Fallout 4 Has Sold 12 Million Copies

[Lightknight]

The internet is full of people complaining. People routinely bomb games like this at the beginning and it levels out later. Bomb them as in literally organizing people en masse to go online and "teach them a lesson". Or did you forget Skyrim's launch?

People routinely bomb broken games that are full of bugs and the reviews get better when they fix the bugs? who would have thought!

Its also interesting to see how more and more detached from their audience critics are becoming.

Huge sale records don't really lie. Though, it does depend on how many of those were preorders of course, but on STEAM right now it is clocking at around 250k players at this moment. That's a lot. That's more than Team Fortress is doing.

You think they're detached but the game is a hell of a lot of fun. The only "bug" I've run into was a character appearing on the roof of a building in a settlement I built. I could either just leave and come back later to find them properly placed or I could build a staircase to their level. Either way, I haven't experienced anything really bad and have just been loving exploring and building.

Sorry if you want it to be perfect. But none of these games ever have. Skyrim, STALKER, even Witcher 3. They all launched with a large number of game breaking bugs that were patched later. It is the nature of massive and complex anythings.

good that you havent experienced problems, but your situation is not representative of most in this case.

How would you know? Only people with problems are going to be going to the internet. Those of us without problems are going to be playing the game. The only reason why I'm not playing is that little thing I have to do five days a week to keep the power going so I can go home and play.

I've already gotten significantly more entertainment out of this than any standard game offers.

But then again, I also rarely go for a Bethesda game's story line. I usually dick around everywhere else and do the story line late.

And FYI, Steam's user reviews are incongruent with the metacritic reviews. Got any explanation for that? They put it around 80%. By your argument it would seem that fans are out of touch with fans.

 

[Lightknight]

So what you probably mean is that Bethesda didn't sell 12 million copies to the end consumer.

Look, the bottom-line is that "shipping numbers =/= sales numbers", everyone who knows their basic economics knows this. It might be a pet peeve of mine, but it is such a cheap way for a company to generate empty hype and so many, like the article writer, readily and uncritically swallows the bait.

NO, it literally does mean sale numbers to the publisher. The retailer buys the game from the publisher so the publisher SELLS the game to the retailer. It just doesn't necessarily mean sales to the end consumer. However, retailers have been doing this for a long time. Sales that high means that the preorders were crazy high and demand presented the need for that many copies.

So your pet peeve is unfounded. Games shipped is the first sale of the supply line. Do you honestly believe this is what happens?

1. Every game company has personal ties with retailers and just magically sends them millions of copies for free.
2. Retailers then sell the game and pay the publisher back?

No. That would be ridiculous. Instead it's like this:

1. Retailers pay the publisher for X number of games. In this moment, the publisher gets all the money they're going to get from the sale of those X number of copies.
2. Retailers then sell the games at a slight markup (making the bulk of their profit later when people start to trade in the games and they can sell a preowned copy for a significantly higher profit margin, sometimes off of the same copy multiple times).
3. The publisher does not get any money from the secondary sales. Some retailers might negotiate a certain number of buybacks if they don't sell but that isn't as common.

When we're discussing how many copies the publisher has sold and how much money they made, number shipped IS number sold and there's not ifs ands or buts there.

Quick question. Have you actually read the article Bogos wrote? Cause if you did, you'd see that he himself fucked up and thought the game already sold (actually sold, not shipped) that much, with him talking about digital sales being a part of it. You know, stuff that wouldn't be counted when you're talking shipped copies.

Though it's nice to see that you immediately thought that the people who brought it up were stupid and needed your roundabout baby explanation to understand what shipping is. Turns out they're more perceptive than you are.

Shipped IS sold. Bethesda DID sell those games.

What is the confusion here? Bethesda has sold 12 million copies of the game. It's just that retailers are the ones who bought them.

We will never know how many copies they then sell to the end consumer. That isn't a metric we can reasonably track so all we follow is how many games Bethesda has sold and that's synonymous with games shipped except in the case of free copies. Any time you ever hear number of copies sold, it's always the number of copies sold from the publisher to the retailers, aka the number of games shipped.

It's not that I think anyone here is stupid. Just wrong. Ignorant would be a better term if not for the baggage of an insult that it conveys when it really just means lacking information rather than a lack of intelligence.

 

[Strazdas]

How would you know? Only people with problems are going to be going to the internet. Those of us without problems are going to be playing the game. The only reason why I'm not playing is that little thing I have to do five days a week to keep the power going so I can go home and play.

I've already gotten significantly more entertainment out of this than any standard game offers.

But then again, I also rarely go for a Bethesda game's story line. I usually dick around everywhere else and do the story line late.

And FYI, Steam's user reviews are incongruent with the metacritic reviews. Got any explanation for that? They put it around 80%. By your argument it would seem that fans are out of touch with fans.

The problems are not new, they were around in Skyrim. The buggyness of the game is not being put up for debate, the debate happens on whether the bugs are a significant detractor or not.

I already adressed Steam reviews. actually read some of them isntead of looking at raw number. the top rated (as in most people agree with them) reviews are either negative or positive that claim the game is very buggy but they liked it anyway. Sadly steam has no "average" rating so a lot of people go for positive when in review they mention they would go for average instead.

 

[Lightknight]

How would you know? Only people with problems are going to be going to the internet. Those of us without problems are going to be playing the game. The only reason why I'm not playing is that little thing I have to do five days a week to keep the power going so I can go home and play.

I've already gotten significantly more entertainment out of this than any standard game offers.

But then again, I also rarely go for a Bethesda game's story line. I usually dick around everywhere else and do the story line late.

And FYI, Steam's user reviews are incongruent with the metacritic reviews. Got any explanation for that? They put it around 80%. By your argument it would seem that fans are out of touch with fans.

The problems are not new, they were around in Skyrim. The buggyness of the game is not being put up for debate, the debate happens on whether the bugs are a significant detractor or not.

I already adressed Steam reviews. actually read some of them isntead of looking at raw number. the top rated (as in most people agree with them) reviews are either negative or positive that claim the game is very buggy but they liked it anyway. Sadly steam has no "average" rating so a lot of people go for positive when in review they mention they would go for average instead.

Reading any individual reviews is just getting anecdotal evidence. Aggregate data is the only thing painting an overall picture.

The point is that the game is fun and people enjoy it. It's just far from bug free.

Can someone tell me the last time a highly scored AAA game was released and commenters of Internet DIDN'T talk shit about cus... I'm struggling here.

Witcher 3

Actually, if you'll turn back the time machine and run an internet search for Witcher 3 bugs you'll see a variety of articles on the early game breaking bugs that were fixed and people were very much upset about. I just think there was so much to do in Witcher that people weren't finding them any time soon.

 

[Something Amyss]

Quick question. Have you actually read the article Bogos wrote? Cause if you did, you'd see that he himself fucked up and thought the game already sold (actually sold, not shipped) that much, with him talking about digital sales being a part of it. You know, stuff that wouldn't be counted when you're talking shipped copies.

He didn't fuck up. Shipped copies are sold to the retailers. He was literally just explaining why Bogos' article isn't wrong. Shipped copies are sold copies, and this is the only metric that is routinely used in gaming.

And you've already had this explicitly explained to you.

 

[Lightknight]

What is the confusion here? Bethesda has sold 12 million copies of the game. It's just that retailers are the ones who bought them.

We will never know how many copies they then sell to the end consumer. That isn't a metric we can reasonably track so all we follow is how many games Bethesda has sold and that's synonymous with games shipped except in the case of free copies. Any time you ever hear number of copies sold, it's always the number of copies sold from the publisher to the retailers, aka the number of games shipped.

It's not that I think anyone here is stupid. Just wrong. Ignorant would be a better term if not for the baggage of an insult that it conveys when it really just means lacking information rather than a lack of intelligence.

Again, have you read the article? Your whole argument about shipping equating to sales from a publishers POV is irrelevant when the writer of this article talks about sales as stuff that people bought from stores. (Hence him talking about digital sales. Why the hell would he talk about digital sales being part of the 12 mill if he was actually aware that he was talking about a metric that only covers physical units?)

