Comment on Crimson Desert sales top five million
Jax@sh.itjust.works 20 hours agoYet 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.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 13 hours ago
My point is that if you took a normie gamer and asked them who Pearl Abyss is they wouldn’t know just like they wouldn’t know who Frontier Developments is. They might know if you mention BDO or ED but that’s not the same as asking who the studio is. If you ask who Bungie is they will know.
The comparison to Marathon was explicitly to debunk the idea that you can sell 5 million units simply by doing marketing. That was the extent of the comparison. But to bring it back to my point here, the reason we’re even talking about Marathon is because of Bungie. If Pearl Abyss had made Marathon we wouldn’t be talking about it because nobody would be giving a shit about a failed extraction shooter. People gave Marathon a chance because it’s made by Bungie. Some people bought Marathon only because they believed Bungie is going to pull out another banger.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
And my point is that if you asked your normie gamer, which really didn’t exist in the same form, in 2005 who Bungie is — you’d mostly get question marks.
This would be relevant except that Marathon only sold as well as it did because of the heavy marketing push. If you’ve been following what Bungie has done with Destiny 2 then you should know it’s fucking amazing anyone bought into that soulless trash. They have burned so many bridges with their community. Had they released Marathon before Bungie was sold to Sony it would undoubtedly have sold better.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 3 hours ago
I doubt it. By 2005 people already knew Bungie. Halo was a critical and commercial success and Halo 2 had released a year prior and not only was highly anticipated but ended up as a system seller for Xbox. If you were gaming in 2005 you’d know about Bungie. Had it been about Bungie in 2001 then a normie would give you question marks because at that point Bungie was pretty much unknown. Marathon games were on Mac, they made a RTS game and Oni, which wasn’t all that big of a hit. Halo is what put Bungie on the map and Halo 2 made them very much a household name.
And that’s my point with Crimson Desert as well. Pearl Abyss made BDO before, but they’re still very much an unknown developer. They don’t get the kind of benefit of doubt Bungie or Bioware or Blizzard tend to get. Crimson Desert is the hit that puts weight behind the Pearl Abyss name. The next Pearl Abyss is going to get more eyes because of Crimson Desert.
Again, that’s largely my point. You can’t market a game and just sell 5 million units. Marathon sold 1.2 million units because a) it’s a Bungie game so people would be paying attention to it and b) it had heavy marketing behind it. It would’ve sold even less without those two things, but that’s besides the point. The idea that you can just sell 5 million units through marketing is simply not true and Marathon proves it.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
Let’s put this into perspective here.
Pearl Abyss is a relatively unknown dev, Black Desert is not an unknown IP. Pearl Abyss has been pushing BDO for years, roping in larger streamers to play their game over time. BDO is a game that does not respect your time however, and player retention is pretty low as a result. Actually, the BDO community itself is known for helping newbies through some awful grinds — mainly because they recognize that most newbies simply won’t withstand it. This has created a pretty committed community towards the game, and Pearl Abyss hasn’t been actively shitting on them. I can’t think of a better word of mouth machine, especially one already entrenched in social media platforms like Twitch.
Meanwhile, Bungie has spent the better part of the last 5 years making it clear to anyone with a brain that Destiny 2 is simply a cash cow for developing other IPs. Bungies content creator network has seemed like paid actors for years, I know because I played Destiny 2. If Pearl Abyss has been generating their community, Bungie has been actively destroying theirs.
Bottom line, Pearl Abyss has set themselves up for people to give them a chance and the recent success of Crimson Desert is the culmination of years planting seeds. Meanwhile Bungie has been resting on their laurels, actively destroying their community, creating people like me who will simply never purchase a Bungie IP again — and the game still sold over 1.2 million copies.
If anything, Marathon’s success is a testament to the power of marketing pushes.