Big Huge Wednesdays
As I lamented yesterday, it really has been too long since last I set foot in Amalur. Sadly, I’m also not likely to get back to that colourful place any time soon; other things are afoot.
The game itself has evidently been selling quite well for a new fantasy RPG IP: 410,000 copies in the US alone — a figure which does not include worldwide sales or digital download sales. I couldn’t begin to speculate as to what those numbers might increase the sales total for the game by, but…would it be unreasonable to speculate that the game has sold over half a million copies?
Okay, so those aren’t Skyrim-esque numbers. They are, however, still quite decent. And reviewers continue to speak about the game in favourable terms.
And wouldn’t you know it? Since last I played Reckoning, two separate DLC packages have been released for it.
The Legend of Dead Kel — evidently a quite decent piece of additional content — adds a little bit of piratey goodness (pirates do seem to be all the rage right now, don’t they?) to the mix, as well as introducing a few new gameplay elements. Most of the reviews of it have been positive, though not all.
<a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/kingdoms-amalur-reckonings-teeth-naros-dlc-release-date-set-april/".The Teeth of Naros, meanwhile, went for a floating city vibe, introducing a new area to explore and new enemies. I haven’t had a chance to try this DLC out either, but damn if it doesn’t look cool. Looks aren’t everything though; Dead Kel appears to be the better expansion overall.
It’s also worth noting that a postmortem for Reckoning was published this month. It makes for some interesting reading, and revisits the issues that Big Huge Games had with making demos for the game.
Big Huge Games has also realeased an inside look at their worldbuilding process, as well as an update on in-game player housing and how it was incorporated into the game. As well, numerous members of the Reckoning team have given interviews over the last little while: the game’s narrative designer and several other team members were profiled on the game’s website, and R.A. Salvatore talked to The Escapist about his disdain for the names used in the game. (He also spoke with G4TV recently.)
All in all, it sounds like life is good at 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, and I for one can’t wait to get back to playing through Reckoning. You know, once I finish working on all the other things I have on my plate.
To be hoenst 410 000 copies for ALL three platform is really not that impressive for a game of this scope, though I could see this improve over the months.
International numbers would be more interesting though.
I understand that they’re having severe problems with releasing patches for the game.
EA doesn’t want to fund the QA, or something like that.
Source: http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/showthread.php?9207-I-ll-never-buy-another-product-from-38-studios.-Poor-Priorities&p=117928#post117928
That, and 38 quite rightly wants to approach the issue of a major patch with caution; they don’t want to introduce new problems in fixing old ones.
Gotta love Schilling’s willingness to be frank about things, though.
This is kind of like Alpha Protocol all over again, except that SEGA never greenlit any further development related to that one…which I don’t think sold as well.
Update: Oh, and I quite agree with the observation that Reckoning seems to have very few major bug-related issues to begin with. Indeed, the game is (I find) rather impressive in its stability.
And Sergorn, remember that the 410,000 figure is just US-based sales of physical game copies. If we assume that Reckoning sales followed the averages, that figure represents about 60% of total game sales in the US.
Assuming the game’s sales saw that average 60/40 split between physical and digital, and rounding up a bit as a guess for world-wide sales, and the game could well have sold 700,000 copies.
Not mind-bendingly huge, but certainly quite respectable for a new RPG IP released so soon after Skyrim.
Ken, your optimism is admirable, but I’m sure you know that 700,000 copies is pretty weak for an AAA game in this day and age, especially one that seems to have had a fairly lengthy development cycle. 2 million would have been decent.
(of course, if Amalur had been a “cash-in” game with a short dev time, then things would have been different. for example Square Enix and Obsidian were fairly satisfied with Dungeon Siege III’s 800k~ sales figure)
700,000 copies isn’t earth-shattering, sure, but the game hasn’t been out for that long either.
And really, we need accurate numbers. 700,000 is a figure I came up with based on an assumption based on 2010/2011 data; digital retail could account for more that 40% of sales now (for all I know), and the game could have sold more that 17,000 copies outside of the US (which is the figure I used in my guess). We just don’t know.
We should revisit its figures after a year, and see how it compares to…say…Dragon Age: Origins (~3.2 million copies sold, across all platforms & all media types, by December 2010).
It won’t have sold that well…but then, it’s not a BioWare (or Bethesda) game, so we’d expect its sales to be lower purely as a function of a lack of brand recognition.
I bet it was more profitable than if it had been developed directly under EA or BioWare.
Given how stable it was upon release, and the number of positive reviews from the major sites and from player feedback, it’s off to a better start than a lot of franchises.
Still, they shot themselves in the foot by letting EA have 100% control over the patching.
I do hope they can do it as an MMORPG.