Do you think Dragon Age The Veilguard will be a big seller for EA? Why or why not? Let me know and please consider subscribing! ruclips.net/user/thedestinchannel Become a Member here ruclips.net/channel/UCgUOWrjLEhmHE9tqYtoeS_gjoin/join`11`
Can you woke Americans stop screwing up games? Rest of the world laughing at you with your damn binary non binary bull. Stop politicizing or genderizing games. Just make the damn game and also the hand holding? this is the reason why baldurs gate 3 or elden ring wins. Just let you play!
For the amount of money they spent on it the numbers don’t make sense look at dragons dogma 2 which is a niche game and they had over 3 times concurrent players….this can’t be a success for them. Not saying it flopped but not great
16m profit after 3 days is terrible if the game cost at the least 80m. You would expect a 60-70% drop off after first weekend sales. So lets say at the end they make 20. Next week they could only make 4m (24 total). 2m on the 3rd weekend (26 total) and then forgotten until a huge sale or something. (I personally see no way an RPG thats 50+ hours long, on a new engine, took 10 years to make, had massive turnover cost 80million to make). Inquisition which was made well over a decade ago had a budget of at least 60 million. Inflation is no joke, no way veilguard only cost 20m more.
I think the hive mind is saying the opposite. That it’s a great game etc Look at the critical reception from official outlets. Seems like Steam reviews are the outlier. A solid 6/10. Not the end of the world for “either side.”
Which fans though? Those who moaned about Origins on release and have moaned no DA game has lived up to it since. The feedback is so mixed with so many of those involved being dudebro reactionaries it's hard to know what to take away.
70k peak for sequel to the renowned franchise that's previous entry won GOTY and was marketed so heavily is literally NOTHING. And the numbers will just fall even lower after the weekend. It's a flop.
week 1 didn't sell over 1 million units. reporting says barely 500k units sold with over 30k returns. expect the game to be discounted by 35% in a few weeks on steam for the fall steam sale.
@@UrDadizAbackloggedgamer ummm ranked #78 on steam charts as of Novemeber 26 , Civ 5 has more players than this dumpster fire LOL. I live in the City where bioware mains office is (Edmonton) . Let's just say the office has a lot of pressure right now 🤣
The quality of the writing is what’s holding me back. CohhCarnage’s comments on the game so far had described exactly what I’m worried about. Dunkey’s video reinforced that for me.
Destin went from having pretty based takes with BG3 and Elden Ring to look incredibly disingenuous, I'd rather he doesn't cover this topics at all if he is not going to do it in good faith.
@@praisetheoak "He isn't infested with gamer lingo and gamer brainrot like me, bruh, he is so dishonest for not hating transpeople as much as me" - weirdass reactionary gamers pretending they are the center of the universe
Completely wrong. Absolutely a lie. They want it to fail because conservatives make every single thing in the universe a battleground. We literally cannot even have a hurricane happening without conservatives blaming it on the government, (((them))), etc. It has become a lifestyle in a world where people are increasingly lonelier and lonelier, especially conservatives. Young men are at their peak with suicide rates, also with fascism and extremism, in less relationships than ever before, and having less s*x than ever before that we have data for, but also older women, and old men. People have lost their goddamn minds. Like at least the worst thing that these liberals are doing is demanding to be called weird shit, while the rest want to murder people. I'd rather cringe at this transstuff over having to listen to lunatics rave on about "mindviruses" and how to kill them all
After listening to the dialog, it reeks of Mass Effect Andromeda's 'quirky' character writing. Peebee is now an elf effectively. I ended up bouncing off the game because the dialog just wasn't for me
@@arda.. Can't play it without buying it and trusted reviews say don't buy or buy at a discount. Considering the weak sales numbers, especially for an EA game, it will be 65% off within a year. Just like the 2023 EA Star Wars game is right now. EA doesn't spend AAA dollars to sell less than 5 million copies. Anthem sold 2 million week 1 and 5 million overall - and still got the axe. DAV is going to be lucky to sell 3 million copies. They won't hit 5.
As a long time DA fan... this game is at max a 5/10. I am severely disappointed in everything I have seen thus far. I want a mature, complex RPG. This is like fast food / marvel movie version of what I want.
I really want this game to succeed because I love the prior Dragon Age games and THEDAS but I want it to fail because I want Bioware to be better than they currently are and more like what they used to be. I just have to be honest with myself though, the good old days of Bioware are never coming back and I would rather they fail than continue to butcher the franchises I love... kind of like Disney and Star Wars. This is coming from someone who has bought ME: Andromeda and Anthem and I feel as though I have been supporting their downfall... which is ironic because they are likely dead if this game fails to meet expectations again.
@@Neovalen So you are not even played the game and you already gave the game a score right. And so far myself I have 4 hours into the game and has been great and I been playing Dragon Age since Origins in pc and the thing I criticize is that each Dragon Age after Origins is more simplistic catering towards console gamers.
This guy ain't confused, he's walking the fence. Everyone knows why some people want it to fail. And why some people are pushing so hard to claim it's good. 2 contrasting political views and he's walking right down the middle, playing dumb and trying not to piss off either side. Also 80mil over 10years is a lie . Lower the proclaimed budget, so less than expected sales can still be claimed as a profit and a success. I got no dog in this fight, never played the series and haven't played this game.
80 million budget for a 10 year dev cycle is completely impossible, especially when considering that there also has to be a marketing budget and that the game went through massive re-writes and at some point was being developed as an MMORPG. these sort of direction changes are incredibly expensive.
I'm still not understanding how making $16m is a success when when the cost of the game is $80-$150m? (for a 10 year dev cycle I bet it's higher). Even at $80m are they suddenly going to make another $64m somewhere to break even. What am I missing?
I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, but I believe the thinking is it makes 16m the first week, then slowly makes 64m over the next year or two. Then probably another 30 - 40 mil over it's lifespan, for a net profit of 30 - 40mil. there are alot of assumptions here of course, which can be up for challenge, but that's the thinking at least.
@@BboyFever (I understand you aren't making that claim you're just explaining. ) Theres a flaw in that thinking though. And I keep seeing this being used as some type of measure for a successful game. But that's not how single player games work, if they don't start profiting within the first month or 2 then it is labeled as a failure. This isn't a live service game, it's not going to continue to increase exponentially. It has no microtransactions and no upcoming DLC. So the fact that anyone thinks this game is eventually going to be a profit for EA is not thinking this through. But look at Outlaws, SP RPG with no future content and it's marked as a failure within the first month. A year or 2 from EA won't care. After the last 2 years of failed games and subsequent studios being shut down due to the failures I don't see how anyone is optimistic for BioWare.
@@BboyFever That's not how any of this works. Timing matters and alternative investments matter. Let's assume if bioware invested 20 million dollars a year for 10 years in the stock market instead of developing this game, let's assume an 8% compounded return, by the time we hit 2024, they would have made 112 million dollars in profit by October 31, 2024. Wouldn't you have done that instead of making this game, that, by the way, has to sell more than 6 million copies to just break even? Who know when and if that will ever happen. This is how people look at investments. You don't just say 'oh break even SOMETIME down the road...' and then 'oh you make 30 million, that's profit, profit is profit, so that's good, right?' No, man.
To add some more context. Its reported they did not sell a million units yet (usually when a game does they promote that all over the place). Its reported that total units sold is around 500k for all platforms with over 30k in returns. This was a huge loss for them. Expect the game to be discounted on steam by 35% in a few weeks for the fall steam sale.
@@methdxman Don't even do the stock market comparison because they are making/selling a product not investing money. The big thing is that they made a bad product and if it doesn't make much money in profit and has a bad reputation, then it's a failure. If it barely made any money and was a big PR win for EA, then they could chalk it up to a success because a good reputation for a development studio/publisher does matter to an extent and can affect how well their games perform.
Especially when they ram it down your throat and try to make the audience feel awkward and ruins all immersion in a dark fantasy world. This game is literally what the rings of power is to Peter Jacksons lotr
I’m not saying it’s bombing and I’d like to see it succeed for BioWare future if nothing else, but some stark figures to consider: Ghost of Tsushima PC release had similar peak numbers in the high 70k and that was a 4 year old game that was out on PS4 & PS5. Another good comparable is Dragon’s Dogma 2, a known IP that hadn’t seen a sequel for a similar length of time and it peaked at over 200k. Not sure these are supportive that DA The Veilguard is doing “well”. I guess we’ll see.
@@DestinL Well EA removed everything off Steam and just returned their titles there in the last few years. I’d argue that Jedi Survivor numbers were low on steam because it was one of the worst PC ports in the last few years. I think that’s a low bar to clear in my opinion.
@@Archon139why are people like you obsessed with comparing Dragon Age to completely unrelated games? By your logic, lets compare Baldurs Gate 3 to Minecraft, we'd have to call BG3 a failure in comparison.
I personally don't think the game is a bomb but I do think there was something shady with the initial reviews... No one can deny the early reviews from the professional reviewers were strange. And let's not kid around here. This game talks to the player like the player is an idiot and the dialogue is absolutely STUPID and horrible. The gameplay is cool but as a Dragon Age fan I want to stress the story means a lot to me. and with the writing this bad it is unbearable to play.
The thing is different games have different measures of success and failure. If an indie game sold 3 million copies, major success. This game sells 3 million copies, still haven’t broken even.
@@purefoldnz3070peak has been over 85 000 in a day and thats only in steams. There is Xbox and PS gamers too. And when 85 000 gamers became little? Im pretty sure it will sell over 5 million copies, since its multiplat.
I'm using Alan Wake 2 as my standard. If 1.3m sales (feb 2024) didn't recoup AW2 development cost. And the game took 13 years of development then Dragon Age might fail to meet their sales goals to just recoup their development cost.
I'd give this game a shot, but spending $70 for an action rpg with passable combat and also a fair amount of cringe dialogue seems like a purchase i'll regret. There are too many other games I could spend that money on right now
Yep.. and this game has the biggest sin of them all - no real role play as a protagonist 😅 I know that main story is linear but c'mon I can't be mean or sarcastic... Only polite and awkward 😅
@@susanna8612 $25 dollars tops if your being paid to push an agenda, I want savings. Same reason I don't use self-checkout at the store. These companies are getting MILLIONS of dollars to push this agenda have to be at this point. No way you would take these types of losses and not being paid to. Thats why the losses don't matter to them. Somebody is paying them more. I want savings and games that play well. This game is probably good but sitting for 6 minutes to listen to HR training just because is crazy. You are paying for HR training lol
This math is horrible. A better comparison is with Dragon Dogma 2, with peak concurrent player count at over 200 thousand players. DD2 sold 3 million copies in 3 months. meaning Veilguard will not even sell 1 million copy this year.
When I queried the sales of this on another RUclips vid, someone said, but, it's in the top 5 PS5 game sales this week. When I asked what else was above it, they said one of the games was Phasmophobia, which, no offence to that game, but its a budget indie title, beating a AAA title from EA......just saying.....
No, that's not nearly it. This was a beloved IP of the fans. The characters were interesting, the world had great lore... And the writers choose to go this route? Why? Why this? It was already 'inclusive and diverse' but they double down on this topic. They turned dialogue into quirky speech. I don't care about this whole 'society' debate. I just wanted to see the world I fell in love with to continue its story without tampering.
@@listlesswanders1687 That's literally what I say in the second part of my sentence dumbass...."society and GAMING". Learn to read. Some people care about the society stuff, you don't, but some do.
Same for me, the political stuff does get way more attention than it has too, but I can deal with that. The problem with this game, is the gameplay. The writing/dialog is cringe, the visuals are very fornite, the combat is way out of what the other dragon games established, a lot of RPG elements are missing like making morally ethical desitions or just been a bad overall person in a game, Darkspawn look goofy compared to the menacing darkspawn in origins. It's just not a good dragon age game
@@listlesswanders1687 This has been happening since DAO, when that was called Baldur's Gate light. Then DA2 came out, and people said that was the end of the series and not a true Dragon Age game. Then Inquisition came out and people attacked it, saying it was not a true Dragon Age game. You starting to see a pattern here.
"did you play it?" is a question I see people ask.... its like... yo... people say if you dont like something, dont buy it. Then when people dont buy it, its like "well did you play it?!?" No, people told us if you dont like it, dont buy it. Its what is happening, and then people stand around being like "what could have possibly happened?!!?" like you guys all told us, dont buy something... I have been a bioware fan forever, and yah... i really dont like the direction they have taken the company, so guess what? I didn't buy it.....................................
Because, unless this toxic pandering garbage fails, they'll keep making it. People used to know how to tell a story where the marginalized character was relatable to anyone. You'd develop real empathy for the difficulties that being different brought to the character's life. Now, they just scream at you what's right and wrong. That if you don't innately agree, you must be a monster. ZERO subtext, everything is beaten into you whether you like it or not. When you hold a bat and tell people how to think, you get more pushback. Take writing back to when you cared about convincing people instead of bullying them.
You clearly didn't play the game. It is extremely weird to have this conversation about an entire game, where like 3-4% of it actually contains the stuff you are talking about. It also screams of first draft more than anything else. It seems rushed, not evil intent. But your comment is clear: You HATE the transstuff. Like fucking loathe it. And you hate that you cannot argue against it. That's what you hate. Not the game. And that's fine, you can hate it, I cringe at it and move on. I agree with the criticism, but the attitude and the targeted vitriol people have is extremely telling. Like if you HATE the game for 4% of its content. I don't think anyone who doesn't buy it is irredeemable, or a bad person, or anything like that. I find the non-binary stuff to be cringe and phony as hell, but I don't hate anything as passionately as people hate this game for having it.
@@7PlayingWithFire7Can't argue against it? LOL Even after all of western media bends the knee to it their 41% hasn't moved at all. How's that for some valid criticism?
@@7PlayingWithFire7 its all just BS and corporate pandering to the EXTREME 1%. They even have a coming out of the closet moment with mommy. You treat your companions like babies. And people hate it because it just keeps being shoved down your throat. From what you see on TVs/Movies to your daily life in school or work. Now its being shoved down your throat with every AAA launch. there's a reason why go woke go broke exits. because its true.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 Okay, do you not find it absolutely telling that the majority of your conversation is doing everything to talk about the trans stuff or the nonbinary stuff instead of the game itself? And really? 3-4% contains the problematic stuff? That is just a blatant lie. The game is a preachy as everyone expected it to be with all the expected problems. Ugly characters, terrible writing, no dark themes, an insistence on pronouns and gender politics. For gods sake, they have shit like the "Pulling a Barv" scene or a character going "You don't get to tell me what I am.". You are absolutely lying when you say it is 4% of its content that is the problem.
