I think most of us can agree that while a 78 metascore is a perfectly acceptable metascore for a game, the expectations of most people who voiced an opinion about what they thought the metascore for Quantum Break would be was somewhat higher than 78. With a lot of people predicting 85+. In the predict the metascire thread no one predicted less than 80.
I don't know what the predictions for The Order 1886 were before it came out, but the rather muted expectations after hearing some less than amazing preview impressions put my expectations into the mid 70s. So the fact it ended on 65 is not too far away relative to expectations from the lower than expected score for Quantum Break.
What's very interesting about this comparison is that depite the over 1 year difference in release date the install base the Quantum Break is releasing into is pretty much the same as the install base that The Order: 1886 released into. Funny that. So really it's a not unreasonable comparison.
Clearly The Order was a critical AND sales disappointment. And most people would say that The Order's sales (at least as far as the VGC estimate can be relied on) are either about what could be reasonably expected for how the game was ultimately received, or perhaps a bit higher than deserved. All things being equal a game that metas in the high 70s in roughly the same genre ballpark should sell better than a game that metas in the mid 60s with the same player base. So we should expect QB on Xb one to wind up with a better LTD than The Order:1886.
Is it fair to compare these games in any way? I think in terms of what the respective fanbases wanted these games to represent they fit in a similar niche. Both fanbases wanted these games to be showcase 8th gen new IP that would help the respective platforms establish or maintain solid sales momentum. Turns out PS4 really didn't need The Order, but arguably Xb one would benefit from a strong critical and commercial performance from QB. But in both cases the fanbases really wanted to be able to crow about the awesomeness of these games that turned out to be less awesome (critically) than hoped for.
What do we have to go on right now? USA pre-orders. The Order had pre-orders over 200K and wound up with a week 1 about the same. So probably those pre-order numbers were a bit inflated, but maybe not too much. Probably with disappointing reviews not many people went out and bought the game who hadn;t already pre-ordered. QB pre-orders are under half at ~95K. Possibly low, possibly not far wrong, but unlikely to be high. Week 1 for QB should end up reasonably higher than the pre-orders because the game has decent reviews and thus there should be relatively more walk-in buyers compared to the people who stayed away from The Order and didn;t lift pre-orders much at all. Still, in the USA it looks like week 1 will go in favour of The Order, but the difference could be less than 100K, a gap that can be easily overcome with better legs.
The problem is the rest of the world outside the USA. When the Order launch, the PS4 install base was 7.2 million in the USA with 13 million PS4s outside the USA. The situation is basically reversed for Xb one. QB is launching into nearly 12 million Xb one's in the USA and a bout 9 million outside the USA. The Order got almost 2/3 of its sales outside the USA on a bigger install base than what QB has right now. So even if QB sells better in the USA than The Order, can it match The Order outside the USA to achieve a higher LTD. And if it can, how much higher? If it still sells less than 2 million does that mean it earns a flop tag the same as The Order. Does it mean MS loses confidence in Remedy in the same way as Sonly lost confidence in RaD?
Do you think this is a crazy comparison and that QB will blow The Order away in terms of sales?
I think QB probably deserves better sales, but I lack confidence in the Xbox userbase to deliver those sales to a game of this nature. I think about how disappointing the sales for Sunset Overdrive are (a much better game by all accounts than The Order, and probably better than QB, and yet it's still sitting 600K short of The Order's sales and only just managed to squeak past 1 million. So I think sales are going to be closer than they shoud be.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix