You’re right but I think it might be relevant for retention? If they retain 10% of players 500k vs 5 mill sales makes the player base size quite different.
Comment on Crimson Desert sales top five million
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Who cares for sales? You can sell dried colored assholes to people with enough marketing. That’s rarely a good index for anything. Except you’re a shareholder.
nyctre@piefed.social 23 hours ago
steel_for_humans@piefed.social 22 hours ago
Why are you talking about player retention in context of a single player game? Perhaps you mixed it with their previous game — Black Desert – which is an MMO.
nyctre@piefed.social 21 hours ago
Oh crap. I didn’t mix them up, I did assume, however. Wasn’t expecting it to be single player. I thought I was basically black desert 2. My bad
steel_for_humans@piefed.social 20 hours ago
It technically started as an MMO. That was their initial idea, but after they started development, they changed direction. That shows in the game to some extent, because the quests are kinda scattered and there is not always linearity, sometimes you get quests out of nowhere which doesn’t make sense. There are some short fedex type quests or tasks, too, but at the same time playing Crimson Desert does not feel like a single player MMO. Exploration is *fantastic*, but you should know that this game doesn’t hold your hand. You are tree to do whatever and to discover the mechanics on your own. There are puzzles with no explanation whatsoever. Sometimes you’ll stumble on some hidden area with an environmental puzzle and no idea what to do. The last game like that was last year’s Hell is Us (a highly recommended hidden gem). Crimson Desert is just *fun*.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
Kinda true. But also depends. A shitty game selling 5mio and retaining 5% is worse than a great game selling 100k and retaining 50%
I’m extremely fast at math, but horribly bad, so…just assume the numbers match the point 😁
But yes of course. For an online game, sales can give a rough estimate of success.
nyctre@piefed.social 23 hours ago
Oh, yeah, I definitely agree. A high retention rate is obviously preferable but at such high sales numbers, I’m sure many of them are only gonna be there for a short while. I’m pretty sure not even WoW can retain so many people anymore.
Steam reviews are fairly positive, which is a good sign but I guess it remains to be seen how many will still be playing in a month or two. And how many will be back for the first content patches.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
True. I haven’t even seen that it already released, and yes, it looks very good.
Also true for wow…though there are still many players. Interestingly, as nothing much did change over the last, I dunno, 500 years since its release
Goodeye8@piefed.social 23 hours ago
But where’s the marketing? Where’s the established franchise to coast upon? Where’s the developer reputation to guarantee sales? Pearl Abyss is a pretty much unknown developer, Crimson desert is a new IP and the only marketing I’ve seen is essentially word of mouth. For a game to organically sell 5 million units is a pretty big deal.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Word of mouth my ass. Heard absolutely nothing about this game for years and then suddenly a few weeks before launch ( and even now) reddit and youtube absolutely exploded in “can’t wait for this!” and “this is the greatest game ever!” posts. To me that smells of astroturfing. I don’t doubt it’s a good game and might pick it up when/if they drop denuvo, but it was definitely not “organic”
Goodeye8@piefed.social 9 hours ago
You can argue everything before launch wasn’t organic if you want to, I don’t care enough to argue over your cynicism, but post-launch it has been organic. If the game was a steaming pile of shit none of the before release “astroturfing” would matter a month after release, the game would have a player count nosedive like Highguard and it would be what people consider “a dead game”. But it’s not having that nose-dive, it has a fairly small decay considering last sunday peak playercount was almost the same as the first peak after launch. Furthermore the reviews have gone from mixed at launch to very positive. Those things don’t happen when the hype is manufactured.
People aren’t making Youtube videos on Crimson Desert combos or puzzle solving videos or why you should engage with the camp management system or etc because Pearl Abyss is paying them, the videos get made because people want to make those videos and talk about the game. You don’t get a RDR2 artist glazing the water simulation (which BTW is a video I very much recommend watching because it’s a nerd nerding out about nerdy things and IMO those are always the best videos) unless there’s something to glaze, Pearl Abyss isn’t going to pay their competition to glaze them.
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 9 hours ago
It’s totally astroturfed. I never heard of this game until two days before release, and most comments about it are “it’s good if you ignore the story and gameplay”.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
I wouldn’t call Pearl Abyss an unknown developer, at least not in the mmo scene.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 19 hours ago
Just because the space Sim crowd knows who Frontier Developments is doesn’t mean the rest of the gaming space knows who they are. Pearl abyss may be known in the niche they were in before but they’ve made a game with mainstream appeal and for many people Pearl Abyss is a name they’re hearing for the first time.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Yet if you’d said Elite Dangerous it would be much more recognizeable, just like BDO is with Pearl Abyss.
Plus, Pearl Abyss has been working to get people to play their game for quite some time — Shroud played it for a bit and I know some other popular mmo streamers played it. All of this to say, Crimson Desert’s success is not wild — and using Marathon as a metric is just the worst thing you could do because Pearl Abyss hasn’t been shitting themselves reputation-wise.
64bithero@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Speaking of lack of marketing did anyone else think was an MMO ? For a long time I thought it was a sequel to Black Desert or a big expansion. I just found out a few months ago it’s a single player game
thethrilloftime69@feddit.online 18 hours ago
My YouTube feed has a million videos on this game. Every major media outlet has done multiple videos on this game and the bugs and the launch. I’m pretty plugged into the games industry and I hadn’t heard of it until it launched but since then it has gotten a ton of press and I doubt it’s just “word of mouth”.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 22 hours ago
They did a pretty significant marketing push on Twitch for Crimson Desert, but in financial terms I don’t know if that is all that expensive, and certainly not in relation to 5 million copies sold.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
I actually just assume marketing to sell 5m copies. As I don’t consume social media or YouTube I have no idea.
But even if that sounds impressive then, it’s still no index for quality IMHO. Buuuut consideting that it’s already released and reviews look good my point is worthless here.
As it uses denuvo I haven’t checked myself yet. When they remove it it’s an instant purchase.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 21 hours ago
Marketing doesn’t guarantee 5 million sales. Just look at Marathon. Insane marketing push for a game made by a beloved studio sold only 1.2 million units. And the marketing was excellent, clearly better than the game itself. This is a piece of art.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Well, Marathon is a supremely bad example as Bungie has been doing everything they can to make the people who have supported them throughout Destiny hate them.