Duke Nukem Forever Will Hurt Take-Two's Profits, Says Analyst

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
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Duke Nukem Forever Will Hurt Take-Two's Profits, Says Analyst


Sales expectations for Duke's "triumphant" return take a hit as well.

Market analyst firm Wedbush Morgan has trimmed a cool $25 million off its first quarter revenue predictions for Duke Nukem Forever publisher Take-Two, after the game received savage reviews from critics and sold much less than expected.

Duke Nukem Forever has proven unpopular with critics and fans alike. With a few exceptions, reviews for the game have been, at best, lukewarm, with reviewers taking issue with everything from the dated gameplay to the crude, often offensive attempts at humor. Wedbush Morgan originally predicted that Take-Two would make around $375 million, but reduced that to $350 following DNF's release. The firm had predicted that the game would sell around 3 million copies, but said that the final sales tally might be as low as half that amount.

It's not all bad news for Take-Two though; Wedbush Morgan has increased its sales predictions for LA Noire by half a million copies, and says that the publisher will still likely turn a profit, despite Duke Nukem Forever not performing as well as expected. "Of the major publishers, Take-Two has had the fewest 'misses' in terms of game quality over the last two years, and as a result, delivered a profitable FY:11 without a GTA release," said analyst Michael Pachter. "It has over a dozen core franchises, and if it can streamline development, can be expected to increase franchise releases to three or more per year."

Take-Two has stated that it plans to make more Duke Nukem games in the future, but it's going to have to work rather hard to overcome Duke Nukem Forever's negative response. It's possible, however, without more than a decade of baggage and old design, a proper "new" Duke Nukem game might be able to find an audience where DNF did not.

Source: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35674/Take_Two_Estimates_Lowered_After_Disappointing_Duke_Sales.php]


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HandsomeZer0

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Dec 6, 2010
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Duke Nukem has spectacularly failed over here in australia. In EB games near my house it has been reduced from $110 to $68 new. L.A Noire is now $90 preowned. Nuff said on how badly the sales went.
 

Exterminas

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Sep 22, 2009
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I think it is funny how people always bragged about how the Civilization game series was doomed to die because it was not profitable.

Then you look at stuff like this and have to ask "So what the hell is profitable?"
 

-Dragmire-

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Mar 29, 2011
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I think the biggest mistake they made with duke is that they played him straight. He's a bad joke and should have been characterized as such.
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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In other news; grass grows, birds fly, sun shines and scouts hurt people.
 

WanderingFool

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Apr 9, 2009
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If they do make more DN games, than I have five words for them to take to heart.

[HEADING=1]MORE.[/HEADING]​
[HEADING=1]THAN.[/HEADING]​
[HEADING=1]TWO.[/HEADING]​
[HEADING=1]WEAPONS.[/HEADING]​
[HEADING=1]...DAMMIT![/HEADING]​

Thats one of the more annoying aspects to the game, IMO.

I apologize if this ends up a double post, fucking internet connection...
 

ZeZZZZevy

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Apr 3, 2011
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Of course it failed, so many years of anticipation could not have been lived up to.

New Duke games might do better though, as it allows them to build it from the ground up, and maybe they can fix the rampant problems.

or they could make a new IP. Those are cool too.
 

LTK_70

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Aug 28, 2009
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Damn, I wish I could make $350 million by delivering a shitty job more than a decade late.
 

Atmos Duality

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ZeZZZZevy said:
Of course it failed, so many years of anticipation could not have been lived up to.
If anyone raised their expectations simply based on the metric of time in development before launch, then they were only fooling themselves. There was no logical reason to start equating that extra time spent with an increase in quality/content. It was no secret that the game development was effectively restarted 5 times, and it hasn't been a secret since the third engine change.

That's five times. Almost completely from scratch.
The final product has the feel of several generations of development incorporated into it, yes, but with the last generation ending just around Gears of War 2. Knowing that, the game that went on sale had essentially been in development for roughly 3 years; not 14.

Dev-time has a correlation with quality, yes, but then you get into games with "special" troubles like these. I mean, shit, did NOONE learn from the Daikatana fiasco??
 

Triforceformer

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Jun 16, 2009
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As much as I liked DNF and hate most of the guys who reviewed it, I have to say that DNF only came out for two reasons.

1. To bring Duke back into the industry properly and not "DNF is cancelled, but we're making a new Duke game anyway".

2. To bring closure to a 14-year long story of delays, engine changes, lawsuits, and George Broussard being really dumb.

And now all I want DNF to do right now is to sell "Enough". Enough to justify a sequel that fixes the problems DNF had. Horrendous NPC animations, dated graphical technology (Good aesthetic, though), the 2-weapon swap, maybe the EGO system, and the fact Duke doesn;t talk as much as he should. That and most of the "Dated" mechanics that critics say the game has is due to being in development for so long and George Broussard seeing Half-Life 2 and saying "MOAR PHYSICS PUZZLES!". It has influence from every major/"Revolutionary" FPS in the last 14 years.

What we need, like you said, is a new Duke Nukem game that does its own thing. And since George Broussard is miles away from this and Randy Pitchford is known to hit deadlines, I think it's safe to say DN5 will be an on-time improvement upon DNF. For most people here, it may not even be that hard to manage.
 

Unhappy Crow

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Mar 14, 2010
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Well what do you expect from a game that's been through development hell for many years?

Let's hope from the reviews this game has received will be put into consideration of future Duke Nukem games. That and never again go through that many years of development hell.
 

Hitchmeister

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Nov 24, 2009
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"Dated gameplay?" I thought the problem was instead of giving players old school Duke like he used to be, they threw in every modern shooter trope, like cover based play, two weapons, regenerating health, scripted events and linearity. Many players would have preferred some good old "dated" Duke Nukem action.
 

imnot

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Apr 23, 2010
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No really, wow is this guys job basically to say
'The game that did not sell well will not make much money'
 

SageRuffin

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Dec 19, 2009
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I see "streamline" in the article up there. The analysis done fucked up now. I can almost smell the picketers crying about how not just games but development as a whole is being dumbed down.

Why do I have the strangest feeling that I repeated myself in that last sentence...?
 

ZeZZZZevy

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Apr 3, 2011
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Atmos Duality said:
ZeZZZZevy said:
Of course it failed, so many years of anticipation could not have been lived up to.
If anyone raised their expectations simply based on the metric of time in development before launch, then they were only fooling themselves. There was no logical reason to start equating that extra time spent with an increase in quality/content. It was no secret that the game development was effectively restarted 5 times, and it hasn't been a secret since the third engine change.

That's five times. Almost completely from scratch.
The final product has the feel of several generations of development incorporated into it, yes, but with the last generation ending just around Gears of War 2. Knowing that, the game that went on sale had essentially been in development for roughly 3 years; not 14.

Dev-time has a correlation with quality, yes, but then you get into games with "special" troubles like these. I mean, shit, did NOONE learn from the Daikatana fiasco??
I wasn't going for the increased dev time was the sole reason for the added hype. This game was hyped from the beginning, which only compounded over years of development. It's actually the same problem that Daikatana had, in that it was hyped again and again as dev time got longer, not because increased time meant better quality, but because people wanted this game years and years ago (and still wanted it after all those years, aka were committed to the game). Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but there were a bunch of factors contributing to the added hype.