If they move the same dev team to "help" with Mass Effect, it will turn out to be slop as well. They will poison the water and bring daddy issues to the game like they did in Dragon Age. If I see the same dev names, as special as some devs working with Mass Effect, it will be a big NO to the game. They will not be able to resist putting some identity stuff into it.
I already turned my back on Mass Effect. It's gonna suck, I have no doubt about it. Hopefully it gets canceled and BioWare gets shut down before they are able to smear their filth all over it.
@@Nex010 true… it’s a casual game because of its woke influence. It has horrible writing that tries everything not to offend or verbally attack anyone, easy combat, easy puzzles and just generally a very soft experience. This ain’t a Dragon Age, but a game tailored for the audience the trans creative director favors.
Former Bioware employees and main people behind original creation of Mass Effect and Dragon Age formed different studio and are working on a new sci-fi game called Exodus. If anyone wonders.
Grand Blue fantasy relink that released this year have 110k peak players. The developers said they sold 1 million copies. Its okay for them since its only a AA game. Since Dragon agw the Veilguard is not even reaching 100k peak players, I'm not be surprised if it did not even sell 1 million copies!
Black myth wukong was also made by previously unknown developer and it had peak player count of 2.5 million. 90k on a well established franchise that's 15 years old is abysmal.
Elden ring said how much they sold. Black Myth Wukong said how much they sold. Space Marine 2 said how much they sold. If bioware doesn't tell you how much he sold, it's because he thinks it will affect your opinion. Oops. They. F@!#$. Looks like I have to pull a "Barve" now.
@@doppelkammertoaster It does, bad games in the last decade usually have these pronoun people behind them and were supposed to pretend the correlation isn't there? Low iq or disingenuous.
Everyone who belonged to the old Bioware are long gone. They began to leave after the release of Inquisition and all the major players who made Bioware what it was were gone by 2023. Even Anthem was more of design by EA committee than Bioware.
Literally mentally ill people run the studio and just trauma dumps into the game. Talentless freaks are recruited bc of their identity EA is pushing for less niche
"best selling EA single player game on steam" no shit, it's the first single player game EA has ever launched on steam that didn't come to steam years after. This is about as disingenuous as when they brought up Veilguard having a higher player count than Inquisition on steam... Inquisition didn't launch on steam until 6 years after its original launch
"No one makes game to lose money", I think most western games companies would not agree with this especially with them mocking their own customers and fans.
They never had any plans for one tho. They announced this pretty early on. Long before the release of the game. Probs because the story ends with DAV. Who knows.
I think this could be the last nail in BioWare’s coffin. 90k concurrent players on Steam is nothing to sneeze at, but given that it took free copies to get there and it’s just keeping pace with what Baldur’s Gate 3 is doing 14 months after launch I don’t see this could be classified as a success.
Even if Veilguard reach 3 million copies sold like some of the other Dragon Age games, the fact that the game costs at least 3 times as much to make as the ones before it already shows it's a massive failure.
@ okay, care to tell me what I was incorrect about then? A couple million units sold is a win for games like what RGG and Atlus put out because they keep their budgets modest. However, when you get into the upper echelon of AAA where budgets are now in the hundreds of millions it’s just not going to cut it. Look at FFXVI as examples. They had pretty normal dev cycles, were critically acclaimed and well received by players, and even had some of their budget recouped by Sony and they still had disappointing returns.
@@Jmerithew87 FFXVI did not have a normal dev cycle. It was in development for about 7 years and despite having a budget of about 60 million, they spent more than double that on the Luminous Engine to make it possible.
It's not just "keeping pace" with Baldur's Gate 3, it's consistently over 10k below it in both concurrent and peak players, except one is a 15 month old game and the other iss not even two weeks old. That is genuinely atrocious. I also like to see the score on Steam as it looks like it's following the Starfield trend where the score starts out good but it's slowly lowering as people get disillusioned with the game
Seeing the game gets 9's and 10's was eye roll inducing as someone who was hopeful for it to do well. Then some of the more trustworthy reviewers flat out not recommending the game. Game reviews, articles, etc are all bullshit now in my mind, minus the 1 or 2 trustworthy sources. I am playing the game and I like the combat. That is it, and I know that will probably get old as I sink more time in. Everything feels so shallow but it's pretty, I guess? Depends on who you ask because a lot of people hate the art direction as well. Bioware is dead to me, which hurts to say because Bioware and Blizzard got me into gaming and now look at them.
That's unfortunately how the gaming industry treats its employees. The best will go sooner or later. Too many hours, crunch, bad pay. What made these companies good are the people working there, and the old guard is long gone. That doesn't mean the new people are bad, far from it. But if you then choose people, that choose people by idiology, not ability, you'll end up with something like this. And I hate it. Representation is important. But how it is done here does more damage than anything else. And now we have both extremes screaming at each other and people focusing on the LGBT+ presentation as a core issue when these people that see it that way can f right off.
@@doppelkammertoaster They're also relying heavily on outside contractors and teams of 1000 people to crank out games in under 3 years now. It's a shit show at best.
i hate to say this, but i hope this game fails. ive seen enough of it to understand that its complete slop, and i dont want to live in a world where this is more succesful than Metaphor: Re Fantazio (intentionally specific example), a game that has a very strong message to deliver, and it does so in a beautiful and elegant way
“Diversity without acknowledging differences is impossible” that was from a talking mouse bat in Metaphor. Metaphor is just a way better game with an emphasis or racism but told with tact and skill.
@@jfkst1 bioware is dead, the og devs left and made there own company called Archetype Entertainment working on a mass effect like game me Exodus which looks amazing
@@halaloe8966 and people like u dont represent real gamers, the ones who just move along if they dont like something, thats what real gamers do, thy dont sit there in front of their pc bitching and cryioing, throwing out facts on a game they havnt evem playied lol
@@ninoroxsox These people are bigots who don't even play these games. They go from outrage to outrage due to their lives lacking any meaning or purpose. Don't bother arguing with them.
