Indeed, but a bit early to tell, but also I’m not sure what the target number is for this title to be considered successful.
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Deleted member 11852
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I imagine they'll be wanting God of War sales numbers at least.
Just noticed the poll at the top. 
We'll never know who was the one person who expressed an opinion!
We'll never know who was the one person who expressed an opinion!
In some other thread, zed said GTAV saw an 85% drop off. There's no confirming link, but if so, it shows drop-off means nothing regards long term sales.
Even bad launches can still do well. See Sea of Thieves.
SoT is a bit different as it's a GAAS. As games evolve, they tend to grow even if slowly. Worst offender is Fallout 76 which was atrocious and should have died, but it keeps on going and manages to get mainstream coverage for updates and the like.
TLOU 2 is a story, end of. It can never hope to reach the audiences of persistent online experiences, and it can't really do much to get a second-wave momentum I don't think. I guess it's dependent on word of mouth recommendations from now on. It'll be very interesting to see how long term sales play out. I guess the best reference point is TLoU 1. What were its week 2 sales like?
Edit: I feel a little more needs be mentioned to clarify, as any and every game continues to sell for a period. There will be people who want to play the game who don't get it at launch for a number of reasons, and as the price drops, more people will pick it up. But on top of that initial interest, you can increase the ongoing interest in a game to reach people who otherwise weren't interested before by adding more to it. NMS is a great example of a game that has kept adding stuff and increased its value and reach. And GAAS can keep adding and maybe reach people who weren't interested in version 1. TLOU can't do that, so can only sell on merit of its story and gameplay execution. That's of course like GOW and Spider-Man and these one-shot titles can still be bestsellers. If we want to compare sales performance, we should look at comparable static titles rather than titles that have grown over time, whether they are online enabled GAAS or single player titles that have lots added to them.
TLOU 2 is a story, end of. It can never hope to reach the audiences of persistent online experiences, and it can't really do much to get a second-wave momentum I don't think. I guess it's dependent on word of mouth recommendations from now on. It'll be very interesting to see how long term sales play out. I guess the best reference point is TLoU 1. What were its week 2 sales like?
Edit: I feel a little more needs be mentioned to clarify, as any and every game continues to sell for a period. There will be people who want to play the game who don't get it at launch for a number of reasons, and as the price drops, more people will pick it up. But on top of that initial interest, you can increase the ongoing interest in a game to reach people who otherwise weren't interested before by adding more to it. NMS is a great example of a game that has kept adding stuff and increased its value and reach. And GAAS can keep adding and maybe reach people who weren't interested in version 1. TLOU can't do that, so can only sell on merit of its story and gameplay execution. That's of course like GOW and Spider-Man and these one-shot titles can still be bestsellers. If we want to compare sales performance, we should look at comparable static titles rather than titles that have grown over time, whether they are online enabled GAAS or single player titles that have lots added to them.
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Please stop with this whole narrative that Druckmann has 'an agenda', or 'politics'.
He had an agenda
though not a political one. His agenda was to push a boundary with games as an art form in a way that movies couldn’t. He wanted to prove something as games being a valid art form. I couldn’t help it; watched the spoilers. This dude really decided to ***k with player emotions LOL. Wow, what a way to split up a 20hr game. Not everyone going to like it. Some people will definitely hate it. He set the game up to make players feel really conflicted, and that is not for everyone, it’s not exactly light reading. Halo 5 marketed it like the game would be like that, but chickened off. But yea if they went through like Neil did, the firestorm that would follow would make this look tame.
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Deleted member 11852
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It was me, but I voted after the delay was announced!Just noticed the poll at the top.
GAAS as a service is tough, because you have the game and the sunk cost of server infrastructure as well. Fallout 76 sold 1.4m in its first six weeks. I gather that recent patches have improved it's popularity but I've not seen any hard numbers. Anthem sold a paltry 6m. Evolve sold 2.5m in the first four months.
I think the problem with GAAS as a service is there just aren't enough avid, day-in-day-out multiplayer gamers to support too many operating at once.
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I just know that when people bitch about a supposed 'political agenda' in the game, you know exactly what they are referring to. And that's sad, but not unexpected really in today's world.
In terms of outright sales, not active user base, you can keep selling to new people by adding new stuff that they want. Let's say NMS sold 2 million in its first iteration. If the game received zero updates, that where it'd have sat, perhaps, but by adding more, Hello Games could reach more people. "NMS, not for me. Oh, but it's got buggies in it now? Okay, let's give it a look."
The turnaround for Fallout 76 might be appallingly high, but as more stuff is added, more people can be coaxed into buying it to have a look, even if they walk away. So after 10 years being actively developed, it may have accrued many million so of purchases.