If steam db is the metric - Starfield - 330k peak on steam. 3M copies sold on PC. Where does it leave new DA ? 500k copies sold on PC? Yeah, amazing success. Reason - this title is non-buynary for many many people who are tired of DEI.
First at all, we don't have Starfield numbers. We have an estimate of 4,1m, and that's it. The 3m thing was old, and sales for that game are irrelevant because it was a day one Game Pass release, so most people played it there, and the only other platform where you had the game was the Xbox itself. Second, there's way more to sales than just peak numbers. DA The Veilguard had multiple peaks already, with the last one being almost at 90k, so it's not like one of those games that have a huge peak of players and lose it the other day. It's looking fine so far. The Witcher 3, to use an example, had a peak of 103k players, not much better than this game, and much worse than Starfield, but sold 50 million copies. First week? Only 1.7 million copies, and that's the thing. This game is on its way to reaching good numbers, but people are focusing so much on how well it's doing the first week and how many people are playing it just to say "I told you so". I get it, the dialogue sucks. It's inclusive, woke trash that I wish could fail to send a message, but it doesn't look like that's happening now.
@@methdxman No, it truly does. We know the vast majority of the people didn't buy the game because by the time there were 1 million concurrent players among all platforms Steam had around 300k, and also, Game Pass ON PC ALONE had nearly half the total playing hours. Keep in mind this is normal because by the point that peak was there most people who got it on PC weren't returning the game, so they paid for it and were actually going to play it, while on Game Pass people didn't need to. They have other things that money they paid got them, which still makes Microsoft money. It was driving subscribers for a long time, which is what makes Xbox money and the reason why they are focusing so much on pushing Game Pass. Microsoft's business model is to keep players interested on Game Pass, which makes an insane amount of money. Staefield is there as a product that can stay on Game Pass for ever. Remember, they were willing to pay around the development cost of Jedi Survivor, which was 300 million just to have it on Game Pass, or pay 12 million to 15 million a month for an old game that still relevant like GTA V, which was even given for free on its Premium Edition on PC already. With 5 million people paying $10 a month (I know it costs more, but I should use 15 to avarage things anyways so 10 to avoid people crying), for 6 months, they would be making that money back. Make it 30 million and you have 1.8 billion dollars, and this is without anyone taking a 30% cut, or distribution cost, or anything like that. You can not tell how successful Starfield was just based on sales, because the people who made Starfield don't ever need sales to make the game successful.
taking jedi survivor for comparins gives a skewed result considering the game was completely broken on pc and would probably have gotten better player numbers if it wasnt
update: almost a week after this video was made and journalists are deleting support on social media for this game now that the writing is on the wall for them. they always see the writing last after us, dont they? funny how that works in an echo chamber.
I still don't think it's a massive failure. It still has 51k concurrents and is in the top 200 all-time peak concurrent of all time on Steam. There are problems with the game that have been called out, but I still don't think that the steam number = failure from a sales standpoint. That's where I differ.
@@DestinL its reported to have sold less than a 500k (with over 30k in refunds). No word from bioware otherwise. Not even a simple "wooo we sold 1 million units". Furthermore, it's an RPG. Most RPGs are around 50 hours in length. Most likely it will take 2 weeks for people to actually play it and beat it if they are putting in 2-4 hours a day. The same 50k that were playing it on launch week are probably the same 50k playing it today. In other words, by end of November there will most likely be no one playing it.
@@DestinL i mean its all relative. in what world does the most popular fantasy franchise in vg history, apart from The Elder Scrolls, get as low as numbers as that? if this was an "indie" game that cost $50m, it would be a huge success. but whether its commercial or critical, its a failure. not all failures need to be Concord levels. if i am making bets, i would say EA will shut down or "rename" the studio after this. if they do, then we both have our answer.
@@DestinL If the game didn't hit 1 million players on opening weekend on steam, it failed. because if peak is 70k... after launch? 70k times 70 bucks, even if its just a fraction of the people who bought the game, doesnt even scratch the surface of production costs. Now you can look at a game like Wukong or Balders gate 3, which both still have more players then veilguard playing currently, and we saw their peaks. Its pretty easy to see when a game does well.... This did not, stop covering up for these companies... BE A JOURNALIST!!!! REMAIN NEUTRAL!!!
For those saying the game isnt an flop or bombed lets introduce them to ROI. The idea behind ROI is that an million dollar investment would result in 1.5 or 2.0 so between 1.5 and 2 million, not only for the time investment but also effort. When talking about an 200M (at bare minimum due to heavy marketing budget, 10 years of AAA development and time ) the ROI will be atleast 2 or even up to 3 based on various leaks such as the imnoniac document leak. I dont see an world where this game revenue wise making 400 or even 600M. It would need to sell 10M copies and that might be true in an few years but EA wants that money right now after wasting an decade on this investment. The studio bioware is gonna close down or an major course correction is incoming in terms of layoffs, dont even think mass effect team is safe. Its the same for spidermid2, the ROI on 300M is close to an billion dollars and no way in hell its getting that so what is the solution? bring it to steam to sell more copies.
@@themightyant.The last DA game came out 10 years ago, this should have been a massive success. The game doesn't look bad but it doesn't look like a DA game and the dialogue they've been showing us through youtube is just way too cringy lol.
Wukong numbers is a bit much. Plus Wukong was definitely a more PC focused game, definitely more so than Veilguard (especially with China being in the equation). The people that play Veilguard are definitely more in line with console players, such as the Switch. Nevertheless, you have to consider that this game had 9 to 10 years of development time, that is absurdly long and two years more than Concord. This game needs to do Starfield good, which took 7-8 years to produce, but at least got like 330k+ on steam and I think an overall revenue of $657 million. No idea if that includes Game Pass or not but regardless in terms of revenue, that's good and more than enough to offset the development time and costs. No one knows the costs of Veilguard but a decade long dev cycle could not have been cheap with the amount of progress that had to be throw away and restarted. I think Veilguard will still do well and may even recoup costs but I don't think it will be for a while without getting at least breaking 200k concurrent players, as a comparison.
Wukong 2mil concurrent peak, Veilguard 89k...less than 10%...for a 10 yr in development multi hundred million dollar game, sure, very successful, so successful the publisher has already shut down DLC possibility.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 I think it's accurate to say this is the minimum cost with Veilguard's decade long dev cycle, not to mention the game had to cancelled and rebooted at least once. This is a stretch but I think the game is selling for $60 on steam because the game doesn't have enough content to warrant a $70 "AAA" label. This likely means that most of the actually development happened in the latter half of the dev cycle and everything before it was scrapped. Dreadwolf was renamed to Veilguard in 2022 so I'm thinking Veilguard's actual development time was like 3-4 years.
@@johnsnowden3769 "Doesn't have enough content to warrant 70 bucks" what? This game is longer than all of Sony's sad dad games (last of us, god of war), and has the same amount if not more content than the spider-man game. In fact its very comparable to god of war, it even seems they based their entire game design on God of War 2018. Yet somehow everyone praises that game for the exact amount of depth in combat, the exact amount of freedom in levels, and similar amounts of extra content. They first started making a dragon age 2 style game to follow-up inquisition, called project Joplin. This game was scrapped, as the team was moved on to work on Anthem. Then after Anthem, they started working on Dreadwolf, as a live-service game, but during the first 1-2 years they convinced the execs to let them make a single player game instead. They then repurposed the game to be purely single player, probably moving over a lot of initial work such as combat, loot economy, statuses, talent builds, enemy encounter designs etc. So yes, veilguard's actual development was probably not longer than 3-4 years. The claims that it cost 250 dollars is absolutely based on nothing. No studio had a full staff actively working on veilguard for 10 years, which is what all the propagandists and haters keep parroting.
Is it a complete disaster? No, but everyone I’ve talked to that’s playing it says the writing is terrible. The writing is terrible in a STORY driven game. I feel like that’s a big red flag. It would be like if someone said Forza is a decent game but the driving sucks. Dragon age to me has always been about the story, the relationships formed along the way and the people that I sleep with. If the writing‘s bad, then I don’t form a relationship that is deep and meaningful. It’s no 1/10 but it’s a 7/10 that I’ll buy during a 70% or greater Steam sale.
What did your iece say. What abput your other family or friends? What does Jesus say? What about your pet rock? Please tell us more about what fictional people say that we don't know or care about.
You just said “The story is bad in a story driven game. It’s like saying the driving is bad in Forza”… And then you gave it a 7/10… WTF is so mind blowing spectacular for you to ignore the “bad story in a story game” and only knock it down 3 points? Review your scoring system bud
@@shykorustotora so skyrim is shit? witcher 3 is shit? I see people make up all kinds of random restarded metric that somehow everyone else has to adhere to, and you all have the same opinion, but completely disagree with eachother's metrics. It's so wild to read.
@ Witcher 3, 96% overwhelming positive reviews with over 730,000 reviews with over 50 MILLION units sold. Dragon Age: Veilguard… saying they’re not even in the same league is still an insult. They’re not even from the same planet. Shut up retard
Steam started to delete negative/Do not Recommend reviews for DA:V so people have started writing the negative reviews but ending up Recommending the game so that Steam doesn't delete the review, in hope that someone reads it. That's why you see such a big % recommendation ratio.
I doubt that. There's a difference between a constructive critical review, and hateful comments. If the latter kind of comment _was_ removed, it was not due to the criticisms but the hateful disrespect.
Its good that steam removes the reviews from people who never even played it. Most of those negative reviews are from people who instantly hate everything if there is any "woke" stuff in the games. But they dont know anything about the game itself. It must be hard to accept for some people that World and gaming will not return to the time where only hetero males were allowed to be the main characters and heros in games and movies.
Tbh i don't think that it is a financial disaster like suicide squad oder concord or something like that. To me it seems more like a sw outlaws thing where in absolutes its fine but of you consider the cost, it seems to be a commercial failure to this time...
Destin, you are missing the point. They are saying when compared to the other blockbuster releases Dragon Age is underperforming. When you compare the sales figures to the top releases this year on steam, DA numbers are not even close! for a game with the backing of a huge IP as Dragon Age should be absolutely destroying the sales charts but it's not and this is the point that they are trying to make. They never said it was not going to sell they simply said it is underperforming which is true when compared to a huge IP.
@@DestinL Other EA games never released Day 1. They put them behind the EA Play paywall to keep more money. Now they release on steam to capture a bigger market but remember they gotto pay steam that 30% tax.
Dragon Age is not and has never been a "blockbuster release" The entire franchise has sold less than 25 million in TOTAL. Why are people acting like Dragon Age is a big mainstream IP suddenly?
@@linkvagar2336probably because bioware needs a W after there last 2 games andromeda and anthem are a commercial failure. i bought the game and its decent so far but the dialogue/writing is really weak.
You know why they want it to fail. people HATE this woke stuff and you know it. People are extremely tired of getting preached at, being told "IF YOU DON"T AGREE YOUR A BIGOT". even in this comment section you just had people say "your a bigot if you don't like this game" or "conservative bigoty". FURTHERMORE no one is allowed any actual criticism anymore. again it just leads to more hate from one side (you know which side)
I dont want it to fail because I care about good combats and this game has it. Get over of your woke obsession...those who complaine everything being "woke" are as annoying ( if not more) than the wokists themselves.
DA: Inquisition took 160m to make in 3 years 2011-2014. Since then basically everything got more expensive, especially in this inudstry. Team sizes have balloned to epic proportions. DA the veilguard went into pre production in 2015 , went through 4 years of dev hell and reboots and stuff being scraped then 5 years of actual development. There is no way in hell this game cost only 150m to make. The low estimate should probably be 250m. Jedi Surviors was a fraction from that. Jedi also sold for 10 bucks more the Veilguard does btw. It compares in steam numbers to AA releases like Metaphor , Divinity OS2 and Kingdom Come 1 , which were great numbers for these games but that is not the competition this game is aiming for. ( you read wilsons quote yourself ) In no shape or way will this game reach 12m lifetime copies of DA:I with these numbers any time soon. And companies like EA want GROWTH so MORE then before. And especially do they want this from the studio that burned millions of dollars on Anthem before. So yes , this is an objective failure , its not concord obviously it never was going to be with the DA IP behind it , but a failure nonetheless.
@@Extramist88 i know that it was in development for almost 10 years in a 350 people studio owned by a major publisher and that it has the steam numbers of AA titles while being far away from the numbers of AAA titles it should compare to on IP pull alone.
Anybody saying this is a Concord level flop is being disingenuous, but I just have a feeling this is going to be a FFXVI type situation where the sales numbers look solid enough, but ending up disappointing. Follow up on almost a decade of BioWare’s failures they really can’t afford a disappointment at this point. Concurrent player numbers comparable to the launch of Metaphor Refantazio and what Baldur’s Gate is averaging 14 months after launch doesn’t scream “success” to me.
People keep saying keep politics out of gaming. What we are talking about is ideology, not politics. Much more powerful, hense why people are so polarised. It literary makes you see the world in a completely different way, like religion. I feel that this will probably be the norm as the west tumbles around in the current confustion and social upheaval. Not going to be a fun time for the forseeable future, whatever side you look from.
Keep ideology out of video games? What fkn trash games do you play? It's simpleminded stupid shit like this why we keep getting boring garbage movies and games left, right and center, with absolutely no heart, no creativity, and nothing to say about the world. You seriously play games like Cyberpunk 2077 and say "this should have less ideology in it"??? When cyberpunk's ENTIRE point is to critique endstage capitalism? That Star Wars is good because "it doesn't address any ideology"?? That Lord of the Rings has no ideology in it? No. What you hate is the fact that you live in a world where someone who DISAGREES with YOUR ideology can make art that represents their values. This take also absolutely assumes that as a gamer you are not only entitled to play every single video game, but you are also entitled to agree with every single video game. The difference is that people like you, never posessed any media literacy, and you view all the stuff you watched and played before you became politically brainwashed, as apolitical and without ideology. What makes it even clearer that you do not only hate this game for your own political bias, but the fact that you are just using it as a culture war front to propagandize your own sick politics is the fact that you talk about "the west" tumbling. Literally not a single serious person who isn't either borderline far-right or fascist-russia supporter uses the term the west and talks about it failing. Especially from so called "enlightened centrists" who also happen to love trump and his rhetoric.
