"...Now to correct one thing, what keeps 2k and Take 2 afloat is Rockstar Games. They produce multimillion dollar games that go on to produce over 700 million dollars from their online mode alone. Their games are the top sellers in their years and even decades. Firaxis Games as of now is a failure of a studio. Years back yes they did develop the wildly successful Civilization 5 which went on to sell over 9 million units and Xcom Enemy Unknown that went on to sell over 3.4 million units. [1] Then they developed Beyond Earth which tanked at 1.4 million and Xcom 2 at .8 million, a game so bad by even it’s supporters admission it needs mods to be playable. Civlization VI is off to a rough start and will probably match Beyond Earth. It hasn’t even broken its first million yet.
Given how poorly they are doing, my money on the next studio closure is going to be them if they are not overhauled instead. I have no clue how their capacity to develop has declined so fiercely but sadly it has.
On to your question as to how a game can sell 1.7 million units and not be profitable. I’m going to break this down for you, on console sales the publisher only gets on average $27 for every $60 sold. Digital is more profitable at 70% of total sales. For that 1.7 it turned out $45.9 million, give or take a few million. After development and marketing the fact it sold significantly less than Borderlands 2 is why it is considered a failure. You sold 14% of what Borderlands 2 did.
Worse and I am going to give you the consumers perspective on this, the game is god awful. For starters it story is loaded with virtue signaling, but that’s only a minor annoyance. What truly cans it is the fact it is either the Pre Sequel is canon or 2 and the books are canon. That’s how atrociously written the presequel was. Even the voice actor of Handsome jack sounded miserable spewing out those out of character lines. The game was received so poorly that within months it was being bundled with Borderlands 2 to desperately sell units.
While I understand that development on The bureau wasn’t your fault it also was atrocious. I must say I loved their original version of the game that was first shown off. The final red flag for the games low quality should have been the YOLO trailer, but sadly I still purchased it, much to my regret.
Autralias other projects aren’t exactly well recieved. At best they are controversial, Bioshock 2 is hated by half the community at least, CodShock was an embarassment that alienated the entire original audience for the game and came with a story only the greatest of idiots thought was intelligent that ultimately damage the continuity of any future Bioshock games going forward in the manner of public perception. It sold well on the hype of Bioshock in the Sky, instead it was Call of Duty with color.
I understand that people put a lot of passion and work into those games, but that doesn’t make them by default good or profitable.
Thanks for giving us insights into what transpired though. Even if they are through tinted lenses it is always great to see insights into what transpires behind closed doors inside the industry."
Just the opposite. The sort of person who straightfacedly uses the term "virtue signalling" is also likely to rail about how the SJWs are ruining civilization.
Bioshock Infinite is one of the most acclaimed games in the last few years and only two from 2013 are rated better. It has a 94% Metacritic rating and was declared a 10/10 game by dozens of reviewers.
No idea about profitability, but it was a great game.
People retrospectively don't like it because it didn't live up to some of what the trailers promised (in terms of how large or open the city was) and the dimension tearing mechanic robbed it of weight for some ("If this is just one version of how things play out then what's the point?" Missing, of course, that THAT is the point).
Personally, I really enjoyed Bioshock Infinite including the so-called "Twist" ending. I did not see it as a Twist since they very obviously foreshadowed it. But to each their own.
In a sense, Civ 3 seemed more detail oriented in some aspects to me. For example how you could tell which "age" other players were in by the characters clothing, the art style seemed a little bit better suited for the game, the city zoom UI was in my opinion more clear, the diplomacy UI was more clear, etc. So yes, I am happy to see like-minded Civ players.
Now, I think with Civ 4 they tried to emphasize online play a bit... which to be fair, is not a bad motivation to have. The only problem is that emphasizing online play will impact offline play.
"...Now to correct one thing, what keeps 2k and Take 2 afloat is Rockstar Games. They produce multimillion dollar games that go on to produce over 700 million dollars from their online mode alone. Their games are the top sellers in their years and even decades. Firaxis Games as of now is a failure of a studio. Years back yes they did develop the wildly successful Civilization 5 which went on to sell over 9 million units and Xcom Enemy Unknown that went on to sell over 3.4 million units. [1] Then they developed Beyond Earth which tanked at 1.4 million and Xcom 2 at .8 million, a game so bad by even it’s supporters admission it needs mods to be playable. Civlization VI is off to a rough start and will probably match Beyond Earth. It hasn’t even broken its first million yet.
Given how poorly they are doing, my money on the next studio closure is going to be them if they are not overhauled instead. I have no clue how their capacity to develop has declined so fiercely but sadly it has. On to your question as to how a game can sell 1.7 million units and not be profitable. I’m going to break this down for you, on console sales the publisher only gets on average $27 for every $60 sold. Digital is more profitable at 70% of total sales. For that 1.7 it turned out $45.9 million, give or take a few million. After development and marketing the fact it sold significantly less than Borderlands 2 is why it is considered a failure. You sold 14% of what Borderlands 2 did.
Worse and I am going to give you the consumers perspective on this, the game is god awful. For starters it story is loaded with virtue signaling, but that’s only a minor annoyance. What truly cans it is the fact it is either the Pre Sequel is canon or 2 and the books are canon. That’s how atrociously written the presequel was. Even the voice actor of Handsome jack sounded miserable spewing out those out of character lines. The game was received so poorly that within months it was being bundled with Borderlands 2 to desperately sell units.
While I understand that development on The bureau wasn’t your fault it also was atrocious. I must say I loved their original version of the game that was first shown off. The final red flag for the games low quality should have been the YOLO trailer, but sadly I still purchased it, much to my regret.
Autralias other projects aren’t exactly well recieved. At best they are controversial, Bioshock 2 is hated by half the community at least, CodShock was an embarassment that alienated the entire original audience for the game and came with a story only the greatest of idiots thought was intelligent that ultimately damage the continuity of any future Bioshock games going forward in the manner of public perception. It sold well on the hype of Bioshock in the Sky, instead it was Call of Duty with color. I understand that people put a lot of passion and work into those games, but that doesn’t make them by default good or profitable.
Thanks for giving us insights into what transpired though. Even if they are through tinted lenses it is always great to see insights into what transpires behind closed doors inside the industry."