Doom3world

Here:
http://beefjack.com/news/rage-xbox-360- ... s-figures/
http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date ... date=40825

problem with the pc sales is that they do only count the retail box sales from stores. as a steamworks game I suggest there are a lot more download-only buys.

It seams id have what they wanted, a foot and more on the console world, after the debacle that was the PC version and reaction to it by my fellow PC gamers, i have no reason to think they see the PC market has profitable anymore, i'm afraid for the fate of the Doom 4 PC version now.

I never trust sale figures.

Yeah, Steam doesn't release sales figures, ever. The statement on the PC sales really means nothing.

Good to see it sold, at least in my opinion, rather well for a first week new IP. Good for them and hopefully their sales continue.

A few starting points:

1) VGChartz are notorious for unreliable numbers. They have a somewhat solid foundation but are missing important retailers and used to use NPD numbers (until they stopped releasing them) for course correction. Use rough numbers for trends, not specific values.

2) Like drill_sarge mentioned, Steam doesn't divulge sales numbers. It would be interesting to know how Rage fared on Steam compared to other games and see if the big download size made a difference.

As Argoon1981, the PC release debacle absolutely caused problems. I wouldn't be surprised if there were cancelled pre-orders in territories that got the game later (Europe, etc.) because of it.

Having said that, my personal expectations would be for PC to roughly hold its own against either console. These numbers are problematic. It will be interesting to see if the patch and drivers change this trend for the following weeks.

Claiming the console market is much more important than PC can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you constantly advertise in interviews that the PC version will have few, if any, advantages and remove a COOP mode from it then people who would have otherwise bought the game on PC will probably just get it on console instead.

Here's a question: if these numbers continue, will the next DOOM be console-only? I.e., during the first month, the console versions combined have 2 million (accounting for some drop off) and the PC has 0.5 million (doubling the current weekly value to account for the patch, etc.). If you don't think id would skip the PC, regardless of Rage PC numbers, could you explain your reasoning please?

Steam sales are the wildcard obviously, what we know so far is that Rage has been the top seller on Steam in the first and second week and that by looking at those lists, there were no other new AAA releases in the same window. Hard to gauge the sales number but I did find this article. Basically, October 2010 was the third best month for Steam where Fallout: New Vegas had a total (month) sales numbers of 308,000.

I bought it retail because I wanted the data on discs, rather than an untenably large download.

Go into the Steam store, click on 'top sellers'. There's the list of topsellers this week, gives some clue as to how Rage is doing.

Right now it's on place 10, right below 'Orcs Must Die!'...

Thing is though...it appears to count preorders. So if a bulk of Rage's orders were pre-orders, than it may have peaked higher on the list earlier.

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If these are acurate numbers, are they not a bit low? The COD games get millions with just the pre-orders.

I know COD and Rage are apples and oranges, but when it takes id 7 years to make a game, how many do they need to sell to break even?

Example: if id gets $20 per copy sold, they would need to sell 5 million to make $100 million.




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Pretty bad sales considering that will be the largest platform, if the first weeks sales total and they are correct. Dev costs - with a good bit written off for future product dev must be around 40 mil, gotta wonder about the break-even, it would be extremely unusual to miss it. Tho I have a feeling that the largest cost will be that in goodwill; I have a feeling after Skyrim things might start to look rather ugly in that camp (even being loaded - most of their cash is very speculative).

One day, when the industry understands that the PC is a console sales driving force par-none; perhaps then these accidents won't happen.

I'm believing that's why id sold themselves to Zenimax. I'd say they got to big & ambitious to be an indie company. I'd say Valve is on that way too, they produce stuff about as often as id does (technically, the guys behind HL2 haven't had a new game since HL2, same time as Doom 3. They've had smaller projects like Left 4 Dead, TF2, Portal, etc. but so has id).

They didn't exactly do nothing for 7 years. They had other revenue.



episode 2 was in October 2007. Also Valve's other games return huge sales. TF2 is pretty much like a money printing machine for them at this point since the item store opened up. They really aren't comparable at all to Id Software.

Just because you might not consider them titles on the same level as Half Life doesn't mean Valve hasn't released anything to make them money.

Portal 2:



Left 4 Dead:



Combined with Steam revenue, Valve ain't gonna be running out of money any time soon.

Yeah valve is making money of Rage

Steam is a winning thing for them.

I doubt very much Rage had that big of a budget. Well, with the later tv advert and breaking bad cross over, etc. I'm not so sure but I'd be surprised if it cost half that. Another good thing with being part of Bethesda is that they're not paying a publisher and can leverage Bethesda's existing marketing/community staff. Overall the numbers aren't too shabby, I think, especially when considering this is one of gaming's best years with so many AAA games being released every week. It's no CoD, but nothing else is. People buy CoD because it's CoD, not because of its quality (or lack thereof).

not only, they buy COD because of the MP, at least on the PC...

Those arent really their games, they're hl2 mods made by mod teams that Valve hired and bought out. That's all Valve has been doing all these years, acquiring hl2 mods and selling them as full games. I also dont like how they dont give out sales numbers. They dont want developers seeing them ?

IMHO sales are not that much of a problem. The numbers could be bigger, but they ain't that bad indeed. The problem is a lukewarm reception the game gets. Been to London lately - "Rage" billboards were everywhere. Naturally, such marketing campaign is something you need to promote a new franchise. Losing money on the first game is probably part of the plan... But then there is a sequel, another sequel, and another, ideally one every year or two years, then a a spin off, DLCs, etc. All cheaper to make and way cheaper to promote as they should, theoretically, sell themselves in millions no matter what - like "COD", "Battlefield", "Fifa", etc. So, eventually you're getting your money back, multiplied by some nice number. Of course all under one condition: buyers loved the first game. If they didn't then you'll have to make some major adjustments (=spend more money) and then convince people (=spend more money) that this time you've made things right. In some cases it's wiser to just shut the project down. I don't know what will ZeniMax do but I won't be surprised if they would decide to cash in some easy money on the "Doom" IP and put "Rage" brand on a shelf for a long time.

All developers can see their own sales numbers. As far as making all sales numbers available I'd take a guess that it has to do with deals they make with all developers/publishers. It's more fair for everyone involved when distribution/sale contracts are kept private only between Valve and the holder. It's rumored that Valve doesn't make a flat % off of sales for everyone, but that there is a sort of sliding scale based on multiple factors. By keeping things private it prevents companies from going at everyone's throats with "but you gave them this deal! I want that!". Instead the individual contracts are based on what each side feels is fair to each other at that moment for that game without other outside factors effecting perception.



What is the actual problem with this? Creative mod teams now have jobs, fun games now have a mass audience, gamers have lots of new, fun games and everyone involved is making boat loads of money on top of it all. Your perception is jaded if your directly comparing say Portal the "Mod" versus Portal the "released game". You come off as if they are just packaging up the mod and selling it for money. Lots of development time and money go into these projects before they are released as games. Valve just has a good eye for new ideas they think people will enjoy. More publishers wish they were so successful in that respect.