I hope Destin doesn't balance his bank accounts. You can't have profit until all costs have been paid back. Revenue at this stage shows the likely ability of the SKU to reach or exceed costs.
the profit is just Revenue after all the platforms take a 30% cut of sales. If anything the top header could have used a bit of better word play, but yes your right. There is techincally no Profit till the costs are paid back.
You also have to realize these other games usually sell physical copies well on Amazon and other stores too. Like COD BO6 has tons of console gamers with 11k physical sales last month on Amazon. Starwars Jedi survivor had tons of console gamers with 11k sales last month of release on Amazon. But when I was looking at dragon age physical sales they were abysmal. 1000 in its last month of release. So just because it does fair on steam doesn’t mean it’s going to move units.
We want this game to fail because it spits in the face of everything that made Dragon Age and by extension BioWare so incredible, so near and dear to our hearts. It is a shell of its former self, there is no depth to anything, there is nothing here. And on top of all of that it is pandering and insults our intelligence. It also shoehorns in modern day language, concepts and culture that just make no sense in a fantasy setting. We’re all tired. It’s such a shame that 10-15 years ago we had such masterpieces and this is where we are now.
ever notice that the older the pyramids are in egypt the better and more skilled the construction? and they get worse and worse as they get closer and closer to us in time? like they where regressing and lost all the talented craftsmen? thats what happened to the gaming industry today same thing different craft, games where simply better and more complete before now. 20 years later we have this shit
I have put 10 hours in the game and so far I have been enjoying myself. I have felt at some points they have some forced comedy.. but overall Im liking it..
I don't have a dog in this fight I don't think it's a failure but.... What was jedi survivors budget and time in devolpment? I just don't think this is a good argument.
Also there is one discrepancy in you’re viewpoint. If there is a massive group not willing to play the game because of issues they have, buying it will give the developers money for something they do not agree with, is effects the game reviews on steam right, because you have to buy it to review it. For instance it already has a filter for people who hate the game. Also the gaming industry has grown by 98% since 2014 since dragon age inquisition, its 10 years ago, its not a good data point. Star wars also isn’t great data points as they were not popular and the second more recent on was infamously bad on pc
The copium coming from some segments of the internet, mainly Resetera and Reddit, is hilarious to watch. Didn't even hit 100K on launch week on Steam. Dragon Age, being an RPG franchise that was primarily developed for PC and ported to console, should be hitting much higher numbers on the platform, however its sales numbers have been dismal, just peaking at over 80K. By comparison, the smaller budget Dragon's Dogma 2 peaked at over 200K players on launch week, and that game wasn't some massive success or anything. Quite the opposite.
Destin, sir, the reason people want it to fail is because they want it to be clear to financial planners that decisions made in the creation of this game were not profitable, and thus might not be repeated.
@@TimTams_64 It isn't about the fact it has rainbow people in it but it's how front & center they pushing the rainbow agenda to the point it's taking away from the actual quality on the game.. Cyberpunk has rainbow content in it but it ain't so in your face like they trying to make it the main thing to the point it took away from the quality of the overall game..
@@TimTams_64 So true . A large part of the gaming community are toxic racists.They have a hissy fit any time someone enjoys something that doesn't fit into their narrow-minded view of the world.
The problem is , I don’t get that old BioWare feel anymore. The studio has been a shadow of itself for the past 10 years. Going from making , arguably the biggest trilogy in gaming history ( mass effect ) to this. It looks like dragon age for kids , it supposed to be dark & gritty with mature themes. I don’t want to be reminded of real world politics in a fantasy video game , we game to chill out & escape the world , not be reminded of the crazy S*** that’s currently in it.
Some of the old Bioware Dev went to make a Game Exodus. The Trailer give off Mass Effect vibe. Hopefully that game would let us experience what we miss from the old Bioware.
I've seen people claim it's a great success because (at the time) there were 77k players and I've seen people claim it was a massive failure because it had 77k players. I've also seen an article that claims it's a colossal success because it has over 10x more players than DA:I did at it's launch on steam -- ignoring the fact that DA:I wasn't even on steam at it's launch and was released on steam years later. My conclusion: people on both sides seem quire deranged.
What you seem to ignore is that there are other ways to track sales OTHER than on Steam. You act like the company doesn't know its own sales. You also act like you know more. The one thing you dont act like is a normal person.
You say “both are deranged” but the evidence speaks for itself. For this IP, this budget and this development time, 80k player base is abysmal. Hell, it’s been beaten by basically every AAA and even some Indi games released this year like Palworld or Lethal Company
Gamers are told to vote with their wallets because sales is the language companies understand. That's why so many celebrated Concord's poor numbers and final outcome, as it indicated the consumer does not desire that sort of product. We can say we don't want games like Veilgard (or any product for that matter) to go in a certain direction until our faces turn blue. Even so, EA/Bioware are going to look at the sales because the dollar is what really matters. Why would any logical company see the need to make a shift in a direction when the consumer's purchase behavior is indicating they are in support of said direction? Consider lootboxes. While so many of us were complaining about the practice, a substantial amount of consumers spoke in support of this with their wallets, resulting in the practice becoming even more popular. That being the case, respectfully, I don't see the difficulty in understanding why disappointed fans of this franchise are hoping for a poor outcome. No decent human being wants misfortune for any professional like a game developer to have their livlihood threatened. However, as adults, we also understand that we--ourselves--cannot expect to continuously perform poorly at our place of employment without consequence.
It's certainly polarizing. You either love it or your really hate it. The people who are in the middle are much smaller than I would anticipate, even from all the debates about DA:V the past few months.
A few things I want to point out. Dragon age being a western RPG is a heavy PC franchise. That Genre is popular amongst gamers on that platform. That Star Wars game is 100% what your average console player would enjoy and wouldn’t be as popular on steam. Not to mention the abysmal PC performance that steered a lot of would be PC players to the console version. Steam charts for those two games is sort of an apples to oranges comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be Dragons Dogma 2 which has a 228k peak player count. Despite bad performance on PC and being a less popular franchise than dragon age.
Ok i am approximately 11-12 hours into the game and I absolutely LOVE IT! I think the combat is great, the overarching story is FANTASTIC, I also love the dialogue between Rook and Solas, that dynamic is pretty interesting to me, looking forward to more of that as well. The conversations with the companions can be a little silly at times, but Veilguard is leaning way more into the High Fantasy feel, and it honestly doesn't bother me. It's different so i get why some people will not like it if you have actually played it. This game actually gets me excited to play Mass Effect 5, just from the gameplay aspect alone. It's a ways off obviously but still. I find the game really engaging, Do i have some criticisms, sure, but overall i think the 7/10's - 8/10's are fair scores. And maybe my opinion will change a little after i finish it, but right now I'm have a BLAST!
55 thousand on the weekend of release and under BG3 for concurrent players are not numbers that are going to set the financial depts on fire 🔥 This would be very concerning for them and they are prob a little nervous right now
As just a PC gamer I do not care for their launcher or business models. I will not spend money on an EA game. Dragon Age I have no interest in. I played the last two Jedi games. First one on Game Pass and and second Jedi game I got with the purchase of my AMD GPU.
@Kniffel101 Lol you really think people put any effort into doing research for themselves instead of just jumping on the hate train because they're told to? Come on man, you know they don't.
@@willbearheart7919 That's why doing "small" stuff like countering misinformation is important to do, so people who aren't blinded can at least do things and buy products based on accurate information! =)
@@willbearheart7919 Some people jump on the hatetrain cause thats all they see. If you provide reasonable counter-narrative that is just true, some people will actually get over the bandwagon bs
It's quite simple why people want this game to fail. I believe everyone would agree it's very different from what Dragon Age was before. Fans of the franchise were expecting a dark fantasy RPG (emphasis on dark) and this is not it. Whether you like it or not (not commenting if it's good or bad), Veilguard should have been its own IP, in my opinion. Also, if it sold well it's because of the Dragon Age name. I would bet money that a sequel of Veilguard would have a lot less sales, because a good portion of the initial fan base would no longer be there. Hope I'm wrong, but Bioware might have ruined the brand going forward.
The exposure of corpos and their shill media pets is stark. It's a fantastic lesson in why any reviewer with a relationship with the industry is immediately suspect and never to be taken at their word. This includes you, Destin. The only reviews that should be given credence are from those who the industry actively despises, and gives no access to. I'm far more likely to listen to you if the industry is hostile to you, not feeding you access.
Jedi Survivor released in an unplayable state and slowly improved over time. That is an obvious difference. Veilguard released with excellent performance. Mark my words, Survivor was a slow burn due to patches slowly improving performance. Veilguard will be a flash in the pan. Watch and learn.
@@yodelingllamas1145it's not a "massive franchise" The entire farnchise has sold less than 25 million TOTAL Why are people acting like this is some massive mainstream IP suddenly?
@linkvagar2336 it's certainly not as mainstream as it used to be. It does have a massive, loyal fan base, though. It's not a niche franchise by rpg standards. The total sales don't mean squat, though. Rpgs, in general, sell less than other genres. If you want a massive franchise to play from, I'd recommend the Mario franchise and leave smaller franchises like Star Wars alone.
Okay lets comapre Dragon age the veil guard with a niche game too. Grand Blue Fantasy relink have 100k peak concurrent players on steam. And the developers say they sold around 1 million copies. (It was released on playstation and pc only, no Xbox) Its not looking good for Dragon age. 1 million copies sold for Grand Blue is ok because its only a AA game.
I would fancy a guess -- since these big name Publishers only listen thru sales numbers - the argument that "I hope they listen to the criticism about the writing" wont work unless gaming consumer speak only with their wallets. So I guess that's where all this messaging over the financial flop is coming from?
Complete horse shit. That's not how developers work. Why do you think DA2 had action combat, limited budget, and time? Because Origins sold poorly? The combat was shit talked by people who tried it out or played it. DAI went open world because people critisized DA2, despite DA2 being a HUUUUGE success in terms of budget-to-profit ratio, EA execs apparently loved what they achieved with the sales for DA2 cause of its short development time. DATV went away from the open world because DAI, a game that sold like 14 million copies, was critisized for its early open world zones that slowed down the pace and did not let you focus on the actual story and conversations with characters. The big name publisher does not make the game, they fund the game. The developers make the game. In fact you could say them listening too much to criticisms has been their biggest issue. EDIT: Some typos
1) You need to remove 30% for steam,PS and XBox’s take. 2) you have to consider how important this title is for BioWares survival and that they were given whatever resources they needed and redid multiple do-overs. 3) Dragon Age is an established IP with a fan base and could have had close to Baulders Gate potential 4) extremists want to see it fail because BioWare chose to choose a side in this ideology war we’re in and made a game with cringy dialogue that many can’t stand. This was unnecessary and could have been avoided. 5) all that matters in there success is if it meets EA’s expectations. No one here knows what that is. If they thought this was break-out potential then this is a complete failure IMO
I missed this at first but he did. He has the Revenue column and Profit column. The profit column is the -30% tax. (probably should have put that somewhere lol)
1) He did, but even if you're right, the game would still be on a path to success. 2) It’s irrelevant. Whether a game is successful doesn’t necessarily affect a studio’s fate; many studios close regardless. 3) Perhaps, but that’s also beside the point. 4) Exactly, that’s the video’s point. I really dislike this game’s dialogue, so I won’t support it. I’d even like this game to flop to send a message, but I can still acknowledge the game is doing well despite my opinion. 5) Ultimately, a studio’s future depends on more than just a single game’s success or profitability. I think what you’re getting at is that even if the game makes a decent profit, they might close the studio if it didn’t make an exceptional amount-but that’s not the point of the video. He’s clarifying why people calling this game a “failure” are mistaken. The discussion isn’t about a studio closing; it’s about whether the game made enough to recoup its production and marketing costs, which it clearly has, so content creators like Asmon are truly far off on this one. Understanding *why* certain decisions are made can clarify why closing studios may sometimes be justified, even when they're profitable.
I get what he is talking about. He is addressing people saying based on the sales the game is a colossal failure and he disagrees with that. I happen to think he is wrong. My point is that EA will decide if it is a financial cluster. No one here knows if it is profitable. There are so many things to account for with profitability with a studio and it isn’t just THE game. BioWare has failed the last few times at bat with Andrmeda and Anthem. Some of that money has to be recouped, they don’t want to just write that off. BioWares relevancy is being questioned. EA is making their cash from Live service models. Anthem failed at that and BioWare failed at it with Veilguard. This is partly why veilguard started over and took 10 years to make. The 150-200 million this cost to make could have been invested and received a nice return over 10 years. A game that just makes its money back is a colossal failure. Where will they get the money to fund their next game. If they are considered risky they won’t. This was their chance to shine and show they still deserve to be a gaming studio and this is why my opinion is the sales figures are a colossal failure. They will be lucky to break even
6:29 Bruh. Did Jedi Survivor really sell 10M copies? That makes me really happy. I love that game. It is super underrated. Great mixture of Super Metroid, God Of War 2018, Sekiro and Uncharted.
@purefoldnz3070 I'm not saying people can't have opinions. I have issues with the game. I think the story is fine but the dialog is so cringe. With that said I don't spend even a minute of my time telling people who like it thst they shouldn't. Criticism is fine on the game. You can hate it cause it's woke, or because it's not a CRPG or just because EA made it. I don't care. I just find it bothersome that people try and shit on other people's parade and tell others they are "stupid" for enjoying the game. It's also strange that people who hate the game care how successful the game is or isn't. Maybe it's cause I have bigger fish to fry in my life.
Totally agree. If you like or don't like something it's fine to say I do or don't like it, the problem is when you tell people they should or shouldn't buy the game. Both sides are equally guilty of doing this.❤❤❤
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been in development for 8 or 9 years. To sustain a studio of BioWare's size and cover marketing costs, it needs to sell around 6 million copies just to break even. I don’t see how these early Steam numbers of 70,000 indicate that level of success for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. At most, we’re probably looking at 1.5 million sales across all platforms. It didn’t even get 200 preorders on Amazon Canada, for example. It’s not a Concord-level flop or anything, but it’s pretty clear that this game has alienated a lot of fans of the franchise. I think the biggest reason is the genre change, shifting to a blockbuster, mass-market action RPG instead of a deep CRPG. The second would be the poor moment-to-moment writing. The third would be the art style and tone of the game. And the fourth is likely due to socio-political reasons. As for Jedi Survivor, that's just cherry-picking. I could also counter that Dragon's Dogma 2 (probably a better comparison since it actually targets the same audience that Dragon Age does) had three times the Steam Chart numbers and only sold 3 million copies. I think you also need to look at Amazon preorders and general preorder leak information, which don’t give much optimism on other platforms.
