Was Dragon Age: Inquisition a commercial failure?

[tuluse]

Afaik DAO was outselling DA2 the second week into the release of DA2 which is an enormous embarrassment but not only EA didn't close Bioware they didn't even kicked the retard duo Laidlaw/Gaider out.

I don't think EA would ever outright close Bioware tho. At worst they would say "enough with your silly niche experiments" and turn them into mass-producing FIFA assembly line.

DA2 was a slamdunk rush job. It didn't need to sell as well as DAO.

 

[Glaurung]

I expected DAI to be a commercial failure upon playing the game, it's so bland and lifeless, there's nothing in it for both casual consoletards and as hardcore oldschoolers. Yet, somehow, all the aggressive marketing and armies of paid shills singing praises to DAI before and after its release must have done the impossible, and made this game successful enough to warrant at least an MMO, if not both MMO and "proper" sequel. It's a corporate Frankenshtein, sewn together from the corpses of Skyrim and AssCreed, existing solely because of a marketing life-support system. Probably not as popular as EA would have liked, but certainly not warranting the much-needed shutdown of Biohazard.

I will eat my shorts if the next DA installment won't be an MMO. I will fucking eat them with ketchup, mayo, and a side of salty tears.

 

[Coboney]

I expected DAI to be a commercial failure upon playing the game, it's so bland and lifeless, there's nothing in it for both casual consoletards and as hardcore oldschoolers. Yet, somehow, all the aggressive marketing and armies of paid shills singing praises to DAI before and after its release must have done the impossible, and made this game successful enough to warrant at least an MMO, if not both MMO and "proper" sequel. It's a corporate Frankenshtein, sewn together from the corpses of Skyrim and AssCreed, existing solely because of a marketing life-support system. Probably not as popular as EA would have liked, but certainly not warranting the much-needed shutdown of Biohazard.

I will eat my shorts if the next DA installment won't be an MMO. I will fucking eat them with ketchup, mayo, and a side of salty tears.

DAI was basically a single player MMO in quest, area design, the way it did things and so forth. So Maybe we'll get a DAI The MMO cut soon!

 

[mastroego]

It's a sad truth that aggressive marketing campaigns do work.
Then again, they cost money of their own too, so who knows.
(which is why marketing managers like to liberally avail themselves of gaming journalists, who can be bought for pocket change by the dozens).

 

[Athelas]

DA2 was a slamdunk rush job. It didn't need to sell as well as DAO.

It didn't, but it had a huge drop-off in sales after the very first week (i.e. as soon as everyone discovered it was shit).

 

[Coboney]

The numbers they come up with are numbers that they pull from their ass. It's complete made up bullshit.

NPD however uses ACTUAL sales numbers.

I don't know much about NPD however it does look more credible on the surface. Doesn't really have much info available though for answering our questions on it.

 

[Drakron]

The same reason they keep Maxis?

Except they didnt, Maxis was effectively closed after The Sims 2, the expansions were done by other studios and they reopened the studio for Spore.

 

[Jaesun]

I don't know much about NPD however it does look more credible on the surface. Doesn't really have much info available though for answering our questions on it.

Yes, NPD works with ACTUAL SALES NUMBERS provided by the Publisher.

VGChartz makes shit up.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Except they didnt, Maxis was effectively closed after The Sims 2, the expansions were done by other studios and they reopened the studio for Spore.

Yes, but at the "new" Maxis, there are lots of people from the old Maxis, so there is continuity. That's better than resurfacing as the brand name for a Steam clone, like Origin.

Anyway, I think most studios are nothing more than a brand and they exist too shortly to create something like a "culture" (or "DNA" in modern corporate speak) which can continue even without the people who originally created it. Interestingly that was a big theme in the recent 30 years video of Naughty Dog, where they talk about that a lot.

It's probably hard for studios to keep their "culture" even when the people stay more or less the same or only a few leave (id and Doom 3 come too mind).

 

[Space Satan]

Assassin's Creed Unity - 4 mils worldwide.
Assassin's Creed Rogue - 1 mil.
Major impact is on sequels as people get disappointed. Biowahore promoted DA:I as a "Fixed DAII" and failed miserably. In the end if biodrones, who always were ready to eat shit with Bioware label on it, mumbling complaints, then next biowhore game will face even more problems.

 

[Sergiu64]

I dunno, I think they did a pretty good job making a product that fits their target audience. Shitload of voiced convos & cut-scenes, main character is born in Epic mode, great graphics, tits, etc. Only thing threatening it is all the money spent on voice acting.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Journalists on gaming sites and the commenters on those sites seem to have absolutely loved this. Rather than seeing the obvious empty open-world areas, really shit MMO-lite sidequests and lack of reactivity they seem to have really taken to DAI and invented a wholly different game in their heads. Usually if the mainstream sites like Gamespot, IGN, Kotaku, Polygon, Rockpapershotgun etc like a game this much, it translates well to sales.