TLOU et al can't do that. They can't be expanded upon to add more stuff and more appeal and sell to a new audience. As such, we shouldn't look at titles in perpetual development for comparison with those in a static development life-cycle. There are of course many such static games that sell bonkers numbers, not least most of what Nintendo puts out there! We just have to be a bit wary with our comparisons and ensure we're comparing like for like. GTAV selling crazy numbers despite a supposed huge drop in second week sales might conceal the facts of how it grew. We ought to look at other static games like LOZ, GOW, and TLOU1 to see how sales varied week to week and whether there are clear identifiable patterns or not.
Just noticed the poll at the top.
I remember creating the poll and wondering if anyone would ever vote on it or even notice it.
Inuhanyou
Veteran
If your game sells 4 million in first 3 days, dropping in next week is e
These same ppl were laughing at journos semi voicing concerns about real life banned weapons being used in cod19 as well as people concerned that the game pinned blame on russia for a real life terrorisf event that america did. "Political agendas" indeed
These same ppl were laughing at journos semi voicing concerns about real life banned weapons being used in cod19 as well as people concerned that the game pinned blame on russia for a real life terrorisf event that america did. "Political agendas" indeed
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Deleted member 11852
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True, but every change is also a risk you'll lose people as well as gain then. The economics of GAAS is still predicated on monthly incoming not from sales, but subscriptions or other forms of micro-transactions.
This does happen, generally you're not looking at massive changes but tweaks to balance, introducing new lower-and/or-higher difficulty levels, changing endings (thank you, Mass Effect 3), tweaks or fully out more options for controls etc. These can make a big different for some people.
You mention NMS but I don't think NMS was based on the GAAS model? It wasn't at launch which is when I played it. When I tried dipping back in early last year the game only bore a passing resemblance to the game that launched.
Doesn't matter in a thread about how many units a game will sell.
I don't ever recall a single title getting a notable change to keep sales active. Probably hard to quantify.
It's not. It's just an example of massive, constant refreshes keeping it relevant. It's had majors changes from visuals to gameplay to content. TLOU won't get any of that and will be the same game, same story, same graphics, 3 years from now. So if someone doesn't buy it this year, it seems unlikely they'll buy it 2022 (ignoring PS5 option). That is, TLOU2 can only sell as many copies as its current build can make; it's not going to double up in size over the coming years with more content, different weapons, more moves, a bunch of new game metas, etc.
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Deleted member 13524
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Yong Yea's review:
Extended discussion of Angry Joe's review (basically one more hour to further explain their opinion):
Of course there's zero proof to back up this claim, but I think GTA5 suffered from supply shortages after it sold 12 million copies in 24 hours.Those were very different times with very different digital/retail sales ratios, by the way.
Big difference to TLoU2 is the 2nd-hand market wasn't flooded with used copies of the game after a week.
TLoU2's first 4 million sales weren't any indication of the game's reception. There were no pre-release reviews ocming out, so they're an indication of the original's reception. BTW, I very much doubt that 4 million sales are very far from being enough to make the game break even, let alone please investors and top management.
What drives sales from now on isn't marketing pushes, access media reviews or tweets from Neil Druckman. It's word of mouth which, according to Liana Kerzner in the video I posted, isn't great for TLoU2.
Gamespot et al targeting Angry Joe for his TLoU2 review isn't anything new. Angry Joe's audience of 2.2 million on his review is probably 10x larger than any Gamespot review (let alone Piediepie's playthroughs with >4 million views), and they know they're losing ground to independent youtubers very fast.
Extended discussion of Angry Joe's review (basically one more hour to further explain their opinion):
Of course there's zero proof to back up this claim, but I think GTA5 suffered from supply shortages after it sold 12 million copies in 24 hours.Those were very different times with very different digital/retail sales ratios, by the way.
Big difference to TLoU2 is the 2nd-hand market wasn't flooded with used copies of the game after a week.
TLoU2's first 4 million sales weren't any indication of the game's reception. There were no pre-release reviews ocming out, so they're an indication of the original's reception. BTW, I very much doubt that 4 million sales are very far from being enough to make the game break even, let alone please investors and top management.
What drives sales from now on isn't marketing pushes, access media reviews or tweets from Neil Druckman. It's word of mouth which, according to Liana Kerzner in the video I posted, isn't great for TLoU2.
Gamespot et al targeting Angry Joe for his TLoU2 review isn't anything new. Angry Joe's audience of 2.2 million on his review is probably 10x larger than any Gamespot review (let alone Piediepie's playthroughs with >4 million views), and they know they're losing ground to independent youtubers very fast.
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