@@aaronlaughter6471 I think EA was hoping more for the 12 million that Inquisition sold, but they are not going to get it. Metaphor ReFantazio is another example that 1000 preorders on Amazon Canada - 4-5x as many as Dragon Age, and we already know this did not sell 6 million either. Between this, Dragon's Dogma and many other games, I think Bioware/EA is not going even break even. Whether this amounts to a studio shutdown before Mass Effect 5, who knows what EA will do but I don't think EA will be happy with these sales.
@@aaronlaughter6471 They were also cheaper to make so the made profits. It is not sales but profit you twat. They were faster to make not having to deal with last decade inflation.
90k-90K peak is amazing number for an up-and-coming studio launching their first AA game. What do you mean it's a 4th game in a series from a legacy studio and AAA publisher?
I want to bring some interesting facts. Development began in 2015, development of BG3 began in 2016. Spending on development is approximately the same, about 150 million dollars. The first two parts of BG were developed by the BioWare studio, Larian studio was inspired by DA:O when creating BG3. Two very popular universes. And now what we see) This is heaven and earth. I do not want to continue this comparison. The games are at completely different levels. Although the conditions were approximately the same. This is just another example of how good and bad games are made. And no matter how hard companies try to manipulate ratings, reviews and media, players judge with their wallets. And maybe the time is finally coming when these companies will be punished for their attitude towards us - ordinary gamers who just want to relax and play good games...
Wait what? Are you serious? What tf are you basing that on? Cause I've paid attention to Bioware the last 10 years, and you couldn't be more wrong. After DA:I they made all the DLCs. DLCs were being made in 2015 and released the same year. They then went on to work on a cancelled Dragon Age game, that was supposed to be a smaller title. This scrapped title's setting (and possibly story) was then re-worked into the netflix dragon age TV series that released 2 or so years ago. The studio then went on to do support for both Andromeda, and then Anthem, putting their own stuff on hold. Pre-production for sure did start and kept going, but pretending that Larian Studios, who solely focused on one game (BG3) for all these years, has been in even remotely similar situation as Bioware is absolutely ridiculous. The fact that you'd peddle such a half arsed ignorant claim as "fact" is borderline propaganda. Like please do explain to me how they shared similar conditions. If you can't, you have to admit that you are literally just engaging in culture war nonsense.
you know why, pretending you dont know is pretentious. i do agree it seems like a successful launch and comparing it to all the blowout success is unfair. i also understand projections, but its basically counting chickens before its hatched, its just 3 days, we dont know if it will stay on the same sales trajectory as those other games you compared it too. we should have a better projection after 2 weeks or so, and see if the steam charts can maintain their numbers on normal drop-offbor not. its simply too soon.
The fucking beta for monster hunter is at 450k players. Dragons Dogma 2 was a niche release, had 250k players at launch. BG3 has the same number of players NOW as DAV
Yes. The free beta of a wildly popular game has 450k players. The DD2 talking point seems like the same thing Asmon brought up. BG3 is literally one of the biggest things on earth. I don't feel like these are great metrics to compare to.
Can we talk about how the Qunari used to look amazing and super badass but now they look all weird? The Dragon Age 2 Qunari looked awesome. Like something out of a fantasy world. The veilgaurd versions look like the sad knockoff version you get off temu.
I'm a huge fan of Dragon Age. DA2 was my first exposure and inquisition got me through a rough period in my life. I pre-ordered Veilguard and have played it every day since launch and it feels like coming home. I love all the companions and the prospective replayability with all the faction choices and how that effects the game. (I'm starting with an elf mage Lord of Fortune and we get a backstory lore drop when talking to Taash) The dialogue is a little weird in some places but I feel it works with my snarky d'Artagnan-esque chaos Rook. Also, they went all out on the Ghil'anain body horror weirdness and I'm here for it. I'm still waiting for the part of the game where I get to punch solas but I'm sure it's coming. I at least get to scream from the rooftops that he's an ass and I love that
If you don't know why people want the game to fail you're purposely not paying attention. People don't want to pay $60-70 to be preached at. They want an entertainment product to escape in. Also, inquisition sold 10 million copies. By comparison this is a massive failure in terms of what it could have sold if they had just made a better game. Can't switch over and control companions, they don't have health bars, and the enemies are too easy, and the writing is awful. And Star Wars was the worst PC port of all time when it launched. So for Dragon Age to be even close to that instead of far past it is terrible.
I think we need to see the budget to tell how well that game did for EA. Also what is the attitude of the executives? Do they understand that making a game three times is unsustainable or will they blame everyone but themselves?
I had a trans colleague who went from man to woman and I had zero problems accepting her. But I absolutely hate how they're incorporating it in every game now to be "inclusive". That colleague did too by the way, because it made people accept her less.
I agree with the video. It should be criticized for it's writing but it's total cope to think that 70k players (steam alone) makes it a bomb. You can't just compare everything to Wukong and say it failed.
The things people keep comparing it to are the extreme out of norms. Not every game is going to have breakout massive sales, in fact the Dragon Age series has never had that level of success so this just falls in line with what was likely expected. Even Mass Effect never sold all that high despite being well received. EA knows they have a niche title and they’ll likely expect it to sell within that niche. (Hell the Mass Effect trilogy remaster sold above their expectations and it didn’t sell very high to begin with so I doubt they really view this as a failure) It ain’t a sports title, or a mass appealing blockbuster, it’s an RPG in a niche series and it’s selling as such
@@broderickfoster2107 let’s compare it with DA:O then? That should be fair. So after checking that game got ~3.2 million copies … Let’s see how veilguard holds up ❤
@@broderickfoster2107 ME Legendary edition released same day on Steam, its peak players were the same numbers as veilguard on launch. EA said it "VAAAASTLY overperformed". In fact that project alone probably made EA fund Bioware for their next 2 games
It's a bomb. When you look at how long the games was in development, how many times its been rebooted, all the money spent making it... it needs to sell at least 5m to break even. I estimate it will barely crack 1m eventually. And that just isn't good enough. Not as bad as Concord, but still bad. Idunno, how many copies do you think the game needs to sell to break even?
EA should just stick to their football franchise. With Delta Force launching on multiple platforms early next year, the Battlefield IP is most likely going to end up in 3rd place and for the top selling FPS genre, 3rd place will amount to nothing.
@jasonarnold1990 how so? The devs are changed, the art style is changed, the gameplay loop is changed and the story writing style is changed. The Halo Reach to H4 signifies the change of hands at the Bioware who created the old dragon age games.
So I haven't heard people claiming the game isn't selling. What I have heard is concerns that EA limited review codes to outlets likely to give the game a positive review to manage the review scores and drive those sales. See Fextralife's video. I'd be interested to hear Destin's thoughts on that controversy.
@@Macheako They announced that ages before the game came out, and the previous lead designer of the Origins, DA2, and DAI said that Bioware most likely will never do big DLCs ever again due to the backlash that Trespasser DLC for DAI and the companion DLC for ME3 had towards those games. But hey, easier to meme your propaganda into existance and pretend that's why things are happening, right? Fuck truth, who cares about facts apparently ?
At the end of the day it doesn’t even matter what the game is like. The fact they pick and chose who they gave review codes to curate review scores. That’s just a bad look
@@zigs44 pay more attention. Huge review channels were denied review copies because after playing a demo at an event, they both voiced concerns for the game. FextraLife was one of them. And the fact it got less than stellar reviews from the picked through reviews is even worse
@@zigs44lol not even close. A couple big channels put out statements saying they didn’t receive the review codes promised and by coincidence, the ones who didn’t get codes were also people who had voiced concerns with the game.
@@nastytechniquez9685 SkillUp got a reviewcode. Don't lie. Lots of people who praised t he previews also did not get codes. What does that say? Oh I guess we ignore that, cause it doesn't fit the conspiracy narrative. Holy hell I'm so t ired of the post-gamergaters and the right wing nonsense of making everything a culture war battleground
People are just mad and complain for everything. It's so annoying, lol. I use to have that same mentality in high school with my friends, we would just sit around and complain about everything because we thought we were being cool or edgy and everyone else was complaining.
The sub Reddit is pretty positive. The RUclips conversation is pure toxic copy pasta as per all AAA. So much hate its ridiculous. The AAA hate train hits alot of games...and modern content creators feed on the negatively!
10 years of development, major developer, proven and renown IP this is why the numbers aren't doing great, its the context. Even on steam alone it would have needed 300-400k to be an indication of okay. But my opinion doesn't count because I'm not buying this, never will.
There may be "more value" to having a game that is not broken at release is the reason for its success. The game also does all of its shader compilations before it runs to avoid stutters. Here is my take on why this is important. We know software have bugs. We recognize it when we see it. But that is especially bad to have in games because you can't be sure whether it is a bug or you are not doing something correctly because it is a game after all and you are supposed to figure things out. I'm sure every one of us have said it must be a bug when we can't figure things out.
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Can you woke Americans stop screwing up games? Rest of the world laughing at you with your damn binary non binary bull. Stop politicizing or genderizing games. Just make the damn game and also the hand holding? this is the reason why baldurs gate 3 or elden ring wins. Just let you play!
For the amount of money they spent on it the numbers don’t make sense look at dragons dogma 2 which is a niche game and they had over 3 times concurrent players….this can’t be a success for them. Not saying it flopped but not great
Dude... BG3, today, has 87k players, 15 months after release...more than DAV in launch weekend
Of course it's a massive flop
16m profit after 3 days is terrible if the game cost at the least 80m. You would expect a 60-70% drop off after first weekend sales. So lets say at the end they make 20. Next week they could only make 4m (24 total). 2m on the 3rd weekend (26 total) and then forgotten until a huge sale or something. (I personally see no way an RPG thats 50+ hours long, on a new engine, took 10 years to make, had massive turnover cost 80million to make). Inquisition which was made well over a decade ago had a budget of at least 60 million. Inflation is no joke, no way veilguard only cost 20m more.
I think the hive mind is saying the opposite. That it’s a great game etc
Look at the critical reception from official outlets.
Seems like Steam reviews are the outlier.
A solid 6/10. Not the end of the world for “either side.”
It was a huge missed opportunity for Bioware. This game could have been #1 and smashing these numbers if they catered to their fans.
Exactly! The only good thing about this game is the art book.
Which fans though? Those who moaned about Origins on release and have moaned no DA game has lived up to it since. The feedback is so mixed with so many of those involved being dudebro reactionaries it's hard to know what to take away.
@@EmoBearRights not the woke freak that are a small minority of the market if not irrelevant
@@theteamxxx3142 So are the reactionary bigoted dudebros you just shout louder and support those who do. Most people don't give a shit either way.
@@theteamxxx3142yet people are freaking out like they are
lol
70k peak for sequel to the renowned franchise that's previous entry won GOTY and was marketed so heavily is literally NOTHING. And the numbers will just fall even lower after the weekend.
It's a flop.
Cope
week 1 didn't sell over 1 million units. reporting says barely 500k units sold with over 30k returns. expect the game to be discounted by 35% in a few weeks on steam for the fall steam sale.
@@UrDadizAbackloggedgamer2 weeks later and it's failed. Cope
@ it didn’t. 🤷🏽♂️
@@UrDadizAbackloggedgamer ummm ranked #78 on steam charts as of Novemeber 26 , Civ 5 has more players than this dumpster fire LOL. I live in the City where bioware mains office is (Edmonton) . Let's just say the office has a lot of pressure right now 🤣
The quality of the writing is what’s holding me back. CohhCarnage’s comments on the game so far had described exactly what I’m worried about. Dunkey’s video reinforced that for me.
Well if you want to hear lines like “ that just happened” and “I guess it’s that kind of day” and be told not to misgender characters go for it!
@@socratese5 and if you want to have no real choices in a dialogue tree then this is the game for you!
one cannot notice the lack of quality in these games without also acknowledging what said quality was replaced with.
Try thinking for yourself.
@@eodyn7 I did. That’s why I said, “the quality of writing is what’s holding me back.”
Pretending you don't know why people want it to fail is one way to go about it i guess.
Destin went from having pretty based takes with BG3 and Elden Ring to look incredibly disingenuous, I'd rather he doesn't cover this topics at all if he is not going to do it in good faith.
@@praisetheoak "He isn't infested with gamer lingo and gamer brainrot like me, bruh, he is so dishonest for not hating transpeople as much as me" - weirdass reactionary gamers pretending they are the center of the universe
@@praisetheoak (in good faith for your view) you meant
Because they saw clips of it on Twitter? I genuinely don't know why they would "want' it to fail.
@@praisetheoak What am I not doing in good faith? This is a conversation about the sales figures, not the content of the game.
It's simple. They want it to fail because it's no longer a DA game.
Completely wrong. Absolutely a lie. They want it to fail because conservatives make every single thing in the universe a battleground. We literally cannot even have a hurricane happening without conservatives blaming it on the government, (((them))), etc. It has become a lifestyle in a world where people are increasingly lonelier and lonelier, especially conservatives. Young men are at their peak with suicide rates, also with fascism and extremism, in less relationships than ever before, and having less s*x than ever before that we have data for, but also older women, and old men. People have lost their goddamn minds.
Like at least the worst thing that these liberals are doing is demanding to be called weird shit, while the rest want to murder people. I'd rather cringe at this transstuff over having to listen to lunatics rave on about "mindviruses" and how to kill them all
After listening to the dialog, it reeks of Mass Effect Andromeda's 'quirky' character writing. Peebee is now an elf effectively. I ended up bouncing off the game because the dialog just wasn't for me
Have you played it or have you just watched clickbait grift RUclips videos
@@arda.. Can't play it without buying it and trusted reviews say don't buy or buy at a discount. Considering the weak sales numbers, especially for an EA game, it will be 65% off within a year. Just like the 2023 EA Star Wars game is right now.