The confusion here comes from the fact that I'm arguing inaccuracies in the article, most likely born from the writer not knowing what the fuck. You're arguing about shipping vs sales from a publisher perspective for reasons beyond me.

Have you read it? At no point did he state that Bethesda sold the copies to consumers. What's hilarious is that neither Bogos nor the article he linked to used the word "shipped". They all consistently said sold. So you thinking that he is talking about "shipping" when he doesn't further illuminates which of the two of us may actually not have read the article. *wink wink*

The people that have been getting corrected in this thread have been making the claim that the sales are just the number "shipped" and saying shipped does not mean "sold" and as I stated it very much does. That is the only number we ever collect and are ever told when discussing sales stats of games because there is no group collecting data on retail sales of specific games because they aren't going to take the time to report their sales to whatever body tries to get the data. Regardless, it doesn't actually matter how many consumers buy it because the publisher has already been paid at that moment. So if you want to know how much they made then retail sales are irrelevant.

Sorry if you just want to gripe about the article. But it was legit and on point. Bogos ftw. Also sorry if you want to defend people who don't understand that every game shipped is a game sold for a publisher. They're just wrong and defending them isn't changing that fact.

 

[Lightknight]

Perhaps you can explain what term you think Bogos said that would exclude digital sales. Bogos only used the term "sold". Not "shipped".

Okay, so just ignore the part where talks about DIGITAL SALES being included in a number that solely means PHYSICAL units.

...While a lot of those sales were physical copies...

A mistake he would not have done if he actually meant what you think he meant when he wrote sold. Sure doesn't look like the thing someone who was thinking about shipped copies would write.

Listen, I don't know if I'm conveying this correctly (most likely not), but I get what you're arguing with the whole ship=sale from a publisher standpoint. But I'm sure that you don't seem to get what my problem is with the article. So let's just agree to disagree.

Also, do you know what the NPD is? Might wanna look it up.

"Sales" means physical numbers only? Again, at no point does Bogos or the article linked to it state the term "shipped". That's what the posters in this thread were claiming the sales were, not what Bogos was saying.

If you're going to conclude that number of games sold has to be physical then you're going to have to do some footwork in redefining a term. Maybe you should also follow the link to Bethesda's press statement while you're at it. Then you'll see that Bethesda was saying they sold 12 million copies at launch and broke down the sales into number of digital copies and physical copies.

Not sure what NPD is, if you meant NDP then that includes goods and services sold. If you're talking about NPD Group then they do include some average of retail sales but they aren't able to record everything so I'm not sure what your point is. Their numbers aren't reported on and aren't used in articles or pretty much anything else. They're for individual retailers to find out if they're being competitive. Not to convey a picture of national sales. Not only that but they are only for Canada and North America. Do you honestly think that every single retailer reports to NPD group any time they sell any game? That they log into a computer and type the name and freely give up corporate information at that detail? No, they have a number of partnerships with individual stores and perhaps some larger ones that they have brokered and specifically negotiated. In fact, according to their wiki they only cover about 60% of the market with large gaps like Toys R Us and Sam's club (laugh about Sam's club if you want but this is actually a place game store owners will go to purchase consoles and games for selling to the consumer and could constitute a significant missed target). They also don't state if they have any ties with Steam either and considering how tight lipped Steam is I wouldn't be surprised if they don't and the 60% market they cover is far smaller thanks to digital pc sales. So you've got to understand that the biggest resource of retail tracking just doesn't come close to the full picture.


Again, I have to repeat that any time you have ever heard anyone talk about how many copies of a game or movie was sold, they are talking about how many copies were sold from the producer to the retailer. You are not getting numbers on how many items were sold to the end consumer. It isn't retail numbers. Bethesda DID sell 12 million copies. Deal with it.

 

[Robeltu]

"Sales" means physical numbers only? Again, at no point does Bogos or the article linked to it state the term "shipped". That's what the posters in this thread were claiming the sales were, not what Bogos was saying.

