell well at all outside of the United States, because people especially Europeans, who seem to be a rather large RPG market didn't even have computers capable of running the game.

The NPD might not (I cant verify this, nor can anyone else except for someone from NPD) take sales figures from small online retailers, like those who go through EBay, but those people don't account for much anyhow, since the most copies they'll buy of a game is probably 10, or less. The NPD does, however, include large online retailers like GoGamer.com, Outpost.com (Fry's), EBGames.com, and even ImportMadness, so I think the sales figures they provided are really very accurate.

I still prefer the numbers from Andrew, i remember a market analyst saying the BG series had sold 500.000 copies based on figures like those in 2003, and we know they sold a lot more than that.

Yeah, but NPD doesn't hire morons like those. Sounds like one of the morons from the Interplay investor forum on RagingBull. The royalty check statement struck me as being odd, as well. We've always known Troika to be a bit soft in their business practices so there's a big chance that the company might have given out royalty checks even though they didn't really have the money for it to increase the morale of their employees. If so, you could mark it down to one of their "bad management decisions".

 

[Fez]

Wouldn't the problems of Arcanum being held back for localisation mean that non-English language versions would sell relatively better than normal? That could account for the odd results perhaps.

It'd be useful if we could get some real worldwide sales figures. I'm not sure of how many sales would have been made in each area. I know Germany is considered a significant market.

 

[Dhruin]

It doesn't seem odd to me that Andrew might have seen the cheque - in Troika's shoes, I would have eagerly shown the royalty cheque to everyone -- as I have done for the larger deals my company has landed.

I can also point to other developers who say the same thing: their royalty cheques are much larger than the NPD sales data. As for NA being most of the market....uh huh. It might be half the market but it sure as hell isn't "most". There are also many games that do signficantly better in Europe than the US -- or do you believe that NPD's 20k figure for Silent Storm accounts for "most" of their sales, too?

From Irrational's Ken Levine -- we do trust the CEO and co-founder, don't we?

And don't forget NPD only covers _roughly_ 60% of the North American market and nothing outside of US and Canada. I say roughly for two reasons:

1) They don't cover WalMart. My undrestanding is they extrapolate WalMart sales based on hand stock counts by NPD staff at 8 local Wal Marts to NPD.
2) When they claim to cover 60% of the market, do they mean 60% of gross unit volume, gross revenue, specific retailers, shelf space inches, or what? It's all very unclear, and I'm kinda in the know on these things. I've never had a straight answer from anybody I've every asked from marketing guru to Vice President of whosi-whatsis.

Point of data: On one of our games, NPD listed 179k units. Our royalty report from the publisher listed nearly 400k units. Using the traditional extrapolation of 60%, that's sales of 252k units to 400k units. Though my publisher may have artificially elevated their financial obligations to us in their royalty report, for some reason I doubt it.

Here's another few words along with steam that call NPD stats into question:

Amazon, Walmart.com, EBGAMES.com, etc.

 

[Briosafreak]

Well Dhruin already responded Rex, so i won`t do it too. Listen to him, he knows many wonderous and wonderfull things

 

[Shagnak]

Well, from that I guess we can say any sales claims are totally dodgy. Who can we trust? Are there totally independent figures anywhere by people who don't have a vested interest (and are accurate)?


More on this channel at 6

 

[Kuato]

seems that's troika's fault for not staffing properly. sure, maybe they didn't have the budget from atari, but that's still their fault for saying they could do it with the reduced staff when obviously, they could not.

Are you saying Atari is run by a bunch of kids who just throw money blindly at first people who can say "we can really do it" with the most unrealistic schedules and budgets, no I think Atari is run by grown ups just like Troika who have access to more information about development budgets, times and costs than developers do. Atari used a small developer like Troika with a reputation for rpgs to try and squeeze as much mileage as they could from a no risk IP and a tiny budget, I would call it a mis-calculated longshot based on reps of the developers as "rpg makers", a nostalgic module and 3.5 rules. I call it a long shot because Reflexive was another small bet made by atari and was developing Ravenloft game at about the same time and who knows what other sidebets bets Atari has lined up all over the table, remember Heroes ?

How can you staff properly if you dont have the proper budget

Kuato wrote:
I agree Baldurs gate seems like it was a much larger operation that spanned nearly three years working with 2d tech while TOEE was only 18 months with full 3d art

uh, no, it's not full 3D. irrelevant either way, since 2D is actually harder to detail than 3D according to most developers.

the models are are full 3d and the backgrounds are prerendered 2d which makes it even harder to match realtime lighting on the models to the prerendered backgrounds. Most developers will unanimously agree that quality realtime 3d assets are much harder to generate than prerendered sprites.


Is realtime 3d technology is more advanced than 2d technology? and would it require more advanced skills to develop for than 2d technology? Do we really need to ask these questions?

 

[taks]

Are you saying Atari is run by a bunch of kids who just throw money blindly at first people who can say "we can really do it" with the most unrealistic schedules and budgets, *snip*

but they did exactly that as we have seen... that's the point. troika sold atari a bill of goods and they bought it assuming D&D would just sell, sell, sell... atari, er, infogrammes, did not have much experience in this realm, either.