EA doesn't spend AAA dollars to sell less than 5 million copies. Anthem sold 2 million week 1 and 5 million overall - and still got the axe. DAV is going to be lucky to sell 3 million copies. They won't hit 5.
@@martyk656
Honestly it should have demo, but u can always find "other ways" to try out the game.
As a long time DA fan... this game is at max a 5/10. I am severely disappointed in everything I have seen thus far. I want a mature, complex RPG. This is like fast food / marvel movie version of what I want.
I really want this game to succeed because I love the prior Dragon Age games and THEDAS but I want it to fail because I want Bioware to be better than they currently are and more like what they used to be. I just have to be honest with myself though, the good old days of Bioware are never coming back and I would rather they fail than continue to butcher the franchises I love... kind of like Disney and Star Wars. This is coming from someone who has bought ME: Andromeda and Anthem and I feel as though I have been supporting their downfall... which is ironic because they are likely dead if this game fails to meet expectations again.
Key phrase "from what I've seen"
@@AbysmalEnd People are playing the full game on RUclips... it's not like I'm watching selective clips and making my opinion based on those.
@@AbysmalEndpeople have the right to have opinions based on gameplay before buying the game....
@@Neovalen So you are not even played the game and you already gave the game a score right.
And so far myself I have 4 hours into the game and has been great and I been playing Dragon Age since Origins in pc and the thing I criticize is that each Dragon Age after Origins is more simplistic catering towards console gamers.
This guy ain't confused, he's walking the fence. Everyone knows why some people want it to fail. And why some people are pushing so hard to claim it's good.
2 contrasting political views and he's walking right down the middle, playing dumb and trying not to piss off either side.
Also 80mil over 10years is a lie .
Lower the proclaimed budget, so less than expected sales can still be claimed as a profit and a success.
I got no dog in this fight, never played the series and haven't played this game.
there is less people playing the game right now, than baldur gate 3, which is already 1 yr older
80 million budget for a 10 year dev cycle is completely impossible, especially when considering that there also has to be a marketing budget and that the game went through massive re-writes and at some point was being developed as an MMORPG. these sort of direction changes are incredibly expensive.
I'm still not understanding how making $16m is a success when when the cost of the game is $80-$150m? (for a 10 year dev cycle I bet it's higher).
Even at $80m are they suddenly going to make another $64m somewhere to break even. What am I missing?
I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, but I believe the thinking is it makes 16m the first week, then slowly makes 64m over the next year or two. Then probably another 30 - 40 mil over it's lifespan, for a net profit of 30 - 40mil.
there are alot of assumptions here of course, which can be up for challenge, but that's the thinking at least.
@@BboyFever (I understand you aren't making that claim you're just explaining. )
Theres a flaw in that thinking though. And I keep seeing this being used as some type of measure for a successful game.
But that's not how single player games work, if they don't start profiting within the first month or 2 then it is labeled as a failure.
This isn't a live service game, it's not going to continue to increase exponentially. It has no microtransactions and no upcoming DLC.
So the fact that anyone thinks this game is eventually going to be a profit for EA is not thinking this through.
But look at Outlaws, SP RPG with no future content and it's marked as a failure within the first month. A year or 2 from EA won't care.
After the last 2 years of failed games and subsequent studios being shut down due to the failures I don't see how anyone is optimistic for BioWare.
@@BboyFever That's not how any of this works. Timing matters and alternative investments matter. Let's assume if bioware invested 20 million dollars a year for 10 years in the stock market instead of developing this game, let's assume an 8% compounded return, by the time we hit 2024, they would have made 112 million dollars in profit by October 31, 2024. Wouldn't you have done that instead of making this game, that, by the way, has to sell more than 6 million copies to just break even? Who know when and if that will ever happen. This is how people look at investments. You don't just say 'oh break even SOMETIME down the road...' and then 'oh you make 30 million, that's profit, profit is profit, so that's good, right?' No, man.
To add some more context. Its reported they did not sell a million units yet (usually when a game does they promote that all over the place). Its reported that total units sold is around 500k for all platforms with over 30k in returns. This was a huge loss for them. Expect the game to be discounted on steam by 35% in a few weeks for the fall steam sale.
@@methdxman Don't even do the stock market comparison because they are making/selling a product not investing money. The big thing is that they made a bad product and if it doesn't make much money in profit and has a bad reputation, then it's a failure. If it barely made any money and was a big PR win for EA, then they could chalk it up to a success because a good reputation for a development studio/publisher does matter to an extent and can affect how well their games perform.
Could just be me, but when a game talks about misgendering someone most people probably don’t wanna play it
It's just you
Stop projecting OP
Especially when they ram it down your throat and try to make the audience feel awkward and ruins all immersion in a dark fantasy world. This game is literally what the rings of power is to Peter Jacksons lotr
@Slodsworth ask yourself why you feel so strongly about something so trivial
@Slodsworth you've never played the last DA game have you? Matter of fact, you sound like you're just jumping on a bandwagon .
I’m not saying it’s bombing and I’d like to see it succeed for BioWare future if nothing else, but some stark figures to consider:
Ghost of Tsushima PC release had similar peak numbers in the high 70k and that was a 4 year old game that was out on PS4 & PS5. Another good comparable is Dragon’s Dogma 2, a known IP that hadn’t seen a sequel for a similar length of time and it peaked at over 200k. Not sure these are supportive that DA The Veilguard is doing “well”. I guess we’ll see.
Well if you compare it to Dragon Age, or other EA titles it's above them.
@@DestinL Well EA removed everything off Steam and just returned their titles there in the last few years. I’d argue that Jedi Survivor numbers were low on steam because it was one of the worst PC ports in the last few years. I think that’s a low bar to clear in my opinion.
@@DestinL those other EA titles never released day 1 on steam
@@DestinLwhy are all journalist websites so fixated on comparing player count solely to past EA/Bioware titles? That doesn’t mean anything
@@Archon139why are people like you obsessed with comparing Dragon Age to completely unrelated games?
By your logic, lets compare Baldurs Gate 3 to Minecraft, we'd have to call BG3 a failure in comparison.
I personally don't think the game is a bomb but I do think there was something shady with the initial reviews... No one can deny the early reviews from the professional reviewers were strange. And let's not kid around here. This game talks to the player like the player is an idiot and the dialogue is absolutely STUPID and horrible. The gameplay is cool but as a Dragon Age fan I want to stress the story means a lot to me. and with the writing this bad it is unbearable to play.
Yeah , like I said the dialogue is the biggest criticism. I hear you on that one.
The thing is different games have different measures of success and failure. If an indie game sold 3 million copies, major success. This game sells 3 million copies, still haven’t broken even.
looks like it will bomb since it needs to sell 5m just to break even and its player peak was only 70,000 on Steam
@@purefoldnz3070peak has been over 85 000 in a day and thats only in steams. There is Xbox and PS gamers too. And when 85 000 gamers became little?
Im pretty sure it will sell over 5 million copies, since its multiplat.
The reviews are fairly accurate. It’s a 7/10. Despite the issues I have with it. Dialog, rpg mechanics, etc
10 years of development only 80 millions? No way in hell
Oh yeah I agree. I would have estimated 200M minimum. But it’s the internet sooo
@@sergiarilla8608 And no way in hell they're selling enough copies to recoup that true amount to break even.
I'm using Alan Wake 2 as my standard. If 1.3m sales (feb 2024) didn't recoup AW2 development cost. And the game took 13 years of development then Dragon Age might fail to meet their sales goals to just recoup their development cost.
the budget is $250m which means it needs to sell over 5m just to break even
@@Xanshi and the worst thing about that is ea might use the game's failure as an excuse to stop making single player games
Definitely don’t want it to fail. Just definitely don’t want to buy it.
‘Nuff said
Maybe not you personally, but most of the people who go out of their way to comment on every single dav video sure seem to want it to fail.
I'd give this game a shot, but spending $70 for an action rpg with passable combat and also a fair amount of cringe dialogue seems like a purchase i'll regret. There are too many other games I could spend that money on right now
Yep.. and this game has the biggest sin of them all - no real role play as a protagonist 😅 I know that main story is linear but c'mon I can't be mean or sarcastic... Only polite and awkward 😅
YS nordics just game out and Romancing SaGa 2: revenge of the 7. you could take a look at those.
This game cost 49.90 € here in northern Europe. Very fair price
@@susanna8612 $25 dollars tops if your being paid to push an agenda, I want savings. Same reason I don't use self-checkout at the store. These companies are getting MILLIONS of dollars to push this agenda have to be at this point. No way you would take these types of losses and not being paid to.
Thats why the losses don't matter to them. Somebody is paying them more. I want savings and games that play well. This game is probably good but sitting for 6 minutes to listen to HR training just because is crazy. You are paying for HR training lol
Just torrent it, it's been cracked since day one.
This math is horrible. A better comparison is with Dragon Dogma 2, with peak concurrent player count at over 200 thousand players. DD2 sold 3 million copies in 3 months. meaning Veilguard will not even sell 1 million copy this year.
When I queried the sales of this on another RUclips vid, someone said, but, it's in the top 5 PS5 game sales this week. When I asked what else was above it, they said one of the games was Phasmophobia, which, no offence to that game, but its a budget indie title, beating a AAA title from EA......just saying.....
Tell us you're ignorant and move on. Just sayin...
People want it to fail because it embodies several things which people think are wrong in society and gaming.
No, that's not nearly it.
This was a beloved IP of the fans. The characters were interesting, the world had great lore... And the writers choose to go this route?
Why? Why this? It was already 'inclusive and diverse' but they double down on this topic. They turned dialogue into quirky speech.
I don't care about this whole 'society' debate. I just wanted to see the world I fell in love with to continue its story without tampering.
@@listlesswanders1687 That's literally what I say in the second part of my sentence dumbass...."society and GAMING". Learn to read. Some people care about the society stuff, you don't, but some do.
Same for me, the political stuff does get way more attention than it has too, but I can deal with that. The problem with this game, is the gameplay. The writing/dialog is cringe, the visuals are very fornite, the combat is way out of what the other dragon games established, a lot of RPG elements are missing like making morally ethical desitions or just been a bad overall person in a game, Darkspawn look goofy compared to the menacing darkspawn in origins. It's just not a good dragon age game
Exactly. And it should fail.
@@listlesswanders1687 This has been happening since DAO, when that was called Baldur's Gate light. Then DA2 came out, and people said that was the end of the series and not a true Dragon Age game. Then Inquisition came out and people attacked it, saying it was not a true Dragon Age game. You starting to see a pattern here.
"did you play it?" is a question I see people ask.... its like... yo... people say if you dont like something, dont buy it. Then when people dont buy it, its like "well did you play it?!?" No, people told us if you dont like it, dont buy it. Its what is happening, and then people stand around being like "what could have possibly happened?!!?" like you guys all told us, dont buy something... I have been a bioware fan forever, and yah... i really dont like the direction they have taken the company, so guess what? I didn't buy it.....................................
You do know the reason behind it all Destin, you just don't want to engage with it.
Because, unless this toxic pandering garbage fails, they'll keep making it.
People used to know how to tell a story where the marginalized character was relatable to anyone. You'd develop real empathy for the difficulties that being different brought to the character's life.
Now, they just scream at you what's right and wrong. That if you don't innately agree, you must be a monster. ZERO subtext, everything is beaten into you whether you like it or not.
When you hold a bat and tell people how to think, you get more pushback. Take writing back to when you cared about convincing people instead of bullying them.
You clearly didn't play the game. It is extremely weird to have this conversation about an entire game, where like 3-4% of it actually contains the stuff you are talking about.
It also screams of first draft more than anything else. It seems rushed, not evil intent.
But your comment is clear: You HATE the transstuff. Like fucking loathe it. And you hate that you cannot argue against it. That's what you hate. Not the game.
And that's fine, you can hate it, I cringe at it and move on. I agree with the criticism, but the attitude and the targeted vitriol people have is extremely telling. Like if you HATE the game for 4% of its content.
I don't think anyone who doesn't buy it is irredeemable, or a bad person, or anything like that. I find the non-binary stuff to be cringe and phony as hell, but I don't hate anything as passionately as people hate this game for having it.
@@7PlayingWithFire7Can't argue against it? LOL Even after all of western media bends the knee to it their 41% hasn't moved at all. How's that for some valid criticism?
@@7PlayingWithFire7 its all just BS and corporate pandering to the EXTREME 1%. They even have a coming out of the closet moment with mommy. You treat your companions like babies. And people hate it because it just keeps being shoved down your throat. From what you see on TVs/Movies to your daily life in school or work. Now its being shoved down your throat with every AAA launch. there's a reason why go woke go broke exits. because its true.
Instead of whining on the internet why not become a writer, or just stick to whining looser
@@7PlayingWithFire7 Okay, do you not find it absolutely telling that the majority of your conversation is doing everything to talk about the trans stuff or the nonbinary stuff instead of the game itself?
And really? 3-4% contains the problematic stuff? That is just a blatant lie. The game is a preachy as everyone expected it to be with all the expected problems. Ugly characters, terrible writing, no dark themes, an insistence on pronouns and gender politics. For gods sake, they have shit like the "Pulling a Barv" scene or a character going "You don't get to tell me what I am.".
You are absolutely lying when you say it is 4% of its content that is the problem.
If steam db is the metric - Starfield - 330k peak on steam. 3M copies sold on PC. Where does it leave new DA ? 500k copies sold on PC? Yeah, amazing success. Reason - this title is non-buynary for many many people who are tired of DEI.
First at all, we don't have Starfield numbers. We have an estimate of 4,1m, and that's it. The 3m thing was old, and sales for that game are irrelevant because it was a day one Game Pass release, so most people played it there, and the only other platform where you had the game was the Xbox itself.
Second, there's way more to sales than just peak numbers. DA The Veilguard had multiple peaks already, with the last one being almost at 90k, so it's not like one of those games that have a huge peak of players and lose it the other day. It's looking fine so far. The Witcher 3, to use an example, had a peak of 103k players, not much better than this game, and much worse than Starfield, but sold 50 million copies. First week? Only 1.7 million copies, and that's the thing. This game is on its way to reaching good numbers, but people are focusing so much on how well it's doing the first week and how many people are playing it just to say "I told you so". I get it, the dialogue sucks. It's inclusive, woke trash that I wish could fail to send a message, but it doesn't look like that's happening now.