If you're going to conclude that number of games sold has to be physical then you're going to have to do some footwork in redefining a term. Maybe you should also follow the link to Bethesda's press statement while your at it. Then you'll see that Bethesda was saying they sold 12 million copies at launch and broke down the sales into number of digital copies and physical copies.

Okay, this is just childish. So your argument boils down "they didn't say the exact word so it isn't that". And you aren't savvy enough to understand that the presser is talking about shipped copies, so you think you have an argument.

Bethesda launched with approximately 12 million units worldwide to meet day one demand, representing sales in excess of $750 million.

This means shipped. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's what it is. None of your semantic arguing is going to change that. "No ifs, ands or buts" as they say. Don't let the word "launch" bedazzle you, it doesn't mean they sold 12 mill out of the gate. (Sold, as in sold, not shipped, sold. Could you stop being anal about the word "sold"? I know you beat it into your own head that "shipping means selling ifyoureapublsshr", but you really ought to treat 2 separate terms for 2 separate things as they are. They are meant to signify a different things(transaction) for a reason.)

I would like you to produce the breakdown of digital and physical sales from that press release, though, that would be some magic. Did you actually read the thing or did you just skim it? (FYI, "it sold the best ever" isn't a breakdown) It seems you should take your own advice and follow the link to the presser. Also, that digital part is, a; completely separated from the things spoken about in the first paragraph (since, you know, shipped doesn't include digital, fancy that) and b; doesn't say any sales number whatsoever. I'll quote the whole fucking thing if you want.

And from what asshole did you pull that I said sales meant physical only? I said shipped meant physical only. You wouldn't misunderstand me if you didn't obfuscate those 2 terms, confusing even you by this point. You ought to retrace your steps, 'cus you seemed to have ran afoul of your own logic.

What a waste of time this was. EDIT: Noticed you chucked a huge ass paragraph in there while I was writing my response, pardon me if I don't wish to bother with it.

Late to this chat and don't have a lot to add but when it says digital copies wouldn't keys provided to Amazon and green man gaming count as shipped copies as they would also likely be paid in advance.

 

[Lightknight]

"Sales" means physical numbers only? Again, at no point does Bogos or the article linked to it state the term "shipped". That's what the posters in this thread were claiming the sales were, not what Bogos was saying.

If you're going to conclude that number of games sold has to be physical then you're going to have to do some footwork in redefining a term. Maybe you should also follow the link to Bethesda's press statement while your at it. Then you'll see that Bethesda was saying they sold 12 million copies at launch and broke down the sales into number of digital copies and physical copies.

Okay, this is just childish. So your argument boils down "they didn't say the exact word so it isn't that". And you aren't savvy enough to understand that the presser is talking about shipped copies, so you think you have an argument.

Bethesda launched with approximately 12 million units worldwide to meet day one demand, representing sales in excess of $750 million.

This means shipped. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's what it is. None of your semantic arguing is going to change that. "No ifs, ands or buts" as they say. Don't let the word "launch" bedazzle you, it doesn't mean they sold 12 mill out of the gate. (Sold, as in sold, not shipped, sold. Could you stop being anal about the word "sold"? I know you beat it into your own head that "shipping means selling ifyoureapublsshr", but you really ought to treat 2 separate terms for 2 separate things as they are. They are meant to signify a different things(transaction) for a reason.)

I would like you to produce the breakdown of digital and physical sales from that press release, though, that would be some magic. Did you actually read the thing or did you just skim it? (FYI, "it sold the best ever" isn't a breakdown) It seems you should take your own advice and follow the link to the presser. Also, that digital part is, a; completely separated from the things spoken about in the first paragraph (since, you know, shipped doesn't include digital, fancy that) and b; doesn't say any sales number whatsoever. I'll quote the whole fucking thing if you want.

And from what asshole did you pull that I said sales meant physical only? I said shipped meant physical only. You wouldn't misunderstand me if you didn't obfuscate those 2 terms, confusing even you by this point. You ought to retrace your steps, 'cus you seemed to have ran afoul of your own logic.

