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General discussion (archive)Dragon Age 2 demo review(921 posts)(921 posts)
(921 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 16, 2011
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Delixe: I'm rather happy about the sales. I was worried that it would be a success despite the changes especially on the consoles which would further push Bioware away from the PC. You can still see the thinly veiled insults in what Mike Laidlaw says.

As it stands PC gamers didn't like it and neither did console gamers. I know two people who only play consoles and I persuaded them to try DA:O and they loved it mainly because it was different. These are people who never heard of Baldur's Gate so unlike us they had nothing to compare DA:O to. They were equally appaled at the changes in DA2 and unlike us PC gamers they had the luxury of selling their copies to game stores, which they did further harming DA2's new sales.

The funny thing is the console players complained about exactly the same things we did. Repeated caves, boring quests, muddled plot, spawning enemies and complete lack of choice in the game. Laidlaw can say he simplified the game for console players but the evidence seems to be that the console players liked DA:O as much as we did and all they wanted was a technically better port and a less confusing interface.
Veiled insults ? The guys just basically told us to "stop whinning and play on hard" on that last interview ;)

Laidlaw's theory that it's just (us) old farts making alot of noise because we can't handle change (wtf?) definitelly falls flat on its face when you realize that console players hated this game as much as PC players did, and i think the sales figures reflect just that.

Arrogance may have been part of what brought this disaster about. Laidlaw is definitely coming across as arrogant in those interviews and i remember Gaider taking a somewhat arrogant stance, not to say rude, in regards to people expressing concerns about all the changes before the game released. I think Gaider's road map to Acceptance stands as a testimony of Bioware's arrogance regarding DA2 and it's quite fittingt that the tables can now be turned and the fans can hand that very same road map to Bioware in regards to DA2's failure.

Maybe in the end this will teach them humility, and they'll remember that no matter how good you are if you stop trying you'll likely fail, and they didn't even tried this time around.
Post edited April 16, 2011 by Namur
Posted April 16, 2011
Good points, Namur & Delixe :)

Derailing this a bit, but do you think we'll ever be able to play as the warden again, or is Hawke the new poster boy of the franchise?

And does anyone have an idea what the *insert random curse word* happened to Alistair's face? I know that it's been few years since Origins, but still...I can understand Zevran, since they "updated" the elves altogether, but Alistair (and Teagan) baffles me..
Posted April 16, 2011
At this point it's hard to say. Hawke has to be amongst the most forgettable playing characters of all times, helll, Anders is pratically the main character in the game. I do think that most people would like to have The Warden back. It doesn't make much difference to me one way or the other, the franchise is pretty much wrecked for me regardless.

Zevran should definitely stop using black market botox. As for Alistair, he should probably cut back on the cheese a bit.
Posted April 16, 2011
Epic Something Dragon Age 2 will never be.
Posted April 16, 2011
Epic, definitely what comes to mind when i think about Origins, it's almost impossible not to fire it up after seeing those scenes ;)

Nice video, btw.
Posted April 16, 2011
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Delixe: Seems the free Mass Effect 2 hasn't had any impact. Could it be perhaps that anyone who would be interested in the deal already has the game?
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Namur: Sure looks like it. Damn, it had no apparent effect whatsoever, the figures keep going down.

Afetr the game released it was obvious it wasn't going to do great in terms of sales, but i kinda always more or less assumed it would turn a decent profit anyway. I'm starting to wonder about that now.
It has sold nearly a million copies, I mean, that's not horrible really. With long tail sales added in they won't loose money, anyway.
Posted April 17, 2011
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orcishgamer: It has sold nearly a million copies, I mean, that's not horrible really. With long tail sales added in they won't loose money, anyway.
It's already over 1M. I didn't say they'd loose money, i said i'm starting to wonder if they'll turn a decent profit.

The figures are terrible, considereding the stated goals and the profitsssss estimates that likely were made based on those goals.

What long tail sales ? No one's picking it up now with ME2 bundled with it and huge discounts. You can get the DA2/ME2 "bundle" for 13 or 14 pounds on Amazon and it's only week 5 after release ;)
Posted April 17, 2011
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orcishgamer: It has sold nearly a million copies, I mean, that's not horrible really. With long tail sales added in they won't loose money, anyway.
It's actually disasterous when you note Origins sold 5 million copies and the 'improvements' made to DA2 made them confident it would exceed the sales of Origins.

The game will be lucky to reach 2 million sales and I think it's tapped out now at full price. Future sales will be made at much lower prices.
Posted April 17, 2011
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Damuna: How exactly does changing the protagonist you play make something a reboot?
The protagonist and the location. But it's oh so much more than that. Skills are gone, most of the spells are gone, classes are gone, you can only play as a human, the entire combat system has been changed. Dragon Age 2 was designed for people who never played Dragon Age: Origins. Sounds like a reboot to me.
Posted April 17, 2011
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Delixe: Epic Something Dragon Age 2 will never be.
Something that both Dragon Ages don't have:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk0sOGVSAP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Ki7yp2XL0&feature=related
Posted April 17, 2011
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orcishgamer: It has sold nearly a million copies, I mean, that's not horrible really. With long tail sales added in they won't loose money, anyway.
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Namur: It's already over 1M. I didn't say they'd loose money, i said i'm starting to wonder if they'll turn a decent profit.

The figures are terrible, considereding the stated goals and the profitsssss estimates that likely were made based on those goals.

