Hello, all. If you guys want to skip reading entirely and go on to predicting a commercial and critical winner, by all means go right ahead. The purpose of this thread is to generate discussion through highliting how Activision's flagship FPS (Infinite Warfare) appears to compare to EA's (BF1) in several ways. However, I know many of you won't read it, and I do like those sweet gamrpoints, so go ahead and post. I encourage predictions in the form of firstweek sales, lifetime sales, review scores etc. Don't limit yourself either - let me know why you think what you do. Thanks!
>>>> I REPEAT: IF YOU DON"T LIKE READING, SKIP TO SECTION 4 FOR PREDICTIONS<<<<
Limitations: I am limited to the data I have access to (AKA the data anyone with a computer can see) and therefore cannot give a completely accurate portrayal.
1. Public Reaction: The IW hate isn't that indicative
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare's reveal trailer was released on May 2nd of this year. As of now, it has amassed 34.3 million views, 540,000 likes and 3.3 million dislikes. Battlefield 1's reveal trailer was released on May 6th of this year (4 days later) and has amassed 48 million views, 2 million likes and 400,000 dislikes. At first glance, it would appear that BF1 had an immense advantage from the start.
However, these numbers are much more inflated than they should be. The IW trailer was more or less bombarded by trolls, and the BF1 trailer benefited greatly from users whom wanted to spite CoD. There is evidence of users making multiple accounts (bad example pic included, yet still relevant) for the sole purpose of disliking the IW trailer a few more times; checking in daily to see the hate growth, and sort of making a game out of it. Anyone can look at a Metacritic user score and know the power of a troll.
Obviously, data like this is not very reliable in helping us determine an future game's success. Even when the criticism has legitimate motivation behind it, it may not end up changing the end result. One might recall PC gamers being extremely upset at Activision back in 2009 for not making dedicated servers a possibility for MW2. A small boycott movement was started by some Steam users; but those same users were discovered playing at launch despite their intentions. Early judgements can flip on themselves, and Activision knows that early reactions like this are a facade. Let's be real - they've gone through it 7+ years in a row, and there are methods to warming the public up to your product.
One of these methods is to to merely release more footage and advertising material. As more and more of a game is shown, I'd argue that gamers are likely to discover aspects that they like. This is especially true in the age of public betas, in which gamers can get their hands on a game and the chance to provide constructive feedback for the developers to adhere to if they so wish. Unfortunately for Activision, they cannot change the setting of IW - which was the biggest source of criticism - but they can put extra effort into informing and catering to the public from here on out.
During a time in which many people were clamoring for a historical shooter, Activision rolled the DICE and developed another jetpack game, putting IW at a slight disadvantage that was blown out of proportion by some online communities. Despite this, we have no reason to believe that the game will suffer too much commercially based on public reaction alone. In fact, according to a recent Nielsen survey (measuring most anticipated games for this holiday season), BF1 and IW both sit at 96%.
Main Takeaway: From public reaction, it appeared that BF1 had an immense advantage over IW. However, most criticisms have been blown out of proportion, and a recently released Nielsen Survey shows us that the public is very excited for both games.
So we've already exhausted one area of investigation, but it could be argued that anticipation does not equate to purchase, or even purchase intention. So next I would like to look at.......
2. COMPARING PRE-ORDER NUMBERS: The odds are good but the goods are odd
*BF4 and Ghosts numbers are treated as normalized releases, so data for each platform was taken an equal time from release.
*For fun, and as it is slightly applicable, I made this chart which names the pre-order bonuses for each game.
>>NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS BASED ON USA VGC NUMBERS ALONE. Obviously this section depends on the charts being accurate - and I know that many of you find them inaccurate, so take the following with a grain of salt.
That being said......
- vs BF1 ( PS4 + X1): IW at 250,000, BF1 at 160,000
- vs Black Ops 3 (PS4 + X1, + PS3 and X360 for BO3): IW has 250,000 pre orders, BO3 had ~1.3 million.
- vs Advanced Warfare at 4 weeks out, using combined PS4 and X1 numbers (and using 360 and PS3 numbers for AW): IW has 250,000 vs AW at 700,000.
BF1, 2 weeks out
- vs Battlefield 4 (2013, including PS3 and X360) at 2 weeks out. BF1 has 200,000 pre-orders, BF4 had 1.16 million.
- vs Battlefield Hardline (2015, including PS3 and X360) 2 weeks out. BF1 at 200,000, and Hardline at 180,000.