What a waste of time this was. EDIT: Noticed you chucked a huge ass paragraph in there while I was writing my response, pardon me if I don't wish to bother with it.

Late to this chat and don't have a lot to add but when it says digital copies wouldn't keys provided to Amazon and green man gaming count as shipped copies as they would also likely be paid in advance.

Doesn't matter, the article doesn't say "Shipped". The person doesn't get that and thinks that they "meant" shipped when they said sales and were quoting an article from Bethesda that said the same.

I'm going to guess he meant sales because he was repeating an article from a company that said sales. If the person wants to extrapolate their imagined interpretation of his meaning then that's on them.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

i...uh... what? there are no disc format we use that is 1 GB in size. there is CD - 700MB - 0,7 GB. there is dual-layer CD - 1,4 gb. There is DVD - 4,4 GB, there is dual-layer DVD - 8,8 GB, there is BluRay - ~30 GB and Dual-Layer BluRay (very rare) - ~60GB. There are other formats such as SD cards, USB sticks, hard drives, tapes, but those are not discs and as far as i know only one handheld device uses SD cards and others are not used for distribution (for good reason).

Obviously they didn't use the full capacity of the disc. Don't bother asking me why, I don't work for those respective companies, I can't answer their insane priorities regarding optical storage policies.

No. Its not up to game companies to deal with you having shitty internet. its up to you, your internet provider and lawmakers that regulate that internet provider. If i make a file downloadable its not up to me to make sure you have internet access, only that the file is accessible without problem, which steam does. Such things like "internet cap" are not and never were based on any real limitations and should be gone away as a bad price gouging tactic that it is.

Bethesda is a business, and the purpose of any business is to make money. You make money by selling your product to as many people as possible. Restricting your business model to digital distribution only is effectively costing you lost sales. Something no business is willing to do.

 

[Strazdas]

Reading any individual reviews is just getting anecdotal evidence. Aggregate data is the only thing painting an overall picture.

The point is that the game is fun and people enjoy it. It's just far from bug free.

It would be so if the reviews were random. however reviews are sorted by "usefulness" which on steam is basically a measure of how many people agree with the review. when the negative reviews turn up with 80% agreement of thousands of people while the spammed positive ones end up in the "0 of 1 people found this useful" bin its not just random anecdotes. Like i said, the overall number is not representative on steam, top reviews are.

Actually, if you'll turn back the time machine and run an internet search for Witcher 3 bugs you'll see a variety of articles on the early game breaking bugs that were fixed and people were very much upset about. I just think there was so much to do in Witcher that people weren't finding them any time soon.

i went back to the month of may and you seem to be correct [http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/05/29/the-most-frustrating-glitches-in-the-witcher-3/]. Still from the numerous google results i found these bugs seem to be happening for very small group of people for Witcher. maybe thats why it went so much under the radar on reddit since majority vote ends up the main sight there.

Obviously they didn't use the full capacity of the disc. Don't bother asking me why, I don't work for those respective companies, I can't answer their insane priorities regarding optical storage policies.

that does seem to be the only explanation. but it is baffling why they would do it since printing extra physical discs actually costs them extra.

Bethesda is a business, and the purpose of any business is to make money. You make money by selling your product to as many people as possible. Restricting your business model to digital distribution only is effectively costing you lost sales. Something no business is willing to do.

It depends on the loss. If the loss is either smaller than the expenses it would take to create physical distribution or so small they think its more profitable to spend time doing something else it is, from a business perspective, a smart move to go away from physical. Its the same deal as with vinyl and casettes that i mentioned earlier. yes, there are some people that would buy them, but they arent big enough crowd to be worth it.

Another thing. i never bought the excuse of "it should do X because its purpose is to make money". If a business is not benefiting society it should be dismantled, profitable or not.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It depends on the loss.

I just keep coming back to the idea that most of the reported sales were physical copies. Steam takes a pretty big cut of all digital sales, surely it would be cheaper to sell physical copies than to lose (I think) 25% off each digital sale.

 

[Strazdas]

It depends on the loss.

I just keep coming back to the idea that most of the reported sales were physical copies. Steam takes a pretty big cut of all digital sales, surely it would be cheaper to sell physical copies than to lose (I think) 25% off each digital sale.

