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I don't get why this is a problem. Myst was a wildly successful game. It presented a new experience for people graphically and with game play (non-combat 1st person exploration). It came out at a time where the potential audience may have been smaller but the game market itself was also much less crowded. You may as well complain that Gone With The Wind still tops ticket sales/inflation adj. box office records. That came out around 74 years ago.


The original Tomb Raider sold over 5.5 million copies between PC and PSX. Tomb Raider II sold over 7.5 million copies on those same two platforms. I know everyone uses Tomb Raider (2013) as an example of how unrealistic publishers are about sales -- likely because not many people say how many copies they wanted to sell of a game -- but hoping for a big reboot of a very popular franchise to sell 8 million copies across three platforms doesn't seem terribly insane. It proved to be excessively optimistic but I don't think it was pulled from a fishbowl. Tomb Raider 2013 has sold over 3.4 million copies (I assume closer to 4+ since the article) which is a sizable jump over the franchise's usual fall-off per new title.

My reason for posting the PC list earlier was because of the "ugly but fun" concept for games. The PC market has a bunch of graphically primitive indie titles to compare that consoles don't share. Very few of them have made a real impact though.

Edited, Jun 16th 2013 8:31am by Jophiel

I am not surprised by the movies you quote. What I am saying in a market that's exploded these past 5 years. I can't find an exact statistic for how many people played in the 90s..However the market is definately bigger, we have.. or had own networks. We have our own celebrities now. Congress been keeping a more watchful eye on the industry. Yet a game that came out in the relative infancy of the industry is stil kicking *** when 65% of the world population owns and are possible consumers of games now.
Source: http://www.onlineeducation.net/videogame

To me that's shocking. Maybe becuase I am not a PC gamer and don't know weather or not this is like a mario or zelda of the PC history. However this game in an industry that's becoming more and more widely appealing in the past 2 decades still kicking a lot of other games *** is just surprising to me.(Then Again I don't know how mario brothers manage to find what is it... 40 million people to sell itself to in the 80s is surprising to me too. Unless they count re-releases in those numbers.)



I understand the reason you posted the the list and agree that graphics are important in sales just like a famous actor is important to get sales for a movie. That's not always the case but if you shooting for big numbers that's what you gotta do. Although I think the most important thing is the aesthetic not the overall graphical quality of the game.

That's great the original tomb raiders did so well. But even across 4 consules. You have to be in the top 15 best selling games across the three major consules. And in the top 30 best selling pc games of all time to be able to meet that number.(If you expect 2 mil sales from each platform to make 8.) That's like shooting to make the sales of the movie "Titanic."

There's nothing wrong if you think you have gold to big or go home. However to standardize your budget for so many games around being in the top tier of game of a consule life. Well that's just plain stupid. Even Tomb raider was a gamble. You list how much the series sold in it's prime. However how did it's more recent titles fair? How popular is she now(or in this case before this last release) The relaunch sold about 3.4 millions copies so far(Most recent number I could find on wiki) half of what square expected, and half of what the original manage to sell.(Again who knows if re-releases count in those numbers.) Yet it was expected to surprass the original first round out after stagnating all these years.

If I was a business man in charge I personally would of relaunched strong and then shoot for the equal to make that level of sales once fans of the series could be assured they were getting a quality experience from a name brand they know again. Let's face it, Lara wasn't treated to kindly up until now. It had good and bad baggage coming along with that package. It's extremely presumptuous to shoot that high on the charts when the average game won't clear a million or two.

There's gambling and then there's going all in hoping that last card dealt will be the spade they need to make a straight flush. Behaving like you know how a hands going to be dealt and financing like it's a guarantee is moronic.

Games have always been around the same price point though, adjusted for inflation. I went before and dug up old pricing for games from the early 90's and a "AAA" style title was retailing for around that point.
Spoiler

I once wrote:

Anyway, as long as we're back on this, MSRP pricing from some 1990 issues of Compute!

Champions of Krynn (SSI Gold Box) - $39.95
Altered Beast - $34.95
Shinobi - $23.95
Paperboy - $25.95
Blue Angels - $49.95
Beyond Dark Castle - $29.95
Battletech - $27.99
Gauntlet II - $29.95
Sentinel Words I - $34.95
Might & Magic II - $39.95
SimCity - $29.95

I stuck with titles I remembered and which were fairly popular titles. So a AAA "RPG" title was $40, most other stuff was around $30 and I don't know what the Blue Angels (some flight sim/combat game) people were smoking. I saw mail-order ads for these titles for cheaper but went with the prices listed in the game reviews. According to the inflation calculator, $30 in 1990 was roughly $50 and $40 is roughly $65.

So we have a market where the product has been around the same price point but various pressures (inflation, development costs, etc) are pushing costs to where perhaps the games should be $65 now or $70. But no one wants to move above the $60 ceiling. So publishers have to find new ways of adding to the total money you expend per game in pieces -- DLC, Real money markets, yearly editions that aren't actual game enhancements or whatever.

That's true. Myst was popular for years. Few games fit into its niche and it was very accessible even for people who didn't play games. These days, the half life of a game on the shelf is much, much shorter. You have a few exceptions like Skyrim which stayed very popular in sales for a long time but even something lauded like Bioshock: Infinite was a come-and-go event before the next story-driven FPS took its place.

Edited, Jun 16th 2013 10:48am by Jophiel

Looks like Microsoft is backpedaling on the DRM.

Funny how they didn't listen until they started seeing the gap in the pre-order numbers.

Wow I dont think I've EVER seen that much of a full out reversal, I mean even region locking, I still think they may have burned more bridges then it was worth but I'm just in awe of heel face turn they are doing.

Lets see if it works

360moonwalk.gif

Well that was a 'no duh' move. If Microsoft had any brains they'd start firing the people who drove this decision in the first place.

There's one barrier to competing with Sony, now to just get rid of Kinect and lower the price and they might have a chance.

yes thanks.

This comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone that has been paying attention for the last week. If they really want to look apologetic, they should publicly fire someone. It will of course not be someone that matters, since that would make sense, but someone's head should roll over how poorly they handled this whole situation.

They should change the name to Xbox 180.

But really good choice, dunno how much they are already bleeding from this, but better to back pedal now than post release.