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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Retail Sales Plummet in the UK
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
According to the latest sales report at Chart-Track.co.uk, Star Wars: The Old Republic's retail sales have dropped drastically. SWTOR first hit the charts at #10 during the week of its release but has plummeted to #38 as of December 31st. The numbers come with a caveat, however: These sales reflect 'box' sales, not digital.
Comments
well i guess everyone that wanted it from there picked it up right away?
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
Not too suprising, I tend to get everything digital on the pc now-a-days.
That's the first thought I had as well.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Word of mouth might not be so great, if it isn't the digital option hampering sales.
I'm not surprised either way.
It's downhill from here
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
I think you'll find the same comes out in North America to.
People who wanted it already bought it. There might of been people on the fence, who will trickle in or get burnt out from other games, but I can't see why there would have been a steady stream of sales after the initial release.
I always hear that UK games are cheaper if you buy them in stores vs digital. So maybe digital isn't as big there. They do have bandwidth caps so digital isn't as viable an option as in the US
Seems quite normal for a newly released game, the early adopters picked it up already & it will now need the media guys to step in to advertise & drum up interest among the wider population.
Word of mouth & a decent campaign should push up overall sales but the overall sales of games trend has been moving towards digital purchase for a while now.
I think this doesn't particularly reflect on the state of Old Republic's success in the UK. Retailers such as GAME and GameStation have been trimming their PC sections for years, to the point where its mostly a shelving space left for Football Manager and The Sims 3: Let's Get New Hats Pack. Boxes just don't seem to shift like they used to, I suppose that's where Steam picks up the slack.
Isn't that to be expected? Not only is it only box sales but they put this thing on pre-order months and months before release. Not really a big thing honestly.
I have only seen the Tor comercial once, and the chuck norris wow commercial every day. The big question though is how many will stay after the free month. Right now things are looking good, half the servers are either full or heavy loaded.
The sky. It is falling.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
I mostly buy digital myself but I'm not sure how this is relative to the article.
Origin is the only digital source for TOR and they only sell to North America (US/Canada).
Also EU!
My brand new bloggity blog.
I bought two copies of digital myself. I hardly buy physical copies anymore. I think SWTOR sold as much as it could for now, it might pick up in sales again later but for now i think Bioware sold enough copies, huge numbers for any MMO so far.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
Wrong, I live in Spain and bought it through Origin. This in reply to someone who said that Origin only sells in NA... hit reply instead of quote...
Same thing here in Canada and I assume the US EB Games (now Gamestop here mostly) pretty much have one shelf for PC titles. I stopped going in to browse so I don't go in to buy now. I get digital copies only. Retailers are helping push PC gamers online. . which is fine by me but makes their sales stats not that reliable. . still a representation though.
Like everyone else said as well. . . everyone who was most likely going to buy it new that months before release and got a copy or decided just after release. Everyone wants in on the ground floor these days to rush to end game first and quit out of bordeom
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Man this WYSIWYG editor is a bit messed up. Anyways,
Origin limits sales to certain countries. The US and parts of Europe.
I havent bought anything retail for my pc since Burning Crusade
BruceLeeglad
Retired in too many games
Wrong on both accounts mate. In the majority, that is.
I don't understand how some people always think that because these numbers only show retail boxes, the numbers would be that much better for the digital sales.
Most other games in that list also have digital sales and it's not because it's an MMO that the % retail vs digital is that much different. If anything, who would really want to buy SW:ToR digital when everybody hates Origin (SW:ToR is not available on Steam) and want to avoid it at all cost...
Battlefield 3, aslo an EA game who's also available on Origin digital download is still peaking in that sales list and it's released 25 October (and it had massive pre-orders which broke records). That's almost 2 months before SW:ToR. It's been out for 5x longer than SW:ToR and it's on the 3rd spot as opposed to SW:ToR's 38th spot.
Skyrim for example, who was released 1,5 months ago is still on the 8th place in the same list and that game is even available on Steam. As we all know, Steam is a much more popular platform for digital download than Origin thus if it would really be digital downloads hurting the retail sales... then Skyrim would have a bigger loss in retail numbers than SW:ToR has.
In other words, the arguments that SW:ToR is low in retail sales list because of digital sales or because of preorders, are nothing more than myths.
What should alarm people is the trend which clearly shows form charts like this. The SW:ToR hype is dying very very fast if you ask me. Unlike Skyrim who created several meme's since it's release and where you still hear things like "omg if you havn't played this game already, you must check it out for sure".
I still play SW:ToR btw, I had 90 days of sub and I started playing the 20th december. I enjoy it and played it for about 45 hours in less than 2 weeks. I played Skyrim too, something like 55 hours. While I think I'll eventually spend more time on SW:ToR I do think it won't leave such a mark on the Game scene as Skyrim did. Every minute I played Skyrim felt special and I had plenty of awesome moments where I was really impressed by the game. I couldn't stop talking about it to my friends like... GO AND PLAY THIS F*ING GAME OR I WILL NEVER EVER LISTEN TO YOU AGAIN IF YOU TALK ABOUT ANY GAME TO ME WITHOUT HAVING EXPERIENCED SKYRIM I'm not having that with SW:ToR bc while I enjoy the entertainment it gives me for my money, it's not leaving that mark on me...
What might hurt SW:ToR long term sales is the word of mouth positive feedback... or the lack thereof...
- Skyrim intrigued me in it's first hour... other people felt the same = mouth to mouth promotion = good continued sales
- SW:ToR entertains me but doesn't stunn me with awesomeness = big hype dying fast after release = faster sale drop after preorder and initial sales
Ow yeah, by the way. I bought SW:ToR for 39 euro in retail store (Saturn, Media Markt). Online digital download costs 50 euro. Do you guys really think they sell so much digital versions of this game? That's being very delusional if you ask me...
Digital download being 11 euro's more expensive than having a boxed retail version...
Edit:
Either the list isn't correct (like the guy below me suggests), or those numbers show a very bad future for SW:ToR and everyone believing that it's bc of digital sales should open their fanboy-eyes and realised other games in those charts also have digital sales.
http://www.mcvuk.com/retail-biz/charts/pc
Vgchartz also has it currently at or near the top.
http://www.vgchartz.com/
Suspect swings not corelated with any other data sets is suspect.
Out of everyone in my guild, only a single person bought a boxed copy. All the rest were digital.
Tribes 2 is back!!!! http://www.tribesnext.com/
And from the makers of tribes: Fallen Empire: Legions http://www.instantaction.com/
My friend buys everything boxed and I buy my games from steam. He says one day in the far future steam will go bust and i wont have access to my games lol Is it possible for a big company like steam to go bust which would make me to loose access to all my games?