Steam takes 30%. The standard for physical distribution is 30%. Now it may be a special contract that does it for less, but in general steam is actually one of the cheapest ways of distribution around.

 

[pookie101]

There needs to be an interface a la fallout shelter for settlement populace management. It's pretty obvious they're planning a crafting DLC and that's why they released the crafting system in the state it's in. The dialogue system is, predictably, crap. At least Bioware does the wheel properly when they do it. The weapon balance s dependent upon the x% perk system to be relevant, especially on higher difficulties. Basically, there's a lot of lazy or shoddy design decisions.

its.. odd to say the least you cant craft armour, weapons and ammo, especially basic stuff like leather or raider

 

[Lightknight]

Reading any individual reviews is just getting anecdotal evidence. Aggregate data is the only thing painting an overall picture.

The point is that the game is fun and people enjoy it. It's just far from bug free.

It would be so if the reviews were random. however reviews are sorted by "usefulness" which on steam is basically a measure of how many people agree with the review. when the negative reviews turn up with 80% agreement of thousands of people while the spammed positive ones end up in the "0 of 1 people found this useful" bin its not just random anecdotes. Like i said, the overall number is not representative on steam, top reviews are.

So people are still buying this in droves because their friends are telling them not to?

It might be that we're dealing with a scenario where your (royal you) capacity to deal with glitches in a game this large and complex greatly impacts your preference for the game.

Actually, if you'll turn back the time machine and run an internet search for Witcher 3 bugs you'll see a variety of articles on the early game breaking bugs that were fixed and people were very much upset about. I just think there was so much to do in Witcher that people weren't finding them any time soon.

i went back to the month of may and you seem to be correct [http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/05/29/the-most-frustrating-glitches-in-the-witcher-3/]. Still from the numerous google results i found these bugs seem to be happening for very small group of people for Witcher. maybe thats why it went so much under the radar on reddit since majority vote ends up the main sight there.

It might be, but we don't really know how many people are impacted with either side or what the percentage is. Please understand that there are 12 million copies of the game out there from the launch alone. The last numbers I saw on the Witcher 3 were 6 million copies sold in six weeks. Now, 6 million is still HUGE. But we're talking about Fallout 4 selling double in one day what the Witcher sold 6 weeks.

So let's think about this. If both the Witcher and Fallout 4 had similar bugs impacting a similar percentage of users, then wouldn't that mean that Fallout 4 would be experiencing twice the number of complaints thanks to the larger consumer base?

Don't forget that people who are experiencing a problem are the ones who go to the internet. Remember when the PS4 first launched and a handful of people made us think the PS4 had a RROD scenario until a couple weeks later when we could finally establish that the rate is even better than the industry standard of hardware defect ratios?

Likewise, let's not forget that this is all 12 million or so on day one whereas the 6 million for witcher was spread out over 6 weeks and a couple million may not have seen the game until after a patch or two.

 

[Strazdas]

So people are still buying this in droves because their friends are telling them not to?

It might be that we're dealing with a scenario where your (royal you) capacity to deal with glitches in a game this large and complex greatly impacts your preference for the game.

We dont know how many people buy the game. like, at all. we know how many bethesda shipped, but not how many are stuck in stores unsold. We know that steam estimates (which are not sales numbers but rather an extrapolated survey of randomly accessed accounts) estimate it at around 6 million for PC (steam is necessary to play the PC version). Also important to note that first week sales are mostly counting pre-orders rather than actual sales. the second week usually shows whether people who wait for reviews/youtubers/friends/etc are going to keep buying the game. Remmeber when GTA5 on PC has been a TOP seller on steam for over 2 months BEFORE it launched? thats going to impact the day 1 numbers a lot.

I think that scenario exists in every game that is buggy. there were people who enjoyed Atkham Knight too, but WB pulled it due to how buggy it is. There were people who enjoyed AC: Unity, but it is generally considered the worst PC port since GTA4.

