Comment on PS5 Exclusive Saros Has Reportedly Only Sold 300K Copies
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoThat is not made by clear by comparing those two games the way we just did, no. Game review and news outlets cover the games most likely to be of value to their audiences, partially because they foster that with their own interest, and partly because the data tells them what their audience is reading or watching. Saros got 130 different outlets reviewing it because it’s generally seen as a big deal for their audiences. Xenonauts 2, not so much, which is why it was only covered by 1/10th as many publications. We’re here on Lemmy because we’re more likely to leave a thing we don’t like even if we’re used to it, like reddit. If you don’t like traditional games media, fair enough, but I don’t think either that preference or our choice of being on Lemmy is representative of broader trends. I was just at a board game night where we had to give clues about Sabrina Carpenter, and I knew nothing about her. It doesn’t mean her publicist is bad at marketing; it means I’m not the target audience for it.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Have to vehemently disagree with this, it is clear that their coverage is not dictated by the value their audiences receive but from other more corporate values. And as time goes on the media coverage on games has less and less valued. It has nothing to do with my option on the media but my observations on the industry. The reason I brought up zenonaughts 2 was that it has 1/10 the reviews but similar sales, and that is indicative of the clear decline of the main stream gaming review system not having the pull it once did.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It is very much not clearly indicative of that. It has 1/10th of the reviews because it is expected to be relevant to far fewer people than Saros. The audience tends to value games that they’ve had marketed to them, which is a correlation for what should be obvious reasons.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
They sold a similar amount, your agument only works if saros sold a proportional amount more (10x in this case). As it stands the marketing clearly did not work.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The studio’s previous game, which is very similar on a gameplay level, sold over 1M copies. Saros costs $10 more than Returnal cost and almost twice as much as Xenonauts 2. Beyond that, Returnal was a difficult game, and trophy data shows lots of people didn’t get anywhere close to finishing it; distaste for the previous game and a slightly higher price for what is, by Sony’s standards, less production value than you can find in other PS5 games at $70, are far better explainers for Saros’ performance.