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.
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.
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
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.
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 mmo 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.
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.
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.
The comparison to Marathon was explicitly to debunk the idea that you can sell 5 million units simply by doing marketing.
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. They literally needed the marketing push.
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.
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.
This would be relevant except that Marathon only sold as well as it did because of the heavy marketing push.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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”
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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. Pearl Abyss might have scummy mtx but they’re honest about it and ultimately make a pretty good game. For Korean devs. Who develop games for Koreans. Who are born with a third invisible spirit arm that they use for extra inputs.
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.
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.
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 free 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I wouldn’t call Pearl Abyss an unknown developer, at least not in the mmo scene.
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.
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 mmo 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.
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.
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. They literally needed the marketing push.
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.
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.
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”.
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”
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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. Pearl Abyss might have scummy mtx but they’re honest about it and ultimately make a pretty good game. For Korean devs. Who develop games for Koreans. Who are born with a third invisible spirit arm that they use for extra inputs.
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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.
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.
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
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 free 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.
They both sound cool, will wishlist them and keep an eye out, thanks !
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.
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.
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