It might be, but we don't really know how many people are impacted with either side or what the percentage is. Please understand that there are 12 million copies of the game out there from the launch alone. The last numbers I saw on the Witcher 3 were 6 million copies sold in six weeks. Now, 6 million is still HUGE. But we're talking about Fallout 4 selling double in one day what the Witcher sold 6 weeks.

So let's think about this. If both the Witcher and Fallout 4 had similar bugs impacting a similar percentage of users, then wouldn't that mean that Fallout 4 would be experiencing twice the number of complaints thanks to the larger consumer base?

Don't forget that people who are experiencing a problem are the ones who go to the internet. Remember when the PS4 first launched and a handful of people made us think the PS4 had a RROD scenario until a couple weeks later when we could finally establish that the rate is even better than the industry standard of hardware defect ratios?

Likewise, let's not forget that this is all 12 million or so on day one whereas the 6 million for witcher was spread out over 6 weeks and a couple million may not have seen the game until after a patch or two.

Yes, that would mean that the Fallout 4 players would be reporting bugs twice as often. as it turns out, its more like 200 times as often, though. the attitude was also different. for Witcher 3 it was "yes the walking animation is janky but the game is best thing since sliced butter" whereas for fallout 4 we more often hear a "and they still havent fixed that bug since skyrim/oblivion".

i dont think many people believed in the PS4 RROD thing. most comments i saw on sites i visit at least were commenting that a single broken console does not show a trend and were pointing out that the 360 failure rates were probably the worst industry has ever seen.

 

[Lightknight]

So people are still buying this in droves because their friends are telling them not to?

It might be that we're dealing with a scenario where your (royal you) capacity to deal with glitches in a game this large and complex greatly impacts your preference for the game.

We dont know how many people buy the game. like, at all. we know how many bethesda shipped, but not how many are stuck in stores unsold. We know that steam estimates (which are not sales numbers but rather an extrapolated survey of randomly accessed accounts) estimate it at around 6 million for PC (steam is necessary to play the PC version). Also important to note that first week sales are mostly counting pre-orders rather than actual sales. the second week usually shows whether people who wait for reviews/youtubers/friends/etc are going to keep buying the game. Remmeber when GTA5 on PC has been a TOP seller on steam for over 2 months BEFORE it launched? thats going to impact the day 1 numbers a lot.

The 12 million number and the 6 million number used for Witcher III are both number of games shipped. The numbers being preorders does not change the number that was purchased either. Many of the Witcher III sales were likely preorders too.

It's important to understand that the people ordering more copies from Bethesda have algorithms and a long history of making a living at anticipating demand. They aren't wasting their money buying copies they don't anticipate selling or haven't already sold.

It might be, but we don't really know how many people are impacted with either side or what the percentage is. Please understand that there are 12 million copies of the game out there from the launch alone. The last numbers I saw on the Witcher 3 were 6 million copies sold in six weeks. Now, 6 million is still HUGE. But we're talking about Fallout 4 selling double in one day what the Witcher sold 6 weeks.

So let's think about this. If both the Witcher and Fallout 4 had similar bugs impacting a similar percentage of users, then wouldn't that mean that Fallout 4 would be experiencing twice the number of complaints thanks to the larger consumer base?

Don't forget that people who are experiencing a problem are the ones who go to the internet. Remember when the PS4 first launched and a handful of people made us think the PS4 had a RROD scenario until a couple weeks later when we could finally establish that the rate is even better than the industry standard of hardware defect ratios?

Likewise, let's not forget that this is all 12 million or so on day one whereas the 6 million for witcher was spread out over 6 weeks and a couple million may not have seen the game until after a patch or two.

Yes, that would mean that the Fallout 4 players would be reporting bugs twice as often. as it turns out, its more like 200 times as often, though.

Come on dude, you and I have managed to have a dozen well informed intellectual discussion. Don't stoop to hyperbole you can't back up if you can help it. "200 times more"?