@@chaoLirath I think one of the important reasons for representation in games is to show people a different perspective that they probably haven't seen before. If they can see a different perspective & can understand how the character feels, then that helps change people's minds about these issues. To achieve this, the message can't be in your face & obvious. It has to be subtle & interesting enough to keep the player invested in the story & the characters. Veilguard completely fails at doing this. It's so blatantly obvious that many people will never even play the game.
@@chaoLirath Here me out, if companies one day decide to glorify incest between consenting, sterile adults, will you complain about how disgusting it is like us bigots you despise or will accept it because "it makes them happy and they aren't hurting anyone".
Good, let it burn. You have one chance to make a glorious comeback and you mess it up *completely* by adding immersion breaking woke nonsense to your game and let interns write your dialogue. After Dr Who, Star Wars, Concord and so many more franchises trying to shove the message down my throat, I really hope they learned their lesson. And losing money is the best way to do so, right?
First time I came across your channel. Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you ACTUALLY EXPLAINING YOUR CALCULATIONS instead of just throwing out wild numbers. To me this makes clear what I intuitivly already thought. Which is that the veilguard not a commercial success. I would also love to find out the real number refunded copies, but halas we will most likely never now
I've spent all week battling suicide and self harm. Distracting myself with video news as it's one of my passions I was not prepared for the break from the distress I've been feeling with your advice on mental health and wellness. Especially in a video about video game sales numbers. I want to take a second to say thank you as I truly believe you've helped me survive today to see tomorrow.
And keep on fighting I’ve shared some of the dark thoughts I’ve had pop into my head but you can rewire your brain 🧠 but it takes time and sometimes you got to get really scientific on the process. You might be having a reaction to the food you are eating and you don’t know it. I want to encourage you to reach out for help, get a friend or someone in your real life to be your spotter. I mean this with all sincerity, you’re worth living for, and the world is better with you in it.
Yeah, with that announcement that no DLC and they're all 100% focused on Mass Effect that does tell us a few things. However, not saying it will happen, but I do expect layoffs considering the game isn't profitable. But these studios are going to find themselves in hot water, do they try and act like an "ally" or do they try and please their customer.
They'll take pride in creating the best selling non-binary dating-sim ever, even as it takes the company down because they ignored the other 99% of their audience
Surprised much, see what happens when you try to sell a turd as a chocolate cake. It gets bought but the taste is bad. How are the shareholders going take this news, no wonder they haven't released the sales numbers.
According to ChatGPT 90k concurrent players leads to average 1 to 2 M lifetime copies sales... no way Bioware / EA will recoup the 9+ year of dev, + Marketing expenses... Rough estimates will lead to $ 70-100M net loss over the lifetime of the game... Layoff to be expected for the Bioware team...EA Andrew Wilson will handle the butcher knife anytime soon, if EA Stocks plummets...
@@ohnosmoarlulcatz yes, I would dare say even up to 4 millions max lifetime sales...at worse if it flops below you get a nice surprise. But I don't see a world where the game recoup its initial costs...
The problem with Dragon age is that it was an RPG built on many different gaming mechanics so it was a challenging RPG not extreme challenge, but it was low to mid tear challenge and the problem is that since it’s been so long since there was a previous game, they decided that they needed to do a restart on the franchise. The problem is the way they decided to do it is they took all the complexity out of the game and they pretty much made it a babies first at Rpg and unfortunately for them in the last few years, we’ve gotten some decent beginner RPG’s and players are not interested at playing a known franchise at the bottom tier plus we’ve heard people say the games like God of war or guardians of the Galaxy. The problem is neither of those are RPG’s, their action games and players didn’t go to Dragon age to play an action game
@@evan5148 If they hadn’t gotten rid of all player choices and given it Pixar-like graphics then those first dialogue leaks would’ve done it, and that’s for me who should have been an instant sell. And it’s not just being in your face about it, the writing is completely modern
Brian, this comment is unrelated to the game. I just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos in particular your ending comments about hope and positivity. I lost my dad the week after Thanksgiving in 2022. This time of year is even more challenging, and I understand how it affects myself and my family. So thank you for the extra little encouragement. I used to be part of your New World company but have fallen out of hobbies.
🤭It seems like they think if they lie enough, they will believe it them selves.🙄Accountants and Shareholders determine what is a Success and Breakeven is NOT THAT!🤣😂
The field is just so competitive nowadays. Everyone is bringing their A game. So when games like this comes out, it just feels like not much effort was put into it.
I didn't know I needed the message that you put out at the end of the video, but I really did. Thank you for opening my eyes to the fact that I am in a negative spiral that I need to break.
I hope they are paying attention. to Bioware and Ubisoft and understand why these companies have failed. Dont Hire people for DEI brownie points... Hire the BEST people for the job regardless of their race or gender and just make a solid good game and leave the activism to the pink and blue haired trolls online...dont put it in the games
That last couple minutes came outta left field, almost sounded like it was gonna be a Better Help ad, but instead of some scam website it was practical advice, cool.
Just wanted to say thanks for this. A lot of people are arguing that 1 million in sales would be a win and it nice to see some one break it down and crunch the numbers in a calm and respectful way. I love the Dragon Age franchise and I am just sad that for a lot of fans it will always be unfinished because of such a bad game. So thanks again I really enjoyed this.
First time watching one of your videos. I just wanted to say I really appreciate that last segment. I think that’s a really cool and thoughtful thing to put at the end of the video.