@@joseijosei Your point about gamepass doesn't help to support your point as you think it does, it actually hurts your argument.
@@methdxman No, it truly does. We know the vast majority of the people didn't buy the game because by the time there were 1 million concurrent players among all platforms Steam had around 300k, and also, Game Pass ON PC ALONE had nearly half the total playing hours. Keep in mind this is normal because by the point that peak was there most people who got it on PC weren't returning the game, so they paid for it and were actually going to play it, while on Game Pass people didn't need to. They have other things that money they paid got them, which still makes Microsoft money. It was driving subscribers for a long time, which is what makes Xbox money and the reason why they are focusing so much on pushing Game Pass.
Microsoft's business model is to keep players interested on Game Pass, which makes an insane amount of money. Staefield is there as a product that can stay on Game Pass for ever. Remember, they were willing to pay around the development cost of Jedi Survivor, which was 300 million just to have it on Game Pass, or pay 12 million to 15 million a month for an old game that still relevant like GTA V, which was even given for free on its Premium Edition on PC already. With 5 million people paying $10 a month (I know it costs more, but I should use 15 to avarage things anyways so 10 to avoid people crying), for 6 months, they would be making that money back. Make it 30 million and you have 1.8 billion dollars, and this is without anyone taking a 30% cut, or distribution cost, or anything like that. You can not tell how successful Starfield was just based on sales, because the people who made Starfield don't ever need sales to make the game successful.
taking jedi survivor for comparins gives a skewed result considering the game was completely broken on pc and would probably have gotten better player numbers if it wasnt
update:
almost a week after this video was made and journalists are deleting support on social media for this game now that the writing is on the wall for them. they always see the writing last after us, dont they? funny how that works in an echo chamber.
I still don't think it's a massive failure. It still has 51k concurrents and is in the top 200 all-time peak concurrent of all time on Steam.
There are problems with the game that have been called out, but I still don't think that the steam number = failure from a sales standpoint. That's where I differ.
@@DestinL its reported to have sold less than a 500k (with over 30k in refunds). No word from bioware otherwise. Not even a simple "wooo we sold 1 million units". Furthermore, it's an RPG. Most RPGs are around 50 hours in length. Most likely it will take 2 weeks for people to actually play it and beat it if they are putting in 2-4 hours a day. The same 50k that were playing it on launch week are probably the same 50k playing it today. In other words, by end of November there will most likely be no one playing it.
@@DestinL i mean its all relative. in what world does the most popular fantasy franchise in vg history, apart from The Elder Scrolls, get as low as numbers as that? if this was an "indie" game that cost $50m, it would be a huge success. but whether its commercial or critical, its a failure. not all failures need to be Concord levels. if i am making bets, i would say EA will shut down or "rename" the studio after this. if they do, then we both have our answer.
@@DestinL If the game didn't hit 1 million players on opening weekend on steam, it failed. because if peak is 70k... after launch? 70k times 70 bucks, even if its just a fraction of the people who bought the game, doesnt even scratch the surface of production costs. Now you can look at a game like Wukong or Balders gate 3, which both still have more players then veilguard playing currently, and we saw their peaks. Its pretty easy to see when a game does well.... This did not, stop covering up for these companies... BE A JOURNALIST!!!! REMAIN NEUTRAL!!!
For those saying the game isnt an flop or bombed lets introduce them to ROI. The idea behind ROI is that an million dollar investment would result in 1.5 or 2.0 so between 1.5 and 2 million, not only for the time investment but also effort. When talking about an 200M (at bare minimum due to heavy marketing budget, 10 years of AAA development and time ) the ROI will be atleast 2 or even up to 3 based on various leaks such as the imnoniac document leak. I dont see an world where this game revenue wise making 400 or even 600M. It would need to sell 10M copies and that might be true in an few years but EA wants that money right now after wasting an decade on this investment. The studio bioware is gonna close down or an major course correction is incoming in terms of layoffs, dont even think mass effect team is safe. Its the same for spidermid2, the ROI on 300M is close to an billion dollars and no way in hell its getting that so what is the solution? bring it to steam to sell more copies.
It's been in development for two console generations. 85k players is not good, it needed wukong numbers with that amount of investment
What game has Wukong numbers tho?
Wukong is an anomaly, no game NEEDS those sort of numbers to succeed except GTA.
@@themightyant.The last DA game came out 10 years ago, this should have been a massive success. The game doesn't look bad but it doesn't look like a DA game and the dialogue they've been showing us through youtube is just way too cringy lol.
Wukong numbers is a bit much. Plus Wukong was definitely a more PC focused game, definitely more so than Veilguard (especially with China being in the equation). The people that play Veilguard are definitely more in line with console players, such as the Switch. Nevertheless, you have to consider that this game had 9 to 10 years of development time, that is absurdly long and two years more than Concord. This game needs to do Starfield good, which took 7-8 years to produce, but at least got like 330k+ on steam and I think an overall revenue of $657 million. No idea if that includes Game Pass or not but regardless in terms of revenue, that's good and more than enough to offset the development time and costs. No one knows the costs of Veilguard but a decade long dev cycle could not have been cheap with the amount of progress that had to be throw away and restarted. I think Veilguard will still do well and may even recoup costs but I don't think it will be for a while without getting at least breaking 200k concurrent players, as a comparison.
Wukong 2mil concurrent peak, Veilguard 89k...less than 10%...for a 10 yr in development multi hundred million dollar game, sure, very successful, so successful the publisher has already shut down DLC possibility.
They lost me once I saw the push up scene...
Btw, games like DA Veilguard are the reason why Game pass must exist
therers alot more scenes like that, arguably worse than that actualy...
@@whytry4682 Have you seen the codex entry? Its even worse
$60 x 400k x 70% = $16.8m
Far below the conservative estimate of development cost of $200m
How is the conservative estimate cost 200mill? Got any sources for that? Based on what metrics?
@@7PlayingWithFire7200 mil is the LEAST you need to develop a modern day AAA game. In all likelihood BW spent a lot more than just 200.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 come on… even Concord costed over $200m to develop
@@7PlayingWithFire7
I think it's accurate to say this is the minimum cost with Veilguard's decade long dev cycle, not to mention the game had to cancelled and rebooted at least once. This is a stretch but I think the game is selling for $60 on steam because the game doesn't have enough content to warrant a $70 "AAA" label. This likely means that most of the actually development happened in the latter half of the dev cycle and everything before it was scrapped. Dreadwolf was renamed to Veilguard in 2022 so I'm thinking Veilguard's actual development time was like 3-4 years.
@@johnsnowden3769 "Doesn't have enough content to warrant 70 bucks" what? This game is longer than all of Sony's sad dad games (last of us, god of war), and has the same amount if not more content than the spider-man game. In fact its very comparable to god of war, it even seems they based their entire game design on God of War 2018. Yet somehow everyone praises that game for the exact amount of depth in combat, the exact amount of freedom in levels, and similar amounts of extra content.
They first started making a dragon age 2 style game to follow-up inquisition, called project Joplin. This game was scrapped, as the team was moved on to work on Anthem.
Then after Anthem, they started working on Dreadwolf, as a live-service game, but during the first 1-2 years they convinced the execs to let them make a single player game instead. They then repurposed the game to be purely single player, probably moving over a lot of initial work such as combat, loot economy, statuses, talent builds, enemy encounter designs etc. So yes, veilguard's actual development was probably not longer than 3-4 years. The claims that it cost 250 dollars is absolutely based on nothing.
No studio had a full staff actively working on veilguard for 10 years, which is what all the propagandists and haters keep parroting.
Is it a complete disaster? No, but everyone I’ve talked to that’s playing it says the writing is terrible. The writing is terrible in a STORY driven game. I feel like that’s a big red flag. It would be like if someone said Forza is a decent game but the driving sucks. Dragon age to me has always been about the story, the relationships formed along the way and the people that I sleep with. If the writing‘s bad, then I don’t form a relationship that is deep and meaningful. It’s no 1/10 but it’s a 7/10 that I’ll buy during a 70% or greater Steam sale.
What did your iece say. What abput your other family or friends? What does Jesus say? What about your pet rock? Please tell us more about what fictional people say that we don't know or care about.
You just said “The story is bad in a story driven game. It’s like saying the driving is bad in Forza”…
And then you gave it a 7/10… WTF is so mind blowing spectacular for you to ignore the “bad story in a story game” and only knock it down 3 points?
Review your scoring system bud
@@shykorustotora so skyrim is shit? witcher 3 is shit? I see people make up all kinds of random restarded metric that somehow everyone else has to adhere to, and you all have the same opinion, but completely disagree with eachother's metrics. It's so wild to read.
@ Witcher 3, 96% overwhelming positive reviews with over 730,000 reviews with over 50 MILLION units sold.
Dragon Age: Veilguard… saying they’re not even in the same league is still an insult. They’re not even from the same planet. Shut up retard
Steam started to delete negative/Do not Recommend reviews for DA:V so people have started writing the negative reviews but ending up Recommending the game so that Steam doesn't delete the review, in hope that someone reads it.
That's why you see such a big % recommendation ratio.
I doubt that.
There's a difference between a constructive critical review, and hateful comments.
If the latter kind of comment _was_ removed, it was not due to the criticisms but the hateful disrespect.
Its good that steam removes the reviews from people who never even played it.
Most of those negative reviews are from people who instantly hate everything if there is any "woke" stuff in the games. But they dont know anything about the game itself.
It must be hard to accept for some people that World and gaming will not return to the time where only hetero males were allowed to be the main characters and heros in games and movies.
Tbh i don't think that it is a financial disaster like suicide squad oder concord or something like that. To me it seems more like a sw outlaws thing where in absolutes its fine but of you consider the cost, it seems to be a commercial failure to this time...
Destin, you are missing the point. They are saying when compared to the other blockbuster releases Dragon Age is underperforming. When you compare the sales figures to the top releases this year on steam, DA numbers are not even close! for a game with the backing of a huge IP as Dragon Age should be absolutely destroying the sales charts but it's not and this is the point that they are trying to make. They never said it was not going to sell they simply said it is underperforming which is true when compared to a huge IP.
Maybe, but I'm comparing it to other EA games.
@@DestinL Other EA games never released Day 1. They put them behind the EA Play paywall to keep more money. Now they release on steam to capture a bigger market but remember they gotto pay steam that 30% tax.
Dragon Age is not and has never been a "blockbuster release"
The entire franchise has sold less than 25 million in TOTAL.
Why are people acting like Dragon Age is a big mainstream IP suddenly?
@@linkvagar2336probably because bioware needs a W after there last 2 games andromeda and anthem are a commercial failure.
i bought the game and its decent so far but the dialogue/writing is really weak.
its beyond missing the point the game launched at 27 on the Steam Charts which isnt just bad, its terrible.
BioWare just Ubisofted themselves. It's well deserved, and IGN was complicit.
You know why they want it to fail. people HATE this woke stuff and you know it. People are extremely tired of getting preached at, being told "IF YOU DON"T AGREE YOUR A BIGOT". even in this comment section you just had people say "your a bigot if you don't like this game" or "conservative bigoty". FURTHERMORE no one is allowed any actual criticism anymore. again it just leads to more hate from one side (you know which side)
spot on. also... when did not accepting far left ideology like the sicko gender stuff mean one is conservative?
I see you've recently learned about dramatic irony.
@@TheIandustry ur mom
@@TheIandustry🤡🤡🤡
I dont want it to fail because I care about good combats and this game has it. Get over of your woke obsession...those who complaine everything being "woke" are as annoying ( if not more) than the wokists themselves.
DA: Inquisition took 160m to make in 3 years 2011-2014. Since then basically everything got more expensive, especially in this inudstry. Team sizes have balloned to epic proportions. DA the veilguard went into pre production in 2015 , went through 4 years of dev hell and reboots and stuff being scraped then 5 years of actual development. There is no way in hell this game cost only 150m to make. The low estimate should probably be 250m. Jedi Surviors was a fraction from that. Jedi also sold for 10 bucks more the Veilguard does btw. It compares in steam numbers to AA releases like Metaphor , Divinity OS2 and Kingdom Come 1 , which were great numbers for these games but that is not the competition this game is aiming for. ( you read wilsons quote yourself ) In no shape or way will this game reach 12m lifetime copies of DA:I with these numbers any time soon. And companies like EA want GROWTH so MORE then before. And especially do they want this from the studio that burned millions of dollars on Anthem before. So yes , this is an objective failure , its not concord obviously it never was going to be with the DA IP behind it , but a failure nonetheless.
You literally don’t know the budget or how many copies sold, so it’s far from an objective failure.
@@Extramist88 i know that it was in development for almost 10 years in a 350 people studio owned by a major publisher and that it has the steam numbers of AA titles while being far away from the numbers of AAA titles it should compare to on IP pull alone.
The Star Wars comparision is a bit strange, I guess most people played that game on the EA Launcher not over Steam
it was unoptimized to the point of unplayable on most PCs at launch. a poor console port. its funny how short memories are.
@@EasytheGoon true
You know why we want preachy bad writing to go away like common. We need these horrible companies to fail so we can get decent games again.
Anybody saying this is a Concord level flop is being disingenuous, but I just have a feeling this is going to be a FFXVI type situation where the sales numbers look solid enough, but ending up disappointing. Follow up on almost a decade of BioWare’s failures they really can’t afford a disappointment at this point. Concurrent player numbers comparable to the launch of Metaphor Refantazio and what Baldur’s Gate is averaging 14 months after launch doesn’t scream “success” to me.
People keep saying keep politics out of gaming.
What we are talking about is ideology, not politics.
Much more powerful, hense why people are so polarised.
It literary makes you see the world in a completely different way, like religion.
I feel that this will probably be the norm as the west tumbles around in the current confustion and social upheaval.
Not going to be a fun time for the forseeable future, whatever side you look from.
Keep ideology out of video games? What fkn trash games do you play? It's simpleminded stupid shit like this why we keep getting boring garbage movies and games left, right and center, with absolutely no heart, no creativity, and nothing to say about the world. You seriously play games like Cyberpunk 2077 and say "this should have less ideology in it"??? When cyberpunk's ENTIRE point is to critique endstage capitalism? That Star Wars is good because "it doesn't address any ideology"?? That Lord of the Rings has no ideology in it?
No. What you hate is the fact that you live in a world where someone who DISAGREES with YOUR ideology can make art that represents their values.
