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Barozi on 04 January 2011
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Scoobes said:
shio said:
Barozi said:

and how do PC game sales work ?

Far Cry has been at 2 million for ages. Same for Crysis. Those are just normal legs for million selling games. Nothing spectacular.

Far Cry just topped out at 2.5 million. It might still reach 3 million, but not more than that. Almost no one wants to buy it anymore, since it's only advantage (the graphics) is severely outdated.

Crysis on the other hand, is a much more recent and much better game. It still has a few years left of decent sales. I can see it reach 4 or 5 million. It will go through several Steam sales, and Crysis 2's release will help some, then bundles with Crysis Crysis 2, etc...

Most console games sell most of their sales in the first month, while PC games tend to keep selling for years and years, with many PC games selling less than 10% of it's lifetime sale in the first months.

Starcraft 1, for example, sold only 1.5 million in the first year, then sold an extra 11 millions the following years. Starcraft 1 probably sold less than 5% of it's lifetime sales in the first month.

This is very true when it comes to PC games. I remember an interview with one of the heads of Ensemble (about the time they announced the closure) said the original Age of Empires sold 500,000 in the first 6 months (just about enough to make profit). It's now one of the biggest RTS franchises in the world.

And on Far Cry, the scenery on the highest settings still holds its own against a huge number of games in the current generation.

You're all talking about the first game in a line of incredibly acclaimed and popular game series. Of course they won't have the biggest opening of all time, but those legs are definitely not a PC exclusive thing.

I admit that the legs are a bit better compared to console games, but the difference really isn't that big when comparing blockbuster titles.

Besides, Far Cry and Crysis are typically games to test new hardware, since both pushed the limits of pretty much all existing PCs at the time of release. Naturally many interested gamers didn't have the necessary hardware back then and got the game a few years later instead of getting it at launch.

Also I wonder what shio means by saying "Most console games sell most of their sales in the first month". I've just looked through some very popular games that are in the same ballpark as Crysis or slightly above and many of them sold ~35% of all their sales in the first month. And they still have some time to sell more so expect that to go down to roughly 30%. Hardly the majority isn't it ?
Why is that a bad thing anyway ? More sales at full price = more profit. Far Cry has been sold for 15€ one year after the release. I got my copy around another year later (2006) for 10€ and since the release of Crysis it has been at 5€. So you telling me that half of the sales (probably even closer to 2/3) comming from a 10€ (average) price-point is something positive ?

Btw I wonder if that number includes the Crysis GPU bundles