What long tail sales ? No one's picking it up now with ME2 bundled with it and huge discounts. You can get the DA2/ME2 "bundle" for 13 or 14 pounds on Amazon and it's only week 5 after release ;)
One thing to consider: if they cut corners so much in DA2 there's a very good possibility that they don't need to sell anywhere near as much as DAO sold. Hell, with the short development cycle and fast turnaround on the short development cycle it could work out to be more profitable to churn out a DA2 every year as long as people keep buying it. That's my worst case scenario anyway, them making it into the Football Manager of cRPGs...
Posted April 17, 2011
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FlintlockJazz: One thing to consider: if they cut corners so much in DA2 there's a very good possibility that they don't need to sell anywhere near as much as DAO sold. Hell, with the short development cycle and fast turnaround on the short development cycle it could work out to be more profitable to churn out a DA2 every year as long as people keep buying it. That's my worst case scenario anyway, them making it into the Football Manager of cRPGs...
Probably a valid point and it's likely DA2 will be proftable but not in the way they were hoping. Origins exceeded all expectations especially on the consoles but DA2 looks to be coming up short by a wide margin.

BioWare need to take a good hard look at the situation. Yes they could churn out Dragon Age games every two years with a minimum amount of effort like DA2 but fans are already bored and will be unlikely to purchase DA3 especially on release. DA2 has only done as well as it has due to very high pre-order numbers, people have estimated up to 500k pre-orders across all formats which is half of it's current sales. Without those pre-orders DA3 is going to be a very poor selling game indeed.
Posted April 17, 2011
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FlintlockJazz: One thing to consider: if they cut corners so much in DA2 there's a very good possibility that they don't need to sell anywhere near as much as DAO sold. Hell, with the short development cycle and fast turnaround on the short development cycle it could work out to be more profitable to churn out a DA2 every year as long as people keep buying it. That's my worst case scenario anyway, them making it into the Football Manager of cRPGs...
You're correct, DA2 doesn't need to sell nearly as much as DAO did for them to break even or turn a profit due to the low budget and short dev cycle.

But their stated goal was to have DA2 outselling DAO, and it looks like DA2 will end up making it to around just 40% of what Origins sold, maybe not even that. Also, less copies sold means that their potencial customer base for DLC and/or an hypothetical expansion is alot smaller.

Any way you look at it, i'm sure they're not happy with the sales figures.
Posted April 17, 2011
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orcishgamer: It has sold nearly a million copies, I mean, that's not horrible really. With long tail sales added in they won't loose money, anyway.
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Delixe: It's actually disasterous when you note Origins sold 5 million copies and the 'improvements' made to DA2 made them confident it would exceed the sales of Origins.

The game will be lucky to reach 2 million sales and I think it's tapped out now at full price. Future sales will be made at much lower prices.
I'm just saying, development got paid for, though I doubt it will fund the next project. It'll probably fund steel toed boot purchases for all employees to give Laidlaw a well deserved kick in the balls, as well.
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orcishgamer: It has sold nearly a million copies, I mean, that's not horrible really. With long tail sales added in they won't loose money, anyway.
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Namur: It's already over 1M. I didn't say they'd loose money, i said i'm starting to wonder if they'll turn a decent profit.

The figures are terrible, considereding the stated goals and the profitsssss estimates that likely were made based on those goals.

What long tail sales ? No one's picking it up now with ME2 bundled with it and huge discounts. You can get the DA2/ME2 "bundle" for 13 or 14 pounds on Amazon and it's only week 5 after release ;)
There will be long tail sales, when the GOTY is out around Christmas for 20-30 they'll tack on a bunch more sales, in 2012 you'll see GOTY go on sale for 10-20 regularly and they'll add more sales that way.

You're right, they screwed the pooch, their estimates were way off, etc. It's silly for them to bitch about profitability, though, when a) they paid for development (I mean, holy shit, most shops can only dream of selling a million units and that's a failure?), and b) they only have themselves to blame for screwing up the game and being jerks to the community (the community may be fickle and unfair at times, but that's their core audience whether they like it or not).
Post edited April 17, 2011 by orcishgamer
Posted April 17, 2011
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orcishgamer: There will be long tail sales, when the GOTY is out around Christmas for 20-30 they'll tack on a bunch more sales, in 2012 you'll see GOTY go on sale for 10-20 regularly and they'll add more sales that way.

You're right, they screwed the pooch, their estimates were way off, etc. It's silly for them to bitch about profitability, though, when a) they paid for development (I mean, holy shit, most shops can only dream of selling a million units and that's a failure?), and b) they only have themselves to blame for screwing up the game and being jerks to the community (the community may be fickle and unfair at times, but that's their core audience whether they like it or not).
I don't know if they're bitching already ;), but it's definitely a failure when the previous product sold 4.5M to 5M and you plan to outsell that wiht the new product which in the end struggles to make it to the the 2M mark. That's a huge cut on the potencial customer base for DLC on top of everything else.

It becomes even a bigger failure when you consider that around 35% to 40% of the current sales of the new product ride on the sucess of the previous product, not on the merits of the new product.

I'll guess we'll see when a GOTY comes around how much it will sell, but it doesn't look good, i'd say they'll be mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but maybe that's just my unwavering pessimism in regards to all things DA2 ;)
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General discussion (archive)Dragon Age 2 demo review(921 posts)(921 posts)
(921 posts)