If anything, I think the frustration is just that it's the same issues as before, like you said. I assume they just didn't want to build an entirely new engine from scratch or the one they built isn't finished yet. The way Bethesda works on engines I just wouldn't be surprised if they considered it too much an expense to do AND also build the game when the previous engine is perfectly serviceable (and it is). At least with Witcher there is the feeling that it's a pretty damn small studio that is basically building top tier AAA with little resources. So there is additional forgiveness there. But it doesn't mean that their work is actually that much better. It could have been exactly the same but treated better based on the size.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

I love fallout 4 , LOVE IT

95% of my solitary time has been plunged into devouring the game on survival mode since release.

I love the graphics
I love the characters
I love that my hand is not being held
I love that there is challenging situations to overcome
I love being nuked totally by surprise from on high
I love consulting a drug addled quazi mystic and having the option to benefit from her drug abuse, or council sanity
I love the undertones and overtones of conspiracy
I love the doubt the game casts on itself and its systems
I love that im expected to find that object i saw streaking across the sky without a quest marker
I love the weapon and armor customization
I love that i sound like the fonz with high charisma
I love how quests can go totally different directions and have effects on multiple characters and events depending what you do (looking at you telltale)
I love that the enemies and computer logs they make will be different depending what you have and have not done
I love how dense the wasteland is
I love scavaging
I love trying to appease as many followers as possible by planning my actions bassed on who is with me
I love the promise of shapiwthe wasteland in my image (chr not high enough yet)
I love that there is no level cap
i love that it seems crafted for adult audience
i love the music!

I could go on and on, having an absolute blast with it iterally and figuratively

I guess the point I trying to get accross is that fallout is good in my opinion, and im not surprised in the least that most of my steam friends are playing it at any given moment.

 

[Strazdas]

The 12 million number and the 6 million number used for Witcher III are both number of games shipped. The numbers being preorders does not change the number that was purchased either. Many of the Witcher III sales were likely preorders too.

It's important to understand that the people ordering more copies from Bethesda have algorithms and a long history of making a living at anticipating demand. They aren't wasting their money buying copies they don't anticipate selling or haven't already sold.

The point i was making was that high numbers of preorders means we cannot know how much of a "friend told me its bad so i wont buy it" effect there is. that only shows up later once the initial first day adopters pass away as they could not have heard their friends say anything for or against. And yes, this was true for Witcher 3, but the stats are for 6 weeks as opposed to 1 which gives more time for the world-of-mouth to travel.

Come on dude, you and I have managed to have a dozen well informed intellectual discussion. Don't stoop to hyperbole you can't back up if you can help it. "200 times more"?

If anything, I think the frustration is just that it's the same issues as before, like you said. I assume they just didn't want to build an entirely new engine from scratch or the one they built isn't finished yet. The way Bethesda works on engines I just wouldn't be surprised if they considered it too much an expense to do AND also build the game when the previous engine is perfectly serviceable (and it is). At least with Witcher there is the feeling that it's a pretty damn small studio that is basically building top tier AAA with little resources. So there is additional forgiveness there. But it doesn't mean that their work is actually that much better. It could have been exactly the same but treated better based on the size.

The point was that the ratio of complaints is much higher even taking into account sale numbers. Certainly, it being same bugs only increases the frustration. I dont think many people care about company size when it comes to whether they like the game or not. but perhaps you are right, there is that tendency at least when it comes to very small indies.

Bethesda is using an engine for Fallout 4 that they created in 1997. Creation is just Gamebryo with Havoc physics shoved in it. First game to release with it was Morrowind. Bethesda does not even need to develop a new engine, they own ID Tech 5. It is a multitude of times better engine than the one they currently use. And no, GameBryo is not serviceable. it wasnt serviceable when Skyrim launched. Its just one of the downsides of Bethesda games you have to get over to enjoy thier games. and yes, many people do get over it. does not make it a good engine.

 

[Naqel]

I love that my hand is not being held
[...]
I love how quests can go totally different directions and have effects on multiple characters and events depending what you do (looking at you telltale)

Oh yes, I love how I'm able to shoot people in the face and tell them I hate them, only for them to idolize me later on anyway and offer sex-on-demand after a charisma check(I hate Piper).

The only reason they're not holding you by your hand, is because they're dragging you by your feet.