1.5 Million Bought Dead Space, 3 Million Played It

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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1.5 Million Bought Dead Space, 3 Million Played It



Visceral Games lead Glen Schofield says that for every gamer that bought Dead Space new, two were playing it while logged into Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network.

As a guest on last month's official EA podcast [http://www.ea.com/blog/ea-underground/ea-podcast-episode-2-interview-glen-schofield-gm-visceral-games/], Glen Schofield - the head of EA's Visceral Games division - talked about how the Visceral team had examined the sci-fi horror game's sales after launch. Interestingly enough, they discovered that while there had been approximately 3 million unique PSN and XBL users who had been recorded playing the game, Dead Space had only shipped a combined 1.5 million copies.

Interestingly enough, Schofield wasn't immediately pointing the finger at pirates like one might expect. Instead, the team's first thought seems to have been another hot-button topic in the industry lately: "But there's something there because that means that, ok, there were a lot of used sales. So there's a lot of people when I go out and talk to [them]... it seems that everybody has played it or heard about it or whatever."

Of course, there are other potential factors - people could have rented the game, borrowed it from a friend, or, of course, pirated it. Even so, one has to imagine that it's frustrating knowing that you could have earned roughly twice as much money on a released game than you actually did, especially in this era of sky-high development costs.

Schofield doesn't think that it was a lack of online multiplayer that hurt Dead Space's sales, either:

[blockquote]I think it's bang for the buck is really what we're looking at right now these days and going: 'OK, we came out at 60 bucks and so did some of these other games that had online that maybe people could play for 50 hours, right? Or they had tons and tons of PDLC [paid downloadable content] so they could play it for 40, 50 hours again. Or we were up against Fallout, which was a 50-hour game to begin with. So, we didn't look at it and say we have to have online. What we said we've got to be bang for the buck. Some people could get through our game in 10 hours or so, so we learned.[/blockquote]

Well, there you go, Glen. People like getting more content for their money. Lesson learned, I hope?

(Via Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5308293/why-did-twice-as-many-people-play-dead-space-as-bought-it])

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VincentX3

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Jun 30, 2009
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Dead Space wasn't a bad game, it was short though compared to most other games.

The real miracle is that there NOT blaiming piratcy (I think)
 

scnj

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Nov 10, 2008
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Is 1.5 million enough for us to get Dead Space 2 or not?
 

UnderOath1617

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May 9, 2008
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I beat the game, never bought it.. I borrowed it from my neighbor. At 60 bucks and no replay value you can't prevent this sort of thing. Really, after you play through Dead Space, there is very little incentive to play through it again, and it can be beat in a couple days of small play sessions.
 

Milkatron

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Jul 18, 2008
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VincentX3 said:
Dead Space wasn't a bad game, it was short though compared to most other games.

The real miracle is that there NOT blaiming piratcy (I think)
Agreed. I immediately assumed that this was going to be the work of Piracy. Too quick to jump to conclusions here I suppose.
 

Lexodus

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Apr 14, 2009
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VincentX3 said:
Dead Space wasn't a bad game, it was short though compared to most other games.

The real miracle is that there NOT blaiming piratcy (I think)
Uh-uh. Even though they're a game company, they're still adults, so the real miracle is that they aren't blaming video games :p
 

VincentX3

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Lexodus said:
VincentX3 said:
Dead Space wasn't a bad game, it was short though compared to most other games.

The real miracle is that there NOT blaiming piratcy (I think)
Uh-uh. Even though they're a game company, they're still adults, so the real miracle is that they aren't blaming video games :p
So what your saying is there not blaiming video games for the "lack of sales" on one of there own video games?

Explain how does that make sense, since everyone seems to know that most companys go to directly blaiming piracty on occasions like these.
 

Sevre

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Apr 6, 2009
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God remember when PS1 and N64 games were 20-30 quid and provided hours of lulz? Nowadays if I'm going to buy a game it needs to keep me entertained for a long time.
 

scnj

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Nov 10, 2008
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VincentX3 said:
Lexodus said:
VincentX3 said:
Dead Space wasn't a bad game, it was short though compared to most other games.

The real miracle is that there NOT blaiming piratcy (I think)
Uh-uh. Even though they're a game company, they're still adults, so the real miracle is that they aren't blaming video games :p
So what your saying is there not blaiming video games for the "lack of sales" on one of there own video games?