Theres no spinning it. The game has very one dimensional gameplay written by people with no life experience to tell a perspective outside of their own, which means no meaningful choices. The puzzles are not engaging. The overall theme is more Avengers than dark fantasy. Theres no real tension between party members - a lot of kindergarten level toxic positivity. There is notbing about this game that is a 'return to form'. Its dead, jim.
Seems BW is already trying to pretend DAV did not happen. Which if I was them I would hope the fans and EA buy that 😅😅. Cause I want some dev team to make a new ME just for the audience to does exist aka not the modern audience.
Would be very difficult to design/write such laws without stifling free speech and making the situation possibly worse. But, laws curbing access journalism might be a bit easier.
Remember, EA has state that any game that does not make 5 million sales is considered a failure. Back when they dropped Deadspace 3, they came out and vocally said. "If this game does not make 5 million sales, we will shutter any future Deadspace projects going forward." DA-VG, has come no where close to 5 million. Not only has it not come close to 5 million but the near decade time span to make this game and Bioware is looking at a loss.
The estimated budget for production alone is 200-250 million $. The marketing-budget is estimated to be around 50-100 million. Don't forget that since the development of DA:I there was a huge inflation and general bloat in AAA games on top. DA:I was around 150m production cost BUT it also had an online mode with microtransactions for additional revenue, this game does not. meaning 250-350 million needs to be made to even break even. Of the 60 bucks price, 37.5 bucks remain (-30% plattform, 7% vat). That means, the game needs to sell at least 6.7 mio copies at FULL PRICE to break even. (Not accounting for local pricing for e.g. SEA being half) So far, the estimate for sales is around 1.3 million in total (generous estimate), based on market estimates across all plattforms. Meaning they are around 16-33% towards breaking even. They must at LEAST sell 3 to 6 times more full price to break even. Any discounts ofc require higher numbers. Can they achieve that? Propably, but it most certainly does not hit sales expectations by a long shot.
Barely doing better than Metaphor and got outdone by the last Granblue Fantasy despite probably costing a lot more than both combined. DBSZ is a fighting game and managed 120K. 90K for a AAA blockbuster RPG in a time where there is no competition besides the brief Monster Hunter Wilds beta is not good. Dragon's Dogma 2 did 228K.
It's common practice to hide your data from anything related to sales, it's a pr move to have illusion of a successful company and the game sell. I remember world of warcraft used to "flex" the number of subscribers they have as a big point in the marketing aspect...guess what over the years everything is private !
Steamspy just updated their numbers and recalculated to all platforms it seems like they're within the region of 2.5-3 mil copies which is about 50% of their development costs.
DAO sold more than 3.2 million copies, DAI sold over 12 million. I thought DAV would get 5 times the nr on steam Dragon Age: The Veilguard made me install and play Dragon Age Origins again and with some graphic the game still is a blast
You are completely wrong. Dragon Age leads with a peak of 90k as best selling EA game so far. For example Jedi fallen order sold approximately 20 millions and had a a peak of 48k on Steam. This is due that EA didn’t sell it games on Steam prior to 2019 and still makes the vast majority of it’s revenue on its own platform.
"They'll have to bend the knee ..." Or they could have just made a good game. BioWare fans are used to progressive, inclusive games. It's one of the ways BioWare has been on the cutting edge and a company worth watching. BioWare's usual strategy backfired this time because their writing sucked. If they had written a good game that maintained the previous world state, the OG Dragon Age fans would have hyped up the market place for them. Instead they stabbed us in the back by eliminating world states and previous companions being mind wiped, and writing really bad, preachy stories. They could have easily done a game with a similar message if they'd been able to pull themselves out of their little woke bunkers and look at the issues from all sides and then write with complexity and vision.
Here's a number that I know is real. On trueachievement xbox, out of 1,1 million members DA: Inquisition, 289,000 members played the game DA Veilguard, 14,100 members played the game. Now you can speculate they sold over 1 million copies all you want but I don't deal in speculation.
Great video! I dislike the woke agenda of this game/gaming in general but I liked the combat from previews so I bought the game to try it for myself. I have never been a Dragon Age fan (I only played like 20 hours of Inquisition). I hope I can get something out of Veilguard. By the way, I specially like the "hope" part of your video! I think it is quite unique in terms of this type of content on RUclips/gaming. Keep it up! You just earned a new sub.
My friend bought the game, and it would not run on his computer. Won't go past character creator on Steam deck. He cant get a refund because he's supposedly played too long, but the game is literally unplayable. Apparently a lot of people are having issues with this. /: Wish Steam made exceptions for broken games getting refunded.
We have to also keep in mind that Anthem had 15 months development time and sold 2 million its first week barely recouped development costs after 2 years(I don’t know the final sales number I think around 5 million) and is considered a massive failure industry wide.
Balder's Gate 3 is quickly catching up to Veilguard on the Steam Sales Chart. It already has more concurrent players... This game easily cost $250++ million to make, which means it needs 7++ million full priced sales simply to break even... If it breaks 1 million sales, I'd be shocked. I'm 110% its target audience and I'm not buying it. I have 600 hours each in Origins/Inquisition and 200 Hours each in Divinity Original Sin I/II. I just bought Balder's Gate 3 after assessing Veilguard as a flop...
No need to translate over consoles, you can obtain some numbers. First, the game is nowhere in the 50 best selling games, still Starfield, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk are there. And on PSN worldwide, the game is 41th most played game. The game floped on console.
How the hell is Dragon Age more niche than Dragon's Dogma? Dragon's Dogma sold way less than the DA series, and less than any individual DA game on it's own launch. It has only two mainline entries into the series, not frigging four with it's MMO being Japan locked only. It was a cult classic in the West, nothing more. It took 10 years for Dragon's Dogma, Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen Remaster to sell 6 million copies. Dragon Age Origin's sold 3.2mil, DA2 sold 2.4mil, DA:I sold 6mil. Dragon Age has sold over 10mil units before Veilguard. How in the blue blazes is it a "niche indie" game but Dragon's Dogma is not despite it needing Capcom to begged for over a decade to get it's sequel?
Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the budget on this game was closer to $400M. You're talking about a $150M budget for Inquisition but the reality is after the fed's meddling with interest rates in 2020 caused unprecedented inflation, the last 4 years of this game's budget likely ballooned as developer incomes increased by upwards of 30%. EVERYTHING got more expensive. There's a good reason EA cut plans to develop DLC for this game, too. They know what they're working with was not worth continued investment.
It's not the interest rates and inflation that's the problem. Veilguard wasn't always the plan. Dragon Age was supposed to be a live service before becoming Dreadwolf and finally Veilguard. The scrapped parts of Dreadwolf are what form much (not all) of the main story of Veilguard. Veilguard is essentially the third game.
1:40 PR can do any kind of story they like, the decidion makers have only one criteria - how much mone did they make. And that will be the only criteria if this game is succesfull or not, nothing else
If they move the same dev team to "help" with Mass Effect, it will turn out to be slop as well. They will poison the water and bring daddy issues to the game like they did in Dragon Age. If I see the same dev names, as special as some devs working with Mass Effect, it will be a big NO to the game. They will not be able to resist putting some identity stuff into it.
@@Nex010 Mass Effect will suck, regardless. The company is BioWare in name only, most of the people who made it great are long gone.
I already turned my back on Mass Effect. It's gonna suck, I have no doubt about it. Hopefully it gets canceled and BioWare gets shut down before they are able to smear their filth all over it.
@@Nex010 true… it’s a casual game because of its woke influence. It has horrible writing that tries everything not to offend or verbally attack anyone, easy combat, easy puzzles and just generally a very soft experience. This ain’t a Dragon Age, but a game tailored for the audience the trans creative director favors.
Former Bioware employees and main people behind original creation of Mass Effect and Dragon Age formed different studio and are working on a new sci-fi game called Exodus. If anyone wonders.
They already did move them to ME.
Larians previous game, Divinity Original Sin 2, had a peak player count of 93k, it was a niche game by a small studio 🤣🤣
Grand Blue fantasy relink that released this year have 110k peak players.
The developers said they sold 1 million copies. Its okay for them since its only a AA game.
Since Dragon agw the Veilguard is not even reaching 100k peak players, I'm not be surprised if it did not even sell 1 million copies!
geometry dash, free to play math game has more peak players ^^
Black myth wukong was also made by previously unknown developer and it had peak player count of 2.5 million.
90k on a well established franchise that's 15 years old is abysmal.
It's not even fair to compare Divinity Original Sin 2 Dragon Age Veilguard, Divinity is a good game! haha
In an Interview for Eurogamer in July 2023, Larian annouced DoS2 sold 7.5 millions, DoS1 2.5 millions.
If the game did well, they wouldn't shut up about it. The silence is very telling.
Elden ring said how much they sold.
Black Myth Wukong said how much they sold.
Space Marine 2 said how much they sold.
If bioware doesn't tell you how much he sold, it's because he thinks it will affect your opinion. Oops. They. F@!#$. Looks like I have to pull a "Barve" now.
cringe comment is cringe.
@@Darinl79 Transcomeback comment is cringe. You need to do Barve.
The whole pronoun-thing doesn't need to be part of this discussion. Focus on the gameplay and how representation is done, not that it is done.
@@doppelkammertoaster It does, bad games in the last decade usually have these pronoun people behind them and were supposed to pretend the correlation isn't there?
Low iq or disingenuous.
@@Darinl79 So spewing fact is "cringe" these day... Alright.
The game IS disappointing. It’s not a Dragon Age game it’s just wearing its corpse as a costume.
Rotting corpse that died with Andromeda
It identifies as DA! Who are to tell it otherwise? ^^
dragon age has been dead since 2
@@ChickenSoupMusic I recently played Andromeda and actually liked it a lot.
You nostalgia zombies need to stop yappin
Dragon always had dei grow up kid
So bad. I returned it. What hot garbage is happening at BioWare?
Garbage people put in positions of power. A few google search ups and you'll see who's running the circus.
Steaming pile of rainbow feces.
DEI
Everyone who belonged to the old Bioware are long gone. They began to leave after the release of Inquisition and all the major players who made Bioware what it was were gone by 2023. Even Anthem was more of design by EA committee than Bioware.
Literally mentally ill people run the studio and just trauma dumps into the game.
Talentless freaks are recruited bc of their identity
EA is pushing for less niche
"best selling EA single player game on steam" no shit, it's the first single player game EA has ever launched on steam that didn't come to steam years after. This is about as disingenuous as when they brought up Veilguard having a higher player count than Inquisition on steam... Inquisition didn't launch on steam until 6 years after its original launch
"No one makes game to lose money", I think most western games companies would not agree with this especially with them mocking their own customers and fans.
0:15 IGN is a meme at this point.
I wonder if anyone over there is aware of that.
Normies and kids will keep following them. At least we are holding the counter culture. Some people wake up, and join our ranks.
They announced there will be no DLC. Every Dragon Age game has had DLC. That tells you everything you need to know.
They never had any plans for one tho. They announced this pretty early on. Long before the release of the game. Probs because the story ends with DAV. Who knows.
What would that be, a married life simulator? They finish dragon age plot in this game, Rook lives happily ever after with their she/he/they lover
They said there would be no DLCs way before release. LMAO.
Must be why BG3 also didn't release any DLCs.... it flopped? LOL
@@Oozaru85 Secret ending of Veilguard begs to differ that Veilguard was planned to be the end of Dragon age.
