What happened to Mass Effect 2?

[Scoobes]

Jereel Hunter said:

Scoobes said:

Jereel Hunter said:

Scoobes said:
Must be all those PC players buying it up. PC games tend to have longer legs than console games ;)

Yes, I'm sure PC players "buying" it is the problem. Fact is, if it had been a timed console exclusive like the first, it would have sold way more overall. A lot of impatient people who pirate PC copies would have bought it...

If EA and Bioware were really worried about that don't you think they would have released it on PC as a timed exclusive like the first? Fact is they got more overall sales this way than (over an equivalent time period) they did with the first. They did the timed release for Mirror's Edge and that got them nowhere. Piracy on 360 is nearly as bad as PC for a large number of games anyway. It's mainly for huge releases like Modern Warfare 2 (which pissed PC players off for other reasons as well) where the piracy on PC is significantly higher than the console versions.

This statement has no basis. Whereas piracy for the PC is often an order of magnitude above sales, even heavily pirated 360 titles are generally a fraction of the sales.

As for if they were worried - I think it had a bigger impact than they anticipated. Mass Effect was a game that grew and grew in popularity... Infact, most of my friends that played ME1 did so in the last few months just before ME2 came out, but they played it via borrowed/used copies. With the hype surrounding ME2, and the great number of additional players over initial sales of the first, it should have easily beaten it's numbers - and unless the PC version did phenomenal in sales, it probably cost them a lot due to piracy.

A fraction but a significant fraction nonetheless. Piracy effects both. It effects PC more, that no-one is going to deny, but the effects on 360 are also substantial so saying sales were hindered by solely PC pirates is wrong. With the numbers that EA released and the numbers on this site the PC version did quite well (approx. 40% of total sales) on first week release.At the end of the day, that's 40% of potential 360 sales that have gone to the PC version.

With digital download services like steam and EAs own store it's very difficult to track just how well the PC version has done or is continuing to do but we do know that PC games tend to have longer legs than their console counterparts. It wouldn't be that suprising if the game was actually still selling quite nicely on PC and for a greater profit margin on digital download (no licensing fees or packaging costs).