Just figured out some Steam sales!

[vlad321]

Mendicate Bias said:

vlad321 said:

Mendicate Bias said:

 

Who said mediocrity has anything to do with sales? Crysis was one of the most hyped games on PC in recent memory and we all know hype is a much bigger contributing factor to sales than your personal opinion that it was mediocre, especially considering most reviewers liked it and thats where most people look for opinions before they buy a game.

@mudface

were arguing retail sales only, thats probably total sales. Still even if it sold 2 million at retail how does that speak towards L4D which is a multiplayer centric game and also a much less hyped game?

All I'm saying is that before shio and ssj12 would argue that PC games sell 5 times better than console games when all the data points to that being far from reality. Hell I remember a thread a while ago where ssj12 said the sales for L4D on 360 were crappy, so now that we have a little more data and it looks like both versions sold the same with the PC version very likely having sold a little less what does he have to say about those "crappy" sales?

Maybe on the consoles hype is a contributor, not so on the PCs. You don't see huge frontloaded sales on the PC, even WoW only sold 2.8 mil first day for its expansion (out of potential 12 million that's VERY weak). If the games sucks the game sales suck and piracy on it skyrockets. Also most people can agree with the fact that it was a mediocre experience and people value word of mouth more than a reviewer's word. Couple that with PC sales not selling immidiately like consoels and you get shitty sales.

Edit: Another thing to keep in mind, when Crysis came out VERY few people could run it even decently while L4D and CoD4 didn't have that poblem (what, with them being on consoles and all). I'm pretty sure that had a lot to do with why people didn't buy it at the start as well, then the fact it sucked just turned them off when they could. Crysis just turned out to be prime for piracy since it didn't have much value beyond being a really good benchmarking tool. Honestly, I've pirated it on 4 or 5 different occassions just to see how my PC will run it after an upgrade or two and how far it can be pushed.

Wait so u expected more than 3 million first day for a WoW expansion with a previous install base of 12 million?! That is an amazing figure don't try to spin it, 1 in 4 potential people bought an expansion pack first day. Also how about the recent big pc games like spore and the sims? As I recall those had huge first week sales. Hype is just as much a factor for PC sales as it is for any other console. Every once in a while you get a gem than continues to sell over the years like starcraft, but to take that and use it as the rule for every pc game is laughable, especially when the exact same cases exist on consoles too. Also most people buy games by amount of hype it is receiving in the general media or based off reviews from websites like IGN or any other big gaming review site, not off word of mouth or discussing it with other people in forums like we do. 

 

Because comapring L4D and Spore/Sims on the PC is liek comparing CoD4 and WiiFit/Sports, in which case CoD4 absolutely bombed, respectively.

Also 3 million is low, also that 12 million was the total account active, the number of elligable people (total with WoW) sit closer to 20mil, so yes, that's actually very weak. Far worse when you look at Halo2 total vs Halo 3 first day.

Also that once in a while "gem" as you call it is not a fluke, it's called a good game. Any game that DOESN'T continue to sell is because it's not worth being sold. Starcraft is a good game, so it still sells, and so is Empie Total War, Warcraft 3, etc. Make a good game and it sells, make a mediocre game and it doesn't. It's really easy to comprehend, also very brutal since PC gamers have a pretty high bar for quality in games.

As for consoles, there are plenty of good games which don't see sales. Look at Zack and Wiki on the wii as a quick example.