How can you staff properly if you dont have the proper budget

again, troika's responsibility to negotiate a proper budget or are you saying that was atari's job, too?... no matter how you try to sell it, troika held the bag for determining how much manpower it would take to develop the game. if they couldn't meet the deadlines (which they couldn't) they shouldn't have taken the job. period.

the models are are full 3d and the backgrounds are prerendered 2d which makes it even harder to match realtime lighting on the models to the prerendered backgrounds. Most developers will unanimously agree that quality realtime 3d assets are much harder to generate than prerendered sprites.

but you said full 3D art, and that is not true. either way, as i noted, 2D is actually harder art to do based on what all the devs working with the infinity engine (2D, BG series) and the jefferson engine (3D, fabled BG3) had to say. so your statement about "most developers" is a load of bull.

Is realtime 3d technology is more advanced than 2d technology? and would it require more advanced skills to develop for than 2d technology? Do we really need to ask these questions?

irrelevant if 3D is more advanced or not... the 3D engines provide a much easier platform for doing 3D art than a 2D engine does. (edit: bad statement). the fact of the matter is that most of the artists that i've seen post that have done 2D and 3D art seem to think 3D is easier. technological complexity is a non-issue. i guarantee my computer is much more complex than a PDP-11 but you wanna take a guess at which is easier to use? your point is incorrect.

taks

 

[AlanC9]

Yep; if 2d art was easy, there'd be a lot more custom IE maps than custom NWN tilesets.

 

[Kuato]

but you said full 3D art, and that is not true. either way, as i noted, 2D is actually harder art to do based on what all the devs working with the infinity engine (2D, BG series) and the jefferson engine (3D, fabled BG3) had to say. so your statement about "most developers" is a load of bull.
taks

all the devs working with the infinity engine and the jefferson engine comprise your idea of most devs than the Industry is a lot smaller in your world

hey.. anyway why don't you .. ask those same guys how well things went on Torn

let me know how that goes.. ok :D

 

[bryce777]

You guys drive me nuts sometimes with your bickering. Anyhow, Kuato is right on the art, but I wont bother to explain it.

 

[AlanC9]

Sure, he's right that the sprites are easy. But the 2D backgrounds just aren't -- unless you want them to suck

 

[Fez]

The art in BG2 must have taken a lot of talent, time and , I would imagine, money. Which is easier or cheaper depends greatly on the quality of each and what you need to do with it.

 

[EEVIAC]

From Irrational's Ken Levine -- we do trust the CEO and co-founder, don't we?

One of the reasons that management might not have wanted to explain exactly how they do their market research is that they don't want to give away their analysis techniques. (Do you know how much it cost them in R&D to come up with the "counting boxes in a Wallmart" idea? I'm surprised they haven't applied for a patent!)

So yeah, I trust Ken over any marketing jerk, any day of the week.

 

[Greatatlantic]

Ughh... Wal-Mart. My local Wal-Mart has a terrible selection of computer games. Mostly strategy titles, kiddie titles, and a few hot of the current hits. Very few M games, but that Wal Mart for you. Yet, so many of the games sold are sold from Walmart. That store can all but dictate terms to the entertainment industry. I mean, the big tickets can survive, if not prosper as much, with out them, but everyone else is stuck with them.

 

[taks]

all the devs working with the infinity engine and the jefferson engine comprise your idea of most devs than the Industry is a lot smaller in your world

just a generalization...
3D is easier because the engine itself adds it's own perspective... 3D art and animation is generated differently than 2D art, and the process is typically simpler. in this case, the advanced technology is a benefit to the user.

hey.. anyway why don't you .. ask those same guys how well things went on Torn

let me know how that goes.. ok :D

crap engine with a "mobile" baseline (it changed often), so what's your point?

taks

 

[taks]

Sure, he's right that the sprites are easy. But the 2D backgrounds just aren't -- unless you want them to suck

that's the problem... well, part of it.
sprites are 2D, btw...
taks

 

[Shagnak]

Yes, but 2d backgrounds are not necessarily sprites. Sprites are 2d animated/moveable entities. If you want to you can have them animated or moving around on top of a 2d background. (or on top of 3d - like the moving crowds in some ugly car racing games I could mention)

See? Not necessarily the same thing.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Backgrounds are not sprites.

 

[MarFish]

You can't make such a simple equation.

There is a point (resolution, art quality, expected number of frames) where sprites become more work and more time consuming than 3d (way less frames to deal with), which is the reason why most games use 3D now. I would imagine that making a more complex monster for BG2 was a damn time intensive job, probably at least as much work as a monster for ToEE. 3D also features a way better reusability due to inheritance (supermodels).

Of course 3D becomes more expensive as well as again due to higher polycounts, more keyframes for smoother animations, blending etc, which is the reason why developers are now starting to use motion capture and less hand animated characters. (compare KotOR II - mostly hand animated to Splinter Cell - mostly motion captured)

 

[Kuato]

glad we got that straightened out

 

[dunduks]

which is the reason why developers are now starting to use motion capture and less hand animated characters. (compare KotOR II - mostly hand animated to Splinter Cell - mostly motion captured)

Uhh sorry to burst your bubble, but Splinter Cell is hand animated, that has been pointed out in interviews Interview-James-Green.

 

[Killzig]

we've all gotten so hung up on arguing whether or not the numbers are real. if they're false, and the sales figures were so much higher then why did Troika falter? Did they inherit their lousy business sense from Interplay? Are gaming companies just paying out too much money to employees who are undeserving? I remember touching on this subject with EvoG not too long ago. He mentioned something about how many untalented people are in the gaming industry stealing checks for garbage 3d animations. Maybe there's something to that.