This take also absolutely assumes that as a gamer you are not only entitled to play every single video game, but you are also entitled to agree with every single video game. The difference is that people like you, never posessed any media literacy, and you view all the stuff you watched and played before you became politically brainwashed, as apolitical and without ideology.
What makes it even clearer that you do not only hate this game for your own political bias, but the fact that you are just using it as a culture war front to propagandize your own sick politics is the fact that you talk about "the west" tumbling. Literally not a single serious person who isn't either borderline far-right or fascist-russia supporter uses the term the west and talks about it failing. Especially from so called "enlightened centrists" who also happen to love trump and his rhetoric.
Romantasy sells well in general, much more than grimdark, dragon ages had trending toward this with each release
I hope Destin doesn't balance his bank accounts. You can't have profit until all costs have been paid back. Revenue at this stage shows the likely ability of the SKU to reach or exceed costs.
the profit is just Revenue after all the platforms take a 30% cut of sales. If anything the top header could have used a bit of better word play, but yes your right. There is techincally no Profit till the costs are paid back.
@@spartacus18954 do not forget about compounded inflation for a decade
You also have to realize these other games usually sell physical copies well on Amazon and other stores too. Like COD BO6 has tons of console gamers with 11k physical sales last month on Amazon. Starwars Jedi survivor had tons of console gamers with 11k sales last month of release on Amazon. But when I was looking at dragon age physical sales they were abysmal. 1000 in its last month of release. So just because it does fair on steam doesn’t mean it’s going to move units.
Where did you find the physical sales amount for Dragon Age?
We want this game to fail because it spits in the face of everything that made Dragon Age and by extension BioWare so incredible, so near and dear to our hearts.
It is a shell of its former self, there is no depth to anything, there is nothing here. And on top of all of that it is pandering and insults our intelligence.
It also shoehorns in modern day language, concepts and culture that just make no sense in a fantasy setting.
We’re all tired.
It’s such a shame that 10-15 years ago we had such masterpieces and this is where we are now.
Played... you're being dumb
ever notice that the older the pyramids are in egypt the better and more skilled the construction? and they get worse and worse as they get closer and closer to us in time?
like they where regressing and lost all the talented craftsmen?
thats what happened to the gaming industry today same thing different craft, games where simply better and more complete before now. 20 years later we have this shit
@@jamesbargo7590 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤡😂😂😂😂😂😂
You haven't played Inquisition have you 😂 or this game for that matter.
@@Tedi652inquisition sucked 1 and 2 was great everything after was utter trash and if you liked it you don't have good tastes period
Can we get a follow up video when EA announces that the game wasn’t profitable?
I have put 10 hours in the game and so far I have been enjoying myself. I have felt at some points they have some forced comedy.. but overall Im liking it..
Can we get a follow up to this video?
I don't have a dog in this fight I don't think it's a failure but....
What was jedi survivors budget and time in devolpment?
I just don't think this is a good argument.
how can you estimate 150+ million to a game that develop 10 years?
If i had the money, I'd buy it in a heartbeat
Also there is one discrepancy in you’re viewpoint. If there is a massive group not willing to play the game because of issues they have, buying it will give the developers money for something they do not agree with, is effects the game reviews on steam right, because you have to buy it to review it. For instance it already has a filter for people who hate the game.
Also the gaming industry has grown by 98% since 2014 since dragon age inquisition, its 10 years ago, its not a good data point. Star wars also isn’t great data points as they were not popular and the second more recent on was infamously bad on pc
The copium coming from some segments of the internet, mainly Resetera and Reddit, is hilarious to watch. Didn't even hit 100K on launch week on Steam. Dragon Age, being an RPG franchise that was primarily developed for PC and ported to console, should be hitting much higher numbers on the platform, however its sales numbers have been dismal, just peaking at over 80K. By comparison, the smaller budget Dragon's Dogma 2 peaked at over 200K players on launch week, and that game wasn't some massive success or anything. Quite the opposite.
Destin, sir, the reason people want it to fail is because they want it to be clear to financial planners that decisions made in the creation of this game were not profitable, and thus might not be repeated.
That I get. But I think it will be profitable, and I hope that can happen and they still take the lessons
people who want it to fail are trolls and trabspobes, the game is sellling dc despite thhe diatribe of hate
@@TimTams_64
It isn't about the fact it has rainbow people in it but it's how front & center they pushing the rainbow agenda to the point it's taking away from the actual quality on the game.. Cyberpunk has rainbow content in it but it ain't so in your face like they trying to make it the main thing to the point it took away from the quality of the overall game..
@@TimTams_64 So true . A large part of the gaming community are toxic racists.They have a hissy fit any time someone enjoys something that doesn't fit into their narrow-minded view of the world.
Does any of that affect the quality of the game ?
The problem is , I don’t get that old BioWare feel anymore. The studio has been a shadow of itself for the past 10 years. Going from making , arguably the biggest trilogy in gaming history ( mass effect ) to this. It looks like dragon age for kids , it supposed to be dark & gritty with mature themes. I don’t want to be reminded of real world politics in a fantasy video game , we game to chill out & escape the world , not be reminded of the crazy S*** that’s currently in it.
Some of the old Bioware Dev went to make a Game Exodus. The Trailer give off Mass Effect vibe. Hopefully that game would let us experience what we miss from the old Bioware.
@ cheers mate , I’ll have a butchers.
I've seen people claim it's a great success because (at the time) there were 77k players and I've seen people claim it was a massive failure because it had 77k players.
I've also seen an article that claims it's a colossal success because it has over 10x more players than DA:I did at it's launch on steam -- ignoring the fact that DA:I wasn't even on steam at it's launch and was released on steam years later.
My conclusion: people on both sides seem quire deranged.
What you seem to ignore is that there are other ways to track sales OTHER than on Steam. You act like the company doesn't know its own sales. You also act like you know more. The one thing you dont act like is a normal person.
You say “both are deranged” but the evidence speaks for itself. For this IP, this budget and this development time, 80k player base is abysmal. Hell, it’s been beaten by basically every AAA and even some Indi games released this year like Palworld or Lethal Company
Gamers are told to vote with their wallets because sales is the language companies understand. That's why so many celebrated Concord's poor numbers and final outcome, as it indicated the consumer does not desire that sort of product. We can say we don't want games like Veilgard (or any product for that matter) to go in a certain direction until our faces turn blue. Even so, EA/Bioware are going to look at the sales because the dollar is what really matters. Why would any logical company see the need to make a shift in a direction when the consumer's purchase behavior is indicating they are in support of said direction?
Consider lootboxes. While so many of us were complaining about the practice, a substantial amount of consumers spoke in support of this with their wallets, resulting in the practice becoming even more popular. That being the case, respectfully, I don't see the difficulty in understanding why disappointed fans of this franchise are hoping for a poor outcome.
No decent human being wants misfortune for any professional like a game developer to have their livlihood threatened. However, as adults, we also understand that we--ourselves--cannot expect to continuously perform poorly at our place of employment without consequence.
It's certainly polarizing. You either love it or your really hate it. The people who are in the middle are much smaller than I would anticipate, even from all the debates about DA:V the past few months.
I am enjoying the game. Couldn’t care less about the negativity in gaming outlet / news / social media
A few things I want to point out. Dragon age being a western RPG is a heavy PC franchise. That Genre is popular amongst gamers on that platform. That Star Wars game is 100% what your average console player would enjoy and wouldn’t be as popular on steam. Not to mention the abysmal PC performance that steered a lot of would be PC players to the console version. Steam charts for those two games is sort of an apples to oranges comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be Dragons Dogma 2 which has a 228k peak player count. Despite bad performance on PC and being a less popular franchise than dragon age.
Interesting, I felt there was something to the comparison with Star Wars Rebel.
This video will age poorly if Bioware ends up closing its doors
I'm fine with that. Sometimes it's nice to just talk about stuff.
@@DestinL I agree
@@DestinLsometimes it's also nice to do proper research BEFORE making actule claims ....
This comment will age poorly if they open more doors.
@alizaidi2893 Sometimes its nice to see whiny bitches cry.
the flaw with comparing it to Jedi Survivor was that Jedi was totally unoptimized for PC at launch were most people couldnt even play.
Ok i am approximately 11-12 hours into the game and I absolutely LOVE IT! I think the combat is great, the overarching story is FANTASTIC, I also love the dialogue between Rook and Solas, that dynamic is pretty interesting to me, looking forward to more of that as well. The conversations with the companions can be a little silly at times, but Veilguard is leaning way more into the High Fantasy feel, and it honestly doesn't bother me. It's different so i get why some people will not like it if you have actually played it. This game actually gets me excited to play Mass Effect 5, just from the gameplay aspect alone. It's a ways off obviously but still. I find the game really engaging, Do i have some criticisms, sure, but overall i think the 7/10's - 8/10's are fair scores. And maybe my opinion will change a little after i finish it, but right now I'm have a BLAST!
I'm so glad a different team is working on Mass Effect. DIfferent writers, designers, developers.
I'm loving it as well 👍👍
55 thousand on the weekend of release and under BG3 for concurrent players are not numbers that are going to set the financial depts on fire 🔥
This would be very concerning for them and they are prob a little nervous right now
As just a PC gamer I do not care for their launcher or business models. I will not spend money on an EA game. Dragon Age I have no interest in. I played the last two Jedi games. First one on Game Pass and and second Jedi game I got with the purchase of my AMD GPU.
But this game does not require another launcher, does not have Denuvo DRM and runs really well on most PCs without any traversal stutter.
@Kniffel101 Lol you really think people put any effort into doing research for themselves instead of just jumping on the hate train because they're told to? Come on man, you know they don't.
@@willbearheart7919 That's why doing "small" stuff like countering misinformation is important to do, so people who aren't blinded can at least do things and buy products based on accurate information! =)
@@willbearheart7919 Some people jump on the hatetrain cause thats all they see. If you provide reasonable counter-narrative that is just true, some people will actually get over the bandwagon bs
It's quite simple why people want this game to fail.
I believe everyone would agree it's very different from what Dragon Age was before.
Fans of the franchise were expecting a dark fantasy RPG (emphasis on dark) and this is not it.
Whether you like it or not (not commenting if it's good or bad), Veilguard should have been its own IP, in my opinion.
Also, if it sold well it's because of the Dragon Age name.
I would bet money that a sequel of Veilguard would have a lot less sales, because a good portion of the initial fan base would no longer be there.
Hope I'm wrong, but Bioware might have ruined the brand going forward.
The exposure of corpos and their shill media pets is stark. It's a fantastic lesson in why any reviewer with a relationship with the industry is immediately suspect and never to be taken at their word. This includes you, Destin. The only reviews that should be given credence are from those who the industry actively despises, and gives no access to. I'm far more likely to listen to you if the industry is hostile to you, not feeding you access.
coming back here after a week after launch. They never posted anything about passing 1 million units sold. The sale numbers are not good.
Jedi Survivor released in an unplayable state and slowly improved over time. That is an obvious difference. Veilguard released with excellent performance. Mark my words, Survivor was a slow burn due to patches slowly improving performance. Veilguard will be a flash in the pan. Watch and learn.
Lets compare a STAR WARS game to a niche RPG👍🏻
@@linkvagar2336 IDK what you mean by niche? It's a massive franchise by one of the better known developers by one of the most recognizable publishers.
@@yodelingllamas1145it's not a "massive franchise"
The entire farnchise has sold less than 25 million TOTAL
Why are people acting like this is some massive mainstream IP suddenly?
@linkvagar2336 it's certainly not as mainstream as it used to be. It does have a massive, loyal fan base, though. It's not a niche franchise by rpg standards. The total sales don't mean squat, though. Rpgs, in general, sell less than other genres. If you want a massive franchise to play from, I'd recommend the Mario franchise and leave smaller franchises like Star Wars alone.
Okay lets comapre Dragon age the veil guard with a niche game too.
Grand Blue Fantasy relink have 100k peak concurrent players on steam. And the developers say they sold around 1 million copies. (It was released on playstation and pc only, no Xbox)
Its not looking good for Dragon age.
1 million copies sold for Grand Blue is ok because its only a AA game.
I would fancy a guess -- since these big name Publishers only listen thru sales numbers - the argument that "I hope they listen to the criticism about the writing" wont work unless gaming consumer speak only with their wallets. So I guess that's where all this messaging over the financial flop is coming from?
Complete horse shit. That's not how developers work. Why do you think DA2 had action combat, limited budget, and time? Because Origins sold poorly? The combat was shit talked by people who tried it out or played it. DAI went open world because people critisized DA2, despite DA2 being a HUUUUGE success in terms of budget-to-profit ratio, EA execs apparently loved what they achieved with the sales for DA2 cause of its short development time. DATV went away from the open world because DAI, a game that sold like 14 million copies, was critisized for its early open world zones that slowed down the pace and did not let you focus on the actual story and conversations with characters.
The big name publisher does not make the game, they fund the game. The developers make the game. In fact you could say them listening too much to criticisms has been their biggest issue.
EDIT: Some typos
1) You need to remove 30% for steam,PS and XBox’s take. 2) you have to consider how important this title is for BioWares survival and that they were given whatever resources they needed and redid multiple do-overs. 3) Dragon Age is an established IP with a fan base and could have had close to Baulders Gate potential 4) extremists want to see it fail because BioWare chose to choose a side in this ideology war we’re in and made a game with cringy dialogue that many can’t stand. This was unnecessary and could have been avoided. 5) all that matters in there success is if it meets EA’s expectations. No one here knows what that is. If they thought this was break-out potential then this is a complete failure IMO
I missed this at first but he did. He has the Revenue column and Profit column. The profit column is the -30% tax. (probably should have put that somewhere lol)
1) He did, but even if you're right, the game would still be on a path to success.
2) It’s irrelevant. Whether a game is successful doesn’t necessarily affect a studio’s fate; many studios close regardless.
3) Perhaps, but that’s also beside the point.
4) Exactly, that’s the video’s point. I really dislike this game’s dialogue, so I won’t support it. I’d even like this game to flop to send a message, but I can still acknowledge the game is doing well despite my opinion.
5) Ultimately, a studio’s future depends on more than just a single game’s success or profitability. I think what you’re getting at is that even if the game makes a decent profit, they might close the studio if it didn’t make an exceptional amount-but that’s not the point of the video. He’s clarifying why people calling this game a “failure” are mistaken. The discussion isn’t about a studio closing; it’s about whether the game made enough to recoup its production and marketing costs, which it clearly has, so content creators like Asmon are truly far off on this one.