- vs Star Wars Battlefront (for fun) (2015, 2 weeks out): BF1 at 200,000, and Battlefront at 600,000
BF4 vs Ghosts (2 weeks out) (to give reference)
- Ghosts had about 1.88 million, and BF4 had 1.16 million.
>>So, barring a huge misprint in our pre-order charts:
Main Takeaway: IW sits above BF1 by a small margin, although its physical pre-order numbers are much lower than its predecessors. BF1 has unimpressive physical numbers as well; especially when compared to the last mainline entry developed by DICE. If we look at other comparisons of these franchises over the years, we see that it is the norm for CoD to sit above Battlefield in the pre-order department. This year Battlefield sits about at 64% of CoD's numbers, which is very similar to the 2013 gap (62%).
>OBJECTION!: This doesn't look right at all! How does a game a much higher install base (almost 10x the install base of BF4 on PS4, in fact have such low pre-order numbers?
In terms of an install base for each game to release onto, we have a bit of a conflict. You see the pre-order numbers don't reflect it, but BF1 doubled up on Battlefront's day one cocurrent playerbase.. So it would appear, contrary to what the Chartz are telling us, that a higher install base = more sales. But I believe a big number of those "missing pre-orders" went towards digital purchase.
Both games offered a good bonus for pre-ordering digitally. IW gave us the COD4 campaign one month early, and BF1 gave us the game 3 days early - which netted at minimum 285,000 gamers on October 19th. This probably accounts for some of the seemingly missing numbers we see below for BF1 and IW.
>OBJECTION! Black Ops 3 was bundled and its numbers are inflated!
Mr Puggsly? Is that you? Get out of here before Kerotan finds you!
3. What do the big guys think?: Previews and Reviews, critically and commercially
Battlefield 1
- Battlefield 1's current Opencritic score is 87. User scores on Metacritic range from 8 to 8.7, based on platform. These numbers are similar to that of BF3, the highest scoring title in the franchise. Critics praise the campaign, Operations game mode, and graphical fidelity in particular.
- 13.2 million players played the BF1 beta, and there were reports of 900,000 players on at one time.
- On the day of its worldwide release, BF1 BF1 doubled up on Battlefront's day one cocurrent playerbase. Battlefront went on to sell over 14 million copies.
- BF1's release has gone a lot more smoothly. The servers were briefly down on release day due to a DDOS attack, but connections have otherwise been great, and glitches minimal (although hilarious)
>>>Sooooo: Positive reception from the big guys.
Infinite Warfare
- No reviews as of yet.
- Unfortunately I do not have stats from the beta as it only recently ended.
- I can however point you in the direction of some previews. Impressions are mixed. For instance, youtuber Drift0r is critical of the game design
- Talk of technical issues with the beta - poor connection and high latency
>>>Soooooo: mixed reception from the big guys (so far)
The wild card: Titanfall 2
- Being so similar, will it cut into Infinite Warfare's playerbase, and perhaps one-up it?
- Holds an 87 on opencritic so far, with reviews praising its mechanics and single player campaign.
- Received much love for having a tiny 88mb day one patch (lol).
- Has a much higher install base to build upon from it's predecessor, with the inclusion of a PS4 release; although there is still some worry of a split playerbase over too many game modes, and its release being so close to FPS juggernauts.
>>>Soooo: positive reception, will likely settle in the mid 80s.
4. Conclusion and your thoughts: Predict, criticise, compliment!
Phew.
After all is said and done, I make the following predictions:
> Battlefield 1 stomps Infinite Warfare critically; topping it by at least 10 points on Opencritic (specifically, I predict a 75 from IW, based on what I have seen). Titanfall 2 will give BF1 a run for its money, but ultimately lose by one or two points - landing around 86
> Battlefield 1 soars past Battlefront, BF3 and BF4 to become DICE's best selling game. Across its 3 release platforms, Battlefield 1 will sell 16.5 million copies by the time 2017 is up
> Infinite Warfare will outsell BF1 in their respective release weeks, but it will struggle from there onward. I think it will be impacted slightly from having the COD4 Remaster being released separately (not confirmed, but a prediction). Furthermore, I think a lot of gamers will stay behind with Black Ops 3, or move to Titanfall 2 or BF1. BF1 will surpass it sometime in the year 2017
>Titanfall 2 nears hits 1.8 million copies sold globally in its first week (across all 3 platforms), and will hit a lifetime of 8 million.
Right, well that's it from me. I want to hear what you have to say about all that, and avoid proof-reading this. Cheers all, and happy hump day!
#1 Amb-ass-ador
Epic comment.