Explain how does that make sense, since everyone seems to know that most companys go to directly blaiming piracty on occasions like these.
I think he's making a joke about the fact that people like to blame video games for society's problems.
 

Royas

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Apr 25, 2008
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I hope they take from this a lesson that when you charge 60 dollars for a product, there had better be 60 dollars worth of gameplay. For that same price, I was able to get GTA IV, which I've played for a lot longer than 10 hours. That's not counting the DLC. For the amount of content Dead Space delivered, the price should have been about half of what it was. I'm glad to see it seems they are realizing this might be the problem, and not piracy.
 

John Funk

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Dec 20, 2005
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Sevre90210 said:
God remember when PS1 and N64 games were 20-30 quid and provided hours of lulz? Nowadays if I'm going to buy a game it needs to keep me entertained for a long time.
No, actually. I seem to recall plenty of N64 games going for 70-80 USD. :p
 

VincentX3

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scnj said:
VincentX3 said:
Lexodus said:
VincentX3 said:
Dead Space wasn't a bad game, it was short though compared to most other games.

The real miracle is that there NOT blaiming piratcy (I think)
Uh-uh. Even though they're a game company, they're still adults, so the real miracle is that they aren't blaming video games :p
So what your saying is there not blaiming video games for the "lack of sales" on one of there own video games?

Explain how does that make sense, since everyone seems to know that most companys go to directly blaiming piracty on occasions like these.
I think he's making a joke about the fact that people like to blame video games for society's problems.
Oh sorry, my bad then.
I thought he was actually serious about "blaming videos games" for something like this.
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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I was interested in Dead Space but for various reasons didn't pick it up when it was first released. Saw it a couple months ago at a drastically reduced price - 20 bucks, as I recall - and decided to give it a go. It would've been a solid game at full price but based on what I actually paid it was absolutely fantastic.

Schofield is right, even though it's hardly a groundbreaking idea. Dead Space was a blast but am I going to be happy paying the same price for it as I did for Fallout 3? Very, very few games are so stunningly good that they can get away with charging full pop for eight hours of play.

I've begun to make a habit of waiting to buy most new games unless it's something I absolutely gotta have on launch day. Picked up Mirror's Edge for 17 bucks a couple weeks ago; paid the same price for Mass Effect a few months back. I missed out on the original wave of excitement, sure, but I also paid a quarter of the price, ultimately got to enjoy the same experience as everyone else, and by the time I got around to them most of the bugs and glitches had been patched out.

It's getting harder and harder to justify paying launch prices for games. The cost of producing "AAA" titles keeps skyrocketing but the games themselves, while prettier than ever before, just don't justify the resulting high retail prices.
 

Summerstorm

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Sep 19, 2008
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And there is the question... Why the hell would you play a pirated game in an online comunity? No decency? If you really have to pirate a game, you do not advertise that when you connect to whatever. Or is it that different with you console-guys?

Do they do not fear, that they record it for the day, when they are allowed to use it against you?

Also it is just rude: "HERE LOOK I AM PLAYING YOUR GAMES WITHOUT PAYING!!!"

P.S. Also. Dead Space wasn't so good, in my opinion.
 

Susan Arendt

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Jan 9, 2007
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Royas said:
I hope they take from this a lesson that when you charge 60 dollars for a product, there had better be 60 dollars worth of gameplay. For that same price, I was able to get GTA IV, which I've played for a lot longer than 10 hours. That's not counting the DLC. For the amount of content Dead Space delivered, the price should have been about half of what it was. I'm glad to see it seems they are realizing this might be the problem, and not piracy.
Sure, but what you consider $60 worth of gameplay and what I consider $60 worth may be two vastly different things. I, personally, wouldn't consider the addition of online play an increase to Dead Space's value, ergo it wouldn't help justify the price tag. You may feel differently. The trouble with horror games is that they tend not to stand up to replays -- part of their intrinsic value comes from their ability to scare you, and the more you play the game, the less likely you are to be scared.

I personally find Dead Space to be worth the full asking price, but I also don't mind short games and have a particular penchant for horror. I do think that knocking off $10 as an acknowledgment that the player's time with the game was going to be relatively brief would've helped EA earn a few more sales, but when a game is short, folks are going to rent them or borrow from friends -- no matter what the price is. I mean, why wouldn't they? If you can be done with a game in a weekend, what incentive is there to not just use a loaner?