Understanding *why* certain decisions are made can clarify why closing studios may sometimes be justified, even when they're profitable.
I get what he is talking about. He is addressing people saying based on the sales the game is a colossal failure and he disagrees with that. I happen to think he is wrong. My point is that EA will decide if it is a financial cluster. No one here knows if it is profitable. There are so many things to account for with profitability with a studio and it isn’t just THE game. BioWare has failed the last few times at bat with Andrmeda and Anthem. Some of that money has to be recouped, they don’t want to just write that off. BioWares relevancy is being questioned. EA is making their cash from Live service models. Anthem failed at that and BioWare failed at it with Veilguard. This is partly why veilguard started over and took 10 years to make. The 150-200 million this cost to make could have been invested and received a nice return over 10 years. A game that just makes its money back is a colossal failure. Where will they get the money to fund their next game. If they are considered risky they won’t. This was their chance to shine and show they still deserve to be a gaming studio and this is why my opinion is the sales figures are a colossal failure. They will be lucky to break even
6:29 Bruh. Did Jedi Survivor really sell 10M copies? That makes me really happy. I love that game. It is super underrated. Great mixture of Super Metroid, God Of War 2018, Sekiro and Uncharted.
Disaster? No, unprofitable, yes
I’m playing it on PC directly through EA, not Steam. How are those sales numbers accounted for?
I don't get why people who don't enjoy a game want to try and convince other players who do like it that they are wrong.
god forbid people have opinions on something they love.
@@purefoldnz3070 sure, opinions are fine but people don't need to shit on others who buy the game and want to enjoy it.
@@CTJMusic I'm enjoying it but just not as a DA game. They could have easily just created an new IP called Veilguard
@purefoldnz3070 I'm not saying people can't have opinions. I have issues with the game. I think the story is fine but the dialog is so cringe.
With that said I don't spend even a minute of my time telling people who like it thst they shouldn't.
Criticism is fine on the game. You can hate it cause it's woke, or because it's not a CRPG or just because EA made it. I don't care. I just find it bothersome that people try and shit on other people's parade and tell others they are "stupid" for enjoying the game.
It's also strange that people who hate the game care how successful the game is or isn't. Maybe it's cause I have bigger fish to fry in my life.
Totally agree. If you like or don't like something it's fine to say I do or don't like it, the problem is when you tell people they should or shouldn't buy the game. Both sides are equally guilty of doing this.❤❤❤
Well, that's the issue!
According to what YOU read..
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been in development for 8 or 9 years. To sustain a studio of BioWare's size and cover marketing costs, it needs to sell around 6 million copies just to break even. I don’t see how these early Steam numbers of 70,000 indicate that level of success for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. At most, we’re probably looking at 1.5 million sales across all platforms. It didn’t even get 200 preorders on Amazon Canada, for example.
It’s not a Concord-level flop or anything, but it’s pretty clear that this game has alienated a lot of fans of the franchise. I think the biggest reason is the genre change, shifting to a blockbuster, mass-market action RPG instead of a deep CRPG. The second would be the poor moment-to-moment writing. The third would be the art style and tone of the game. And the fourth is likely due to socio-political reasons.
As for Jedi Survivor, that's just cherry-picking. I could also counter that Dragon's Dogma 2 (probably a better comparison since it actually targets the same audience that Dragon Age does) had three times the Steam Chart numbers and only sold 3 million copies. I think you also need to look at Amazon preorders and general preorder leak information, which don’t give much optimism on other platforms.
SO a Dragon Age game. Dragon Age has never been Biowares seller. DAO and 2 combined sold less the Mass Effect 2.
@@aaronlaughter6471 I think EA was hoping more for the 12 million that Inquisition sold, but they are not going to get it. Metaphor ReFantazio is another example that 1000 preorders on Amazon Canada - 4-5x as many as Dragon Age, and we already know this did not sell 6 million either. Between this, Dragon's Dogma and many other games, I think Bioware/EA is not going even break even. Whether this amounts to a studio shutdown before Mass Effect 5, who knows what EA will do but I don't think EA will be happy with these sales.
@@aaronlaughter6471 They were also cheaper to make so the made profits. It is not sales but profit you twat. They were faster to make not having to deal with last decade inflation.
90k-90K peak is amazing number for an up-and-coming studio launching their first AA game.
What do you mean it's a 4th game in a series from a legacy studio and AAA publisher?
I want to bring some interesting facts. Development began in 2015, development of BG3 began in 2016. Spending on development is approximately the same, about 150 million dollars. The first two parts of BG were developed by the BioWare studio, Larian studio was inspired by DA:O when creating BG3. Two very popular universes. And now what we see) This is heaven and earth. I do not want to continue this comparison. The games are at completely different levels. Although the conditions were approximately the same. This is just another example of how good and bad games are made. And no matter how hard companies try to manipulate ratings, reviews and media, players judge with their wallets. And maybe the time is finally coming when these companies will be punished for their attitude towards us - ordinary gamers who just want to relax and play good games...
Wait what? Are you serious? What tf are you basing that on? Cause I've paid attention to Bioware the last 10 years, and you couldn't be more wrong.
After DA:I they made all the DLCs. DLCs were being made in 2015 and released the same year. They then went on to work on a cancelled Dragon Age game, that was supposed to be a smaller title. This scrapped title's setting (and possibly story) was then re-worked into the netflix dragon age TV series that released 2 or so years ago. The studio then went on to do support for both Andromeda, and then Anthem, putting their own stuff on hold. Pre-production for sure did start and kept going, but pretending that Larian Studios, who solely focused on one game (BG3) for all these years, has been in even remotely similar situation as Bioware is absolutely ridiculous. The fact that you'd peddle such a half arsed ignorant claim as "fact" is borderline propaganda.
Like please do explain to me how they shared similar conditions. If you can't, you have to admit that you are literally just engaging in culture war nonsense.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 here my answer
you know why, pretending you dont know is pretentious.
i do agree it seems like a successful launch and comparing it to all the blowout success is unfair.
i also understand projections, but its basically counting chickens before its hatched, its just 3 days, we dont know if it will stay on the same sales trajectory as those other games you compared it too. we should have a better projection after 2 weeks or so, and see if the steam charts can maintain their numbers on normal drop-offbor not. its simply too soon.
he deliberately compared it to games that got released on steam years after the console releases. They obviously wont be high.
The fucking beta for monster hunter is at 450k players. Dragons Dogma 2 was a niche release, had 250k players at launch. BG3 has the same number of players NOW as DAV
Yes. The free beta of a wildly popular game has 450k players. The DD2 talking point seems like the same thing Asmon brought up. BG3 is literally one of the biggest things on earth. I don't feel like these are great metrics to compare to.
Well... yeah, it's a free beta. Duh!
Can we talk about how the Qunari used to look amazing and super badass but now they look all weird? The Dragon Age 2 Qunari looked awesome. Like something out of a fantasy world. The veilgaurd versions look like the sad knockoff version you get off temu.
Until the game sales meet the total development cost there is no profit Destin.
I'm a huge fan of Dragon Age. DA2 was my first exposure and inquisition got me through a rough period in my life.
I pre-ordered Veilguard and have played it every day since launch and it feels like coming home. I love all the companions and the prospective replayability with all the faction choices and how that effects the game. (I'm starting with an elf mage Lord of Fortune and we get a backstory lore drop when talking to Taash)
The dialogue is a little weird in some places but I feel it works with my snarky d'Artagnan-esque chaos Rook.
Also, they went all out on the Ghil'anain body horror weirdness and I'm here for it.
I'm still waiting for the part of the game where I get to punch solas but I'm sure it's coming. I at least get to scream from the rooftops that he's an ass and I love that
If you don't know why people want the game to fail you're purposely not paying attention. People don't want to pay $60-70 to be preached at. They want an entertainment product to escape in. Also, inquisition sold 10 million copies. By comparison this is a massive failure in terms of what it could have sold if they had just made a better game. Can't switch over and control companions, they don't have health bars, and the enemies are too easy, and the writing is awful. And Star Wars was the worst PC port of all time when it launched. So for Dragon Age to be even close to that instead of far past it is terrible.
woo a logical person. ty o7
I think we need to see the budget to tell how well that game did for EA. Also what is the attitude of the executives? Do they understand that making a game three times is unsustainable or will they blame everyone but themselves?
I had a trans colleague who went from man to woman and I had zero problems accepting her. But I absolutely hate how they're incorporating it in every game now to be "inclusive". That colleague did too by the way, because it made people accept her less.
I knew a trans once so I will speak for all of them. Way to go slow mo.
@@couchguy427Wait till you hear it was two of my trans friends who got me into Hogwarts Legacy.
Snowflake
@couchguy427 I'm not speaking for all of them, neither was she.
@@couchguy427 Completely mis-reads the original comment and gets instant triggered. Slow mo.
So "Not great, not phenomenal, but mostly okay" is igns criteria for a 9 right?
I agree with the video. It should be criticized for it's writing but it's total cope to think that 70k players (steam alone) makes it a bomb. You can't just compare everything to Wukong and say it failed.
The things people keep comparing it to are the extreme out of norms. Not every game is going to have breakout massive sales, in fact the Dragon Age series has never had that level of success so this just falls in line with what was likely expected. Even Mass Effect never sold all that high despite being well received. EA knows they have a niche title and they’ll likely expect it to sell within that niche. (Hell the Mass Effect trilogy remaster sold above their expectations and it didn’t sell very high to begin with so I doubt they really view this as a failure) It ain’t a sports title, or a mass appealing blockbuster, it’s an RPG in a niche series and it’s selling as such
@@broderickfoster2107 let’s compare it with DA:O then? That should be fair. So after checking that game got ~3.2 million copies …
Let’s see how veilguard holds up ❤
@@broderickfoster2107 ME Legendary edition released same day on Steam, its peak players were the same numbers as veilguard on launch. EA said it "VAAAASTLY overperformed". In fact that project alone probably made EA fund Bioware for their next 2 games
@@Macheako You mean lifetime sales over 15 years? Origins sold kinda poorly at launch actually.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 hold up ☝️ lemme google 😂
Lots of exact quotes from reviewers in here…
Wish there was more people who played it
It's a bomb. When you look at how long the games was in development, how many times its been rebooted, all the money spent making it... it needs to sell at least 5m to break even. I estimate it will barely crack 1m eventually. And that just isn't good enough. Not as bad as Concord, but still bad. Idunno, how many copies do you think the game needs to sell to break even?
I'm saying it needs 2.7 million copies to break even.
@@robsdroid6856 i doubt it will make it that far.
EA should just stick to their football franchise.
With Delta Force launching on multiple platforms early next year, the Battlefield IP is most likely going to end up in 3rd place and for the top selling FPS genre, 3rd place will amount to nothing.
It is like going from Halo Reach to Halo 4. But much much worse.
Going from Reach to Infinite lol MAYBE MAYBE halo 5 (imo that was absolute trash)
This is an awful take.
@jasonarnold1990 how so? The devs are changed, the art style is changed, the gameplay loop is changed and the story writing style is changed. The Halo Reach to H4 signifies the change of hands at the Bioware who created the old dragon age games.
So I haven't heard people claiming the game isn't selling. What I have heard is concerns that EA limited review codes to outlets likely to give the game a positive review to manage the review scores and drive those sales. See Fextralife's video. I'd be interested to hear Destin's thoughts on that controversy.
Maybe I'll cover that aspect of it. The game is getting hit from all angles if you look online.
If you haven't heard people claiming the game isn't selling then you certainly aren't on Twitter lol
@@linkvagar2336 I do stay away from social media, especially that one
EA literally announced they have no future plans for DLC…..
A hurr durr
@@Macheako They announced that ages before the game came out, and the previous lead designer of the Origins, DA2, and DAI said that Bioware most likely will never do big DLCs ever again due to the backlash that Trespasser DLC for DAI and the companion DLC for ME3 had towards those games.
But hey, easier to meme your propaganda into existance and pretend that's why things are happening, right? Fuck truth, who cares about facts apparently ?
At the end of the day it doesn’t even matter what the game is like. The fact they pick and chose who they gave review codes to curate review scores. That’s just a bad look
@@zigs44 pay more attention. Huge review channels were denied review copies because after playing a demo at an event, they both voiced concerns for the game. FextraLife was one of them. And the fact it got less than stellar reviews from the picked through reviews is even worse
@@zigs44lol not even close. A couple big channels put out statements saying they didn’t receive the review codes promised and by coincidence, the ones who didn’t get codes were also people who had voiced concerns with the game.
@ SkillUp?
@@zigs44 and FextraLife.
@@nastytechniquez9685 SkillUp got a reviewcode. Don't lie.
Lots of people who praised t he previews also did not get codes. What does that say? Oh I guess we ignore that, cause it doesn't fit the conspiracy narrative. Holy hell I'm so t ired of the post-gamergaters and the right wing nonsense of making everything a culture war battleground
People are just mad and complain for everything. It's so annoying, lol. I use to have that same mentality in high school with my friends, we would just sit around and complain about everything because we thought we were being cool or edgy and everyone else was complaining.
The sub Reddit is pretty positive. The RUclips conversation is pure toxic copy pasta as per all AAA. So much hate its ridiculous. The AAA hate train hits alot of games...and modern content creators feed on the negatively!
Yeah because that subreddit bans and deletes any negative thing.
10 years of development, major developer, proven and renown IP this is why the numbers aren't doing great, its the context. Even on steam alone it would have needed 300-400k to be an indication of okay. But my opinion doesn't count because I'm not buying this, never will.
show me proof this game has been in development for 10 years. Cause I can guarantee you that it hasnt lmao
I'm a fan of the Dragon Age series and I'm having a great time with Veil Guard.
There may be "more value" to having a game that is not broken at release is the reason for its success. The game also does all of its shader compilations before it runs to avoid stutters. Here is my take on why this is important. We know software have bugs. We recognize it when we see it. But that is especially bad to have in games because you can't be sure whether it is a bug or you are not doing something correctly because it is a game after all and you are supposed to figure things out. I'm sure every one of us have said it must be a bug when we can't figure things out.
This is a fun game and most people bashing it probably haven’t even played it.
*absolutely haven't played it