@@Oozaru85 Success changes lots of things and clearly lack of it didn't.
I think this could be the last nail in BioWare’s coffin. 90k concurrent players on Steam is nothing to sneeze at, but given that it took free copies to get there and it’s just keeping pace with what Baldur’s Gate 3 is doing 14 months after launch I don’t see this could be classified as a success.
Even if Veilguard reach 3 million copies sold like some of the other Dragon Age games, the fact that the game costs at least 3 times as much to make as the ones before it already shows it's a massive failure.
u hve no idea what u talking about
@ okay, care to tell me what I was incorrect about then? A couple million units sold is a win for games like what RGG and Atlus put out because they keep their budgets modest. However, when you get into the upper echelon of AAA where budgets are now in the hundreds of millions it’s just not going to cut it. Look at FFXVI as examples. They had pretty normal dev cycles, were critically acclaimed and well received by players, and even had some of their budget recouped by Sony and they still had disappointing returns.
@@Jmerithew87 FFXVI did not have a normal dev cycle. It was in development for about 7 years and despite having a budget of about 60 million, they spent more than double that on the Luminous Engine to make it possible.
It's not just "keeping pace" with Baldur's Gate 3, it's consistently over 10k below it in both concurrent and peak players, except one is a 15 month old game and the other iss not even two weeks old. That is genuinely atrocious.
I also like to see the score on Steam as it looks like it's following the Starfield trend where the score starts out good but it's slowly lowering as people get disillusioned with the game
The fact that Bioware have no DLC planned at all for The Veilguard tells you exactly how much faith they have in their own game.
None at all.
Yep, and to announce that so soon too.
Seeing the game gets 9's and 10's was eye roll inducing as someone who was hopeful for it to do well. Then some of the more trustworthy reviewers flat out not recommending the game. Game reviews, articles, etc are all bullshit now in my mind, minus the 1 or 2 trustworthy sources. I am playing the game and I like the combat. That is it, and I know that will probably get old as I sink more time in. Everything feels so shallow but it's pretty, I guess? Depends on who you ask because a lot of people hate the art direction as well. Bioware is dead to me, which hurts to say because Bioware and Blizzard got me into gaming and now look at them.
That's unfortunately how the gaming industry treats its employees. The best will go sooner or later. Too many hours, crunch, bad pay. What made these companies good are the people working there, and the old guard is long gone.
That doesn't mean the new people are bad, far from it. But if you then choose people, that choose people by idiology, not ability, you'll end up with something like this. And I hate it. Representation is important. But how it is done here does more damage than anything else. And now we have both extremes screaming at each other and people focusing on the LGBT+ presentation as a core issue when these people that see it that way can f right off.
@@doppelkammertoaster They're also relying heavily on outside contractors and teams of 1000 people to crank out games in under 3 years now. It's a shit show at best.
@@ohnosmoarlulcatz Yeah, but that's a general problem of the industry. It's impossible to manage that many people well, especially creatives.
i hate to say this, but i hope this game fails. ive seen enough of it to understand that its complete slop, and i dont want to live in a world where this is more succesful than Metaphor: Re Fantazio (intentionally specific example), a game that has a very strong message to deliver, and it does so in a beautiful and elegant way
@@soul-5 Absolutely agree. Metaphor is amazing and does have a great message in its story that is really well told.
100% agreed. I don't know what they were thinking. They kind of deserve it.
“Diversity without acknowledging differences is impossible” that was from a talking mouse bat in Metaphor. Metaphor is just a way better game with an emphasis or racism but told with tact and skill.
It is already more successful than that game. Metaphor is trash.
@@samb123078 i love the way Heismay discusses the utopia in the book; clapped in my own room alone from how intelligent and well explained it was
I hope this ends Bioware.
*the skinwalker that pretends to be Bioware.
@@jfkst1 bioware is dead, the og devs left and made there own company called Archetype Entertainment working on a mass effect like game me Exodus which looks amazing
Same, Let's save Mass effect's trilogy legacy
I found out the ending of the game, and yea. I want bioware gone. They've gotta go.
They're a bit like universities - they always manage to be number one at something, even if it's just number one on their street.
Please EA please. Close Bioware. I can't take another Mass Effect from this abomination of a studio.
What do you mean? Experts say Veilguard could be the greatest RPG ever made.
@@nisse18 "Experts" like IGN do not represent the players, take a look at Veilguard's score on metarcritic.
yeah dragon age VG is the greatest RPG evermade by new gen bioware its true but not the sales
@@halaloe8966 The Metacritic score is just pure bigotry. It is the far right.
@@halaloe8966 and people like u dont represent real gamers, the ones who just move along if they dont like something, thats what real gamers do, thy dont sit there in front of their pc bitching and cryioing, throwing out facts on a game they havnt evem playied lol
1.5M is wishful thinking. Also, when you play with the big guys, breakeven IS a total failure.
From dark fantasy to DnD queer fantasy
Wtf are you babbling about dragon age had queer options since origins you clearly are just spouting other people's talking points
@@ninoroxsox
Queer OPTIONS.
There are no options here. You can like it or love it.
@@ninoroxsox These people are bigots who don't even play these games. They go from outrage to outrage due to their lives lacking any meaning or purpose.
Don't bother arguing with them.
@@chaoLirath I think one of the important reasons for representation in games is to show people a different perspective that they probably haven't seen before.
If they can see a different perspective & can understand how the character feels, then that helps change people's minds about these issues.
To achieve this, the message can't be in your face & obvious. It has to be subtle & interesting enough to keep the player invested in the story & the characters.
Veilguard completely fails at doing this. It's so blatantly obvious that many people will never even play the game.
@@chaoLirath Here me out, if companies one day decide to glorify incest between consenting, sterile adults, will you complain about how disgusting it is like us bigots you despise or will accept it because "it makes them happy and they aren't hurting anyone".