 

[pippin]

I don't give a flying fuck if the game sold poorly, but I do believe this old Bio tactic of "carrying your character" effectively shrunk the market for this game. DA always seemed to me as a franchise for DA fans; at least Mass Effect had more of a dudebro aspect to it (space marines on an epic quest for alien booty, plus pew pew guns), while DA's quirky approach to what Bio calls storytelling and characterization possibly hurt sales. Also there's the DA2 effect, which shoudln't be omitted. You can't recover just as easily from that. At the same time, and as I was saying, I do believe ME4 will have better sales than DA:I and DA:4 (the inclusion of DA:I in the Keep makes me think they do intend to keep releasing DA games). Also, all the Incline seen in 2014 possible hurt the sales of DA:I, since most of the "floating" costumers were playing Original Sin, Wasteland 2 or Shadowrun, for instance.
30% discount after less than a month of release is indeed curious. Bio's products are featured prominently in Origin's store, but still on a secondary place; however, I don't really believe EA expected too much from them, it's like they're ok with DA:I as long as it's profitable and brings good publicity (they offer you DA:I on Origin as Eternal GOTY).
That said, I would eventually buy it if it reaches 60/75% discount territory, and only because of Cassandra's naked boobs.

 

[Infinitron]

30% discount after less than a month of release is indeed curious.

Again, that was a Christmas sale. Skyrim had one too. Remember, it was released in 11/11/11: http://www.geek.com/games/skyrim-is-33-off-on-steam-today-only-1452715/

 

[Morality Games]

Hm. I wouldn't be surprised if it was doing well. On the other hand, if it was, why don't they just release the figures?

Big publishers don't release figures most of the time.

 

[pippin]

I've just visited Origin and DA:I still has an important discount, considering the release date (33%). Sale ends tomorrow, if anyone's interested.
11/11/11 was the biggest marketing tool ever, but while this is another case, one third is still too much for your new AAA title with GotY status on release.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, Bethesda thought otherwise.

It's a good point that this sale is longer than Skyrim's was, but that could just be compensating for the fact that Origin has much less visibility than Steam. Make the sale one day only and too many people might miss it, whereas lots of PC gamers check Steam every day.

 

[ZoddGuts]

VGChartz? Might as well ask you grandmother for sales numbers, she would be as accurate as VGChartz is.

 

[Turjan]

Make the sale one day only and too many people might miss it, whereas lots of PC gamers check Steam every day.

I guess so. DA:I was also Amazon's Black Friday deal (all platforms including digital) for 25% off. Then again, Black Friday is not the traditional online sales event, so it might not have moved too many copies.

 

[imweasel]

VGChartz? Might as well ask you grandmother for sales numbers, she would be as accurate as VGChartz is.

Yep, and Infinitron knows that too...

 

[Infinitron]

Yep, and Infinitron knows that too...

It's a good thing the sources I posted in OP cite other sales trackers as well!

 

[Daemongar]

I would honestly believe that even if DA:I numbers are great, if they aren't in the Skyrim area, the game will be seen as a failure. This is putting on the EA exec cap for a second. They were given extra time to work on it, it came out three years after Skyrim, and had a pretty good marketing budget. This doesn't feel like a game changer, or a game that will "turn around the franchise." This feels like a good market response, but not the excellent response they were looking for. Considering the amount of advertising and hype, it was a lot of effort expended on Good results, but not results commensurate with the effort. They wanted *great* f-ing results.

This isn't shortages of DA:I or packages flying off the shelves. Numbers or not, industry hype doesn't seem to carry conviction that this is a success, the way Skyrim didn't even need the press to say. If that makes any sense.

 

[Ellef]

There's already a 502(!!) page thread discussing everything about this game right below this post

 

[tuluse]

I would honestly believe that even if DA:I numbers are great, if they aren't in the Skyrim area, the game will be seen as a failure. This is putting on the EA exec cap for a second. They were given extra time to work on it, it came out three years after Skyrim, and had a pretty good marketing budget. This doesn't feel like a game changer, or a game that will "turn around the franchise." This feels like a good market response, but not the excellent response they were looking for. Considering the amount of advertising and hype, it was a lot of effort expended on Good results, but not results commensurate with the effort. They wanted *great* f-ing results.

This isn't shortages of DA:I or packages flying off the shelves. Numbers or not, industry hype doesn't seem to carry conviction that this is a success, the way Skyrim didn't even need the press to say. If that makes any sense.

You're wrong. Skyrim has sold a rumored 20 million copies, the highest selling Bioware game was ME2 which sold 5-6 million. They were not expecting a 4x increase in sales.

 

[Daemongar]

You're wrong. Skyrim has sold a rumored 20 million copies, the highest selling Bioware game was ME2 which sold 5-6 million. They were not expecting a 4x increase in sales.

Nah, besides I was speaking from opinion. If you think that EA is happy that 2x AAA rpg's in a row sold 25% of Skyrims total, you are insane. EA is investing over three years a calculated amount of money and resources. If they were just some guy, I'll bet a straight 100% return on their $100 million is reasonable. However, they are EA and they tied up $100 for three years to make $100 million - 33% a year on their investment. Without accurate numbers, it's hard to draw if the investment was worth what they could have done with that money. I'll assume they are making more than 33% off of each new version of Madden 2015 or whatever, and you don't want me to bore you with some kinda graph showing what they could have invested in but didn't.

However, to address your point: executives see another company spend their resources wisely and see 6x return on their video game investment. They don't see that and say "Gosh, congrats Bethesda... I'm just glad we are making 2x our money!" No, that's what losers say. They say "Why are they making a killing and we're not?" Then they do whatever unethical and horrible thing you can imagine to make that 6x.