GCD2: Games Chart Discussion

[Lebowski]

"underperformance against our expectations"

Destiny 2 reviewed well and sold well at launch but then was dropped for the next big thing like most tripple a games are. I think the reason there saying it's under performed is related to the Micro transaction and uptake on the first two DLC's which where very poor in quality and lacking in content, i saw a massive fall off of friends after these two dlc's came out.

They need a bit of goodwill to get player back adding the base game for free on the ps4 and pc isn't going to bring players back its more than likely to just p off the people that did buy it as it devalues there purchase even more. The kicker with forsaken was they where asking for £30 for the dlc and another £30 for the year two content pass, and if you didn't already have the two now mothballed dlc's you have had to buy them too.

What they should of done was put the content pass out as part of Forsaken and dropped the requirement for you to own the two bad dlcs, i bet there would have been a lot more sales if people thought that this £30 dlc would be supported past the first few months. No other game seems so greedy with its dlc.

[Neon Ignition]

Maybe it's time for Destiny to move past gated DLC, CoD suggests Activision remains behind the curve on it but they need a model that keeps players consistently engaged with the game with weekly and monthly updates instead of these all or nothing expansion drops

[Lebowski]

Maybe it's time for Destiny to move past gated DLC, CoD suggests Activision remains behind the curve on it but they need a model that keeps players consistently engaged with the game with weekly and monthly updates instead of these all or nothing expansion drops

The dlc's are a bit different to Cods map packs, in destiny the yearly standalone expansion is a self contained story's, and a massive content drop ive been playing it solidly since launch and still have tons to do, it defiantly has it value but maybe it would be better if they had gone down the subs route.

[Lebowski]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-18-pok-mon-and-spyro-top-hyper-competitive-week-at-uk-games-retail

Good week for spyro, though if pokemon Eevee and pikachu had been counted as one release it would have been the no1 game this week. Fallout 76 comes in at 3 surprisingly as the hate its been getting online is pretty bad. hitmans not done great and strangely Mario Kart is back in the charts too

1 Spyro Reignited Trilogy
2 Red Dead Redemption 2
3 Fallout 76
4 Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu
5 FIFA 19
6 Pokémon Let's Go Eevee
7 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
8 Fortnite: Deep Freeze Bundle
9 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
10 Hitman 2

[Neon Ignition]

Nipped into CEX yesterday and everyone at the tills was tearing into Fallout 76 as they'd apparently had another person trade it in after just a night with it

[Lebowski]

Nipped into CEX yesterday and everyone at the tills was tearing into Fallout 76 as they'd apparently had another person trade it in after just a night with it

I did a couple of night of the beta its an ugly broken boring game, and i bet its gonnatunr into a FTP game with tons of microtransction in 6 months.... maybe sooner if the the user base evaporates over night.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-11-26-battlefield-5-physical-sales-down-more-than-half-on-battlefield-1

Battlefield 5's launch was a disaster for EA. The article in the link adds lots of possible whataboutery talking about early Deluxe releases, the rise of digital sales etc but BF launches frequently enough that in this case you can call a spade a spade. Physical sales over 5 days were half that of Battlefield 1's 3 day sales. They were half of Black Ops 4 too. Also down from Hardlines.

[Digfox]

[MENTION=345]Superman Falls[/MENTION] Can't make those statements based of GfK figures, which are largely garbage.

Again sorry to be that guy but those figures don't include digital, UK retail is in the gutter and increasing digital sales probably close to the 50% mark. Numerous recent games like BLOPS4, RDR2 and FH4 etc. have all had incomplete UK sales figures that were in no way indicative of their actual sales performance. Again it's going to be a case of wait for more reliable figures or for a financial statement to see how BF5 has done.

[Neon Ignition]

There are a lot of variables but the growth of digital sales isn't so aggressive as to represent that big a shift from previous entries that are that recent and have their initial reports the same way. It'll be genuinely interesting to see where BF5 finally lands but the walls seem to be closing.

I'd love MS and EA etc to reveal more of the inner workings of how they profit from their library services too. MS is quick to crow about how many play their big releases in the era of Game Pass and EA will surely bring up Origin but it's not a very straight forward picture. I played BF5 via Origin but it means that whilst EA notched up a user for the game they did so for just £3.99 so made less than if I'd bought the game. I'd be curious how many consistent subs do so for these releases to balance out the loss of full game sales.

[Neon Ignition]

https://twinfinite.net/2018/11/yooka-laylee-sell-million-copies/

Yooka Laylee has passed the 1m sales milestone

Preusmably we get Tooka Laylee now?

[Digfox]

There are a lot of variables but the growth of digital sales isn't so aggressive as to represent that big a shift from previous entries that are that recent and have their initial reports the same way. It'll be genuinely interesting to see where BF5 finally lands but the walls seem to be closing.

I know, it's just these current UK GfK figures are junk for the most part. You only need to look back on this thread and your () 'suggestion' RDR2 wasn't doing as well it should - just based off Chart Trak data.

I think the one thing that EA Access (inc. Premium) and these subs do is 'normalise' revenue, in that companies love that consistent or growing income from such services. Rather than the up and downs from a game being released every so often.

Indeed T2/Rockstar have probably taken 2-3Bn+ already in revenue from 30m+ RDR2 sales. And then on top can start to enjoy 500m to 1bn a year from MTX revenue as they switch that on this week. Maybe an extreme but it's a great example of how to maximise revenue. And MS, Sony, Acti etc. are all doing the same.

[Neon Ignition]

Hopefully at some point there'll be more transparency on digital sales somehow, hiding the figures doesn't stop a game from being a hit or a flop but instead we'll have to wait till EA crows about its performance somehow.

And RDR2 was a sales failure! (To those hoping something would drive Rockstar to make more than one game a gen)

[Digfox]

NPD figures and Superdata estimates do include digital for the US. Gfk are meant to be adding digital sales by next year. Until then I think the GfK data is too incomplete to draw conclusions from.

[Digfox]

UK video games market is now 80% digital - However, 75% of AAA game sales are physical - GI.biz link

Digital accounted for over £3 billion of that number, representing 80.1 per cent of the market. Digital grew 12.5 per cent year-on-year, whereas physical sales dropped slightly by 2.8 per cent

Indeed, physical remains a strong part of the games retail business. According to ERA, the best-selling game of the year was FIFA 19 with 2.5 million units sold... 1.89 million of those sales came physically. That means when it comes to AAA releases, digital sales only account for around 25 per cent of the games sold. However, that percentage is getting bigger. Last year, 20% of FIFA 18's sales were digital.

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I'm guessing you have digital-only titles and the AAA products mentioned pulling at the average. Anyway with the UK retail sector in dire straits this probably comes as a shock to no one.

[Neon Ignition]

Paints a picture that most releases die a death in the UK. It's such an awkward one, I presume the likes of CEX don't factor into these figures? When it comes to physical games I could easily imagine they're a pretty big factor, the lack of high street offerings making the same physical copies circulate via second hand instead of new