Not that surprising, noone wanted to play a 30 hour Dhar Mann episode
Good, let it burn. You have one chance to make a glorious comeback and you mess it up *completely* by adding immersion breaking woke nonsense to your game and let interns write your dialogue.
After Dr Who, Star Wars, Concord and so many more franchises trying to shove the message down my throat, I really hope they learned their lesson. And losing money is the best way to do so, right?
I think an AI wrote dialogues, EA is quite ok with using it...
If this is how the chuds are owned then please own us again. You'll want to spend even more money next time. It will be a glorious own.
Hope they get shut down. They are just going to stomp on the corpse of Mass Effect. 2 bad ME games is enough! Let my boy rest in piece!
First time I came across your channel.
Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you ACTUALLY EXPLAINING YOUR CALCULATIONS instead of just throwing out wild numbers.
To me this makes clear what I intuitivly already thought. Which is that the veilguard not a commercial success.
I would also love to find out the real number refunded copies, but halas we will most likely never now
Price is not 60 dollars everywhere.
In India it is half that. For hundreds of journalists it is zero also.
You have been very generous indeed.
It's a bad game.
In your opinion but I love this game
@@rayosborne8617 watching scenes from the game, it feels like the writer is treating me like I have an IQ of a doorknob
@fusilism not really the game and story are great to me, I'm 32 hours in
@@rayosborne8617 stop botting.
@attilamarics3374 I'm not a bot, I actually generally think vielguard is a great game
I've spent all week battling suicide and self harm. Distracting myself with video news as it's one of my passions I was not prepared for the break from the distress I've been feeling with your advice on mental health and wellness. Especially in a video about video game sales numbers. I want to take a second to say thank you as I truly believe you've helped me survive today to see tomorrow.
And keep on fighting I’ve shared some of the dark thoughts I’ve had pop into my head but you can rewire your brain 🧠 but it takes time and sometimes you got to get really scientific on the process. You might be having a reaction to the food you are eating and you don’t know it. I want to encourage you to reach out for help, get a friend or someone in your real life to be your spotter. I mean this with all sincerity, you’re worth living for, and the world is better with you in it.
I love steam so much for showing us numbers
Yeah, with that announcement that no DLC and they're all 100% focused on Mass Effect that does tell us a few things.
However, not saying it will happen, but I do expect layoffs considering the game isn't profitable. But these studios are going to find themselves in hot water, do they try and act like an "ally" or do they try and please their customer.
It's all fun and games until the next shareholder's meeting.
ye, once numbers roll out, they'll be "goodbye Corinne and the veilguard team, thanks for your services"
EA makes a ton of money on their sports games. This game is a line item to shareholders but not a big deal.
@@yellowbeard1 It's still a huge loss for a well established franchise. It won't kill EA, that doesn't means shareholders will like it.
They'll take pride in creating the best selling non-binary dating-sim ever, even as it takes the company down because they ignored the other 99% of their audience
This isn't Dragon Age! This is some Orin the Red's doppelganger! I bet there is a body part of Dribbles the Clown inside Veilguard.
We have let you go years ago, Bioware! Now we're letting you go, Zombie Bioware.
Surprised much, see what happens when you try to sell a turd as a chocolate cake. It gets bought but the taste is bad. How are the shareholders going take this news, no wonder they haven't released the sales numbers.
According to ChatGPT 90k concurrent players leads to average 1 to 2 M lifetime copies sales...
no way Bioware / EA will recoup the 9+ year of dev, + Marketing expenses...
Rough estimates will lead to $ 70-100M net loss over the lifetime of the game...
Layoff to be expected for the Bioware team...EA Andrew Wilson will handle the butcher knife anytime soon, if EA Stocks plummets...
Generative AI has no sources and even makes sources up.
Remember that the game is also on EA's own store as well as Playstation and Xbox, so I expect lifetime sales to be closer to 3 million.
@@ohnosmoarlulcatz yes, I would dare say even up to 4 millions max lifetime sales...at worse if it flops below you get a nice surprise. But I don't see a world where the game recoup its initial costs...
The problem with Dragon age is that it was an RPG built on many different gaming mechanics so it was a challenging RPG not extreme challenge, but it was low to mid tear challenge and the problem is that since it’s been so long since there was a previous game, they decided that they needed to do a restart on the franchise. The problem is the way they decided to do it is they took all the complexity out of the game and they pretty much made it a babies first at Rpg and unfortunately for them in the last few years, we’ve gotten some decent beginner RPG’s and players are not interested at playing a known franchise at the bottom tier plus we’ve heard people say the games like God of war or guardians of the Galaxy. The problem is neither of those are RPG’s, their action games and players didn’t go to Dragon age to play an action game
They lost me at the pronouns and non-binaryism.
I would have bought it if it didn't have all the woke stuff. The push ups for miss gendering was my straw lol
@@evan5148 The director was mine.
@@evan5148 If they hadn’t gotten rid of all player choices and given it Pixar-like graphics then those first dialogue leaks would’ve done it, and that’s for me who should have been an instant sell. And it’s not just being in your face about it, the writing is completely modern
Dragon has been woke since origins you guys are literally bots
@@ninoroxsox Woke does not equal non-standard, explain
Brian, this comment is unrelated to the game. I just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos in particular your ending comments about hope and positivity. I lost my dad the week after Thanksgiving in 2022. This time of year is even more challenging, and I understand how it affects myself and my family. So thank you for the extra little encouragement. I used to be part of your New World company but have fallen out of hobbies.
For me, I've been boycotting all games associated with EA for a while now and this game is no exception. I have no regrets about it either.
