The Order 1886 Review Thread - Meta: 66

[binary solo]

iceboy151 said:

NavyNut said:
Damn another flop for the PS4. I was hoping this would not have been the case, sick of waiting for next gen awesomeness.

How is it a flop when we don't even know the sales?!

We can predict with pretty reasonable accuracy that legs will be very short for this game, because metascore does seem to either influence or predict the sales success of games, especially when they score either below 70 or above 85.

It's a very rudimentary analysis but here are all the 50-69 metascore games that have global sales numbers on VGC. 

Game	Global sales LTD '000	release year
Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition	TBA	2014
Lords of the Fallen	310	2014
Sniper Elite III	350	2014
Thief	700	2014
The Order: 1886	TBA	2015
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected & Gat Out of Hell	80	2015
WWE 2K15	790	2014
The Crew	1080	2014
NHL 15	400	2014
NBA Live 15	110	2014
Murdered: Soul Suspect	230	2014
Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed	40	2014
Knack	1340	2013
Bound by Flame	120	2014
Natural Doctrine	60	2014
Average	431.54

The Crew has managed 1 million, possibly because there is a dearth of decent racers on PS4, I don't know.

I am convinced the only reason Knack is over 1 million is because of bundling. My personal experience of Knack is that it's actually an all right game but I doubt positive word of mouth will have helped much with sales. But even with these >1 million games, with Knack benefitting from significant bundling, games that get metascores below 70 can be expected to sell less than 500K. That is if VGC can at all be relied on to provide a ball park estimate of sales for these games.

The Order seems like it might benefit from bundling, as I believe it is being bundled in Europe. This could help it to 1 million. The other thing that might help is a common vibe that the IP has potential and a better job at doing a sequel might give us a very good game, or at least a longer game. That, with bundling might help it to 1.5 million. Anything above that is a far off dream. More than likely though is lifetime sales below 1 million. I don't see Sony letting RaD have another go at this IP for sales less than 1 million. Too much of a financial risk of a second sales failure. This would not have been a cheap game to make. KPI for this game would probably have been 2 million, which is not going to happen.

Too bad that the metascore is also below Sony's PSN+ free game commitment. Though as an exclusive that failed to sell (probably) Sony might decide to break its own rule, or they might decide that 65 is the new 70, given there are games worth giving away for free in that 65-70 zone.