All that time and money wasted 🤦♂️
🤭It seems like they think if they lie enough, they will believe it them selves.🙄Accountants and Shareholders determine what is a Success and Breakeven is NOT THAT!🤣😂
I've been searching for a channel with numbers like these for years. Thank you and I'm staying subbed for this. Great work.
Thanks for the sub!
The field is just so competitive nowadays. Everyone is bringing their A game. So when games like this comes out, it just feels like not much effort was put into it.
Isn't falsely advertising a games success to boost sales credit by deceit and or false advertising, crimes in most countries.
Most countries commit their own crimes
maaaan. so disappointed. I was really hoping for basically inquisition 2.0. would some other studio buy dragon age and reboot this please?? 😢
I didn't know I needed the message that you put out at the end of the video, but I really did. Thank you for opening my eyes to the fact that I am in a negative spiral that I need to break.
bioware's PR working so hard
Steam price varies by country. For example, I bought the game for IDR 649,000, that's about USD 40.
daily player count is already dropping. The game has failed.
Veilguard isn't a game. It's a lecture.
I want to highlight this in my video tomorrow
I fear that what happened to Bioware, will happen to CD projekt red.
I hope they are paying attention. to Bioware and Ubisoft and understand why these companies have failed. Dont Hire people for DEI brownie points... Hire the BEST people for the job regardless of their race or gender and just make a solid good game and leave the activism to the pink and blue haired trolls online...dont put it in the games
Well they do have illuminati propaganda in Cyberpunk. The whole trans stuff and what not is their movement.
Waiting for DA:V to win Game of the Year. Everything for THE MESSAGE
I am surprised it beat Last Jedi Survivor. That game is faaaar superior do Veilguard
That last couple minutes came outta left field, almost sounded like it was gonna be a Better Help ad, but instead of some scam website it was practical advice, cool.
Just wanted to say thanks for this. A lot of people are arguing that 1 million in sales would be a win and it nice to see some one break it down and crunch the numbers in a calm and respectful way. I love the Dragon Age franchise and I am just sad that for a lot of fans it will always be unfinished because of such a bad game. So thanks again I really enjoyed this.
First time watching one of your videos. I just wanted to say I really appreciate that last segment. I think that’s a really cool and thoughtful thing to put at the end of the video.
The games crap avoid at all costs
"sales are softer than expected"
Theres no spinning it.
The game has very one dimensional gameplay written by people with no life experience to tell a perspective outside of their own, which means no meaningful choices.
The puzzles are not engaging.
The overall theme is more Avengers than dark fantasy. Theres no real tension between party members - a lot of kindergarten level toxic positivity.
There is notbing about this game that is a 'return to form'. Its dead, jim.
The same criticism for DAI when it came out. The critics inspired me to BUY it. Shut up about it!
Just sucks the game has no replay value besides the 3 classes. I beat the game and got 94% of the achievements in 1 run... :(
@@TheSushiandme Same. In general, the game is just disappointing. Horrible writing, dumbed down RPG aspects, one dimensional companions.
People keep saying BioWare like EA doesn't own them. Till EA scraped them up BioWare was a great studio.
kudos for speaking of mental health at the end
If they want to save this franchise, they need to give the next one to Larian xD
Seems BW is already trying to pretend DAV did not happen. Which if I was them I would hope the fans and EA buy that 😅😅. Cause I want some dev team to make a new ME just for the audience to does exist aka not the modern audience.
Overestimated low number is called an underestimated amount 🤔🤷🏻
We need laws to ensure Journalistic integrity! And imagine those suckers who bought it on PSN, no refunds there! haha
Would be very difficult to design/write such laws without stifling free speech and making the situation possibly worse. But, laws curbing access journalism might be a bit easier.
Great vid bro beans, especially your mental health tidbit at the end
Remember, EA has state that any game that does not make 5 million sales is considered a failure.
Back when they dropped Deadspace 3, they came out and vocally said. "If this game does not make 5 million sales, we will shutter any future Deadspace projects going forward."
DA-VG, has come no where close to 5 million. Not only has it not come close to 5 million but the near decade time span to make this game and Bioware is looking at a loss.
Great vid, loved the ending as well. Subbed!
The estimated budget for production alone is 200-250 million $. The marketing-budget is estimated to be around 50-100 million. Don't forget that since the development of DA:I there was a huge inflation and general bloat in AAA games on top.
DA:I was around 150m production cost BUT it also had an online mode with microtransactions for additional revenue, this game does not.
meaning 250-350 million needs to be made to even break even.
Of the 60 bucks price, 37.5 bucks remain (-30% plattform, 7% vat).
That means, the game needs to sell at least 6.7 mio copies at FULL PRICE to break even.
(Not accounting for local pricing for e.g. SEA being half)
So far, the estimate for sales is around 1.3 million in total (generous estimate), based on market estimates across all plattforms.
Meaning they are around 16-33% towards breaking even. They must at LEAST sell 3 to 6 times more full price to break even. Any discounts ofc require higher numbers.
Can they achieve that? Propably, but it most certainly does not hit sales expectations by a long shot.
Barely doing better than Metaphor and got outdone by the last Granblue Fantasy despite probably costing a lot more than both combined. DBSZ is a fighting game and managed 120K. 90K for a AAA blockbuster RPG in a time where there is no competition besides the brief Monster Hunter Wilds beta is not good. Dragon's Dogma 2 did 228K.
It's common practice to hide your data from anything related to sales, it's a pr move to have illusion of a successful company and the game sell. I remember world of warcraft used to "flex" the number of subscribers they have as a big point in the marketing aspect...guess what over the years everything is private !
Steamspy just updated their numbers and recalculated to all platforms it seems like they're within the region of 2.5-3 mil copies which is about 50% of their development costs.
DAO sold more than 3.2 million copies, DAI sold over 12 million. I thought DAV would get 5 times the nr on steam
Dragon Age: The Veilguard made me install and play Dragon Age Origins again and with some graphic the game still is a blast
17:00+ great stuff man
Thanks Leo :)
You are completely wrong. Dragon Age leads with a peak of 90k as best selling EA game so far. For example Jedi fallen order sold approximately 20 millions and had a a peak of 48k on Steam.
This is due that EA didn’t sell it games on Steam prior to 2019 and still makes the vast majority of it’s revenue on its own platform.
Anyone else watching this while being really stoked for Exodus?
20 seconds in and I am IMMEDIATELY laughing. Imagine having the balls to say that only making "most" of the money back is a _"continued"_ success. XD
That’s what the gaming media has become
"They'll have to bend the knee ..."
Or they could have just made a good game.
BioWare fans are used to progressive, inclusive games. It's one of the ways BioWare has been on the cutting edge and a company worth watching.
BioWare's usual strategy backfired this time because their writing sucked. If they had written a good game that maintained the previous world state, the OG Dragon Age fans would have hyped up the market place for them.
Instead they stabbed us in the back by eliminating world states and previous companions being mind wiped, and writing really bad, preachy stories. They could have easily done a game with a similar message if they'd been able to pull themselves out of their little woke bunkers and look at the issues from all sides and then write with complexity and vision.
CHUDS = Chad+Stud
i dont see how thats an insult.
I am hearing there are some big returned game numbers too. Sounds a bit like the Cyberpunk launch...
I think esg related business and tax incentives are an important part of the calculation as well.
AAA games - crap
Indies games - fun
Valheim - fun $20
Enshouded - fun $30
Palworld - fun $30
Baldurs Gates 3 - fun $70
One thing you got wrong. Bg3 is $60 and goes on sale enough for it to technically be cheaper.
Here's a number that I know is real. On trueachievement xbox, out of 1,1 million members
DA: Inquisition, 289,000 members played the game
DA Veilguard, 14,100 members played the game.
Now you can speculate they sold over 1 million copies all you want but I don't deal in speculation.
Great video! I dislike the woke agenda of this game/gaming in general but I liked the combat from previews so I bought the game to try it for myself. I have never been a Dragon Age fan (I only played like 20 hours of Inquisition). I hope I can get something out of Veilguard. By the way, I specially like the "hope" part of your video! I think it is quite unique in terms of this type of content on RUclips/gaming. Keep it up! You just earned a new sub.
Thanks, dude and I appreciate the sub. :)
So sad, no one saw it coming 😢
Its a single player game, so why are they suprised, that its not popular? We live in an era of MP games.
My friend bought the game, and it would not run on his computer. Won't go past character creator on Steam deck. He cant get a refund because he's supposedly played too long, but the game is literally unplayable. Apparently a lot of people are having issues with this. /: Wish Steam made exceptions for broken games getting refunded.
mmm i think it is barely 1 million. and at the end of its lifespan about 2.5 to 3 million. Taking the numbers of dragon dogma 2
We have to also keep in mind that Anthem had 15 months development time and sold 2 million its first week barely recouped development costs after 2 years(I don’t know the final sales number I think around 5 million) and is considered a massive failure industry wide.
You're the man, thank you for your message of hope brother. God bless your efforts and all your good energy you put into the world.
Balder's Gate 3 is quickly catching up to Veilguard on the Steam Sales Chart. It already has more concurrent players...
This game easily cost $250++ million to make, which means it needs 7++ million full priced sales simply to break even...
If it breaks 1 million sales, I'd be shocked. I'm 110% its target audience and I'm not buying it. I have 600 hours each in Origins/Inquisition and 200 Hours each in Divinity Original Sin I/II.
I just bought Balder's Gate 3 after assessing Veilguard as a flop...
60k peak concurrent players on steam… what a joke
Great video. Really enjoyed your analysis based just on straight numbers. Refreshing 👍
No need to translate over consoles, you can obtain some numbers. First, the game is nowhere in the 50 best selling games, still Starfield, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk are there. And on PSN worldwide, the game is 41th most played game. The game floped on console.
Honestly, the only thing that matters to me is that i dont spend a single cent on this pile of garbage
How the hell is Dragon Age more niche than Dragon's Dogma? Dragon's Dogma sold way less than the DA series, and less than any individual DA game on it's own launch. It has only two mainline entries into the series, not frigging four with it's MMO being Japan locked only. It was a cult classic in the West, nothing more. It took 10 years for Dragon's Dogma, Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen Remaster to sell 6 million copies. Dragon Age Origin's sold 3.2mil, DA2 sold 2.4mil, DA:I sold 6mil. Dragon Age has sold over 10mil units before Veilguard. How in the blue blazes is it a "niche indie" game but Dragon's Dogma is not despite it needing Capcom to begged for over a decade to get it's sequel?
Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the budget on this game was closer to $400M. You're talking about a $150M budget for Inquisition but the reality is after the fed's meddling with interest rates in 2020 caused unprecedented inflation, the last 4 years of this game's budget likely ballooned as developer incomes increased by upwards of 30%. EVERYTHING got more expensive. There's a good reason EA cut plans to develop DLC for this game, too. They know what they're working with was not worth continued investment.
It's not the interest rates and inflation that's the problem. Veilguard wasn't always the plan. Dragon Age was supposed to be a live service before becoming Dreadwolf and finally Veilguard. The scrapped parts of Dreadwolf are what form much (not all) of the main story of Veilguard. Veilguard is essentially the third game.
Alen wake 2 is a legit masterpiece. If it wasnt epic exclusive it would have sone alot beter.
Agree
1:40 PR can do any kind of story they like, the decidion makers have only one criteria - how much mone did they make. And that will be the only criteria if this game is succesfull or not, nothing else