Sales, well when we are done looking in the shallow end of the pool here, then we might be ready to talk truth. COD series is best example of this mindless gun use in Rat Mazes and people think they are achieving greatness. In fact they insist on it. Destiny sold HD screen shots and Videos not available on all platforms (misleading) PS3 version is a cartoon joke. I found it horrid and profundly empty. Much like money means its good right? No it does not.
Just like some poorly reviewed movies become cult classics(Clerks anyone?) so do poorly reviewed games become fan favorites.
It's not the first time, and not the last time!
The first Monster Hunter got god awful reviews and despite that people were obsessed with it.
Sometimes the things reviewers are looking for are not the same as the players. Or the players are just more willing to overlook a game's flaws when it does something else they really like.
I earlier expressed an opinion that Destiny is "average" at best and that Bungie still hasn't let go of Halo in a sense. I would like to add one thing to those thoughts. Destiny, though now released, is an un-finished game and I think Bungie would be the forst to agree. Usually that would spell doom for a game but in this era of dlc that problem can be fixed over time if the effort is made and so there is hope that Destiny may evolve into a better state than it now is. So, good luck, Bungie, no hard feelings. Again, these are just my opinions.
Is there an increase in troll articles on this site or is it me? One day its " the MYTHS of paid reviews" because no review in gaming history was ever paid for and then we get " reviews must be wrong if something sells".
I mean seriously, sega master system was the more powerful system over the NES, we know how that turned out. Marketing trumps all or does Mcdonalds really make one fantastic burger...
sold cause of the company that made it. Halo 4 sold a ton of copies but after a month the online population dropped probably 80 percent. I'm sure destiny is a good game but I'd love to see the numbers when Cod and the big AAA's start coming.
I find it hard to find sales and review co-relates to each other, because of advertisement and hype.
They're not related.
Sales are a product of advertisement and to a degree, pre launch hype, so people have raised expectations and inevitably, buy into it. Reviews are based on the actual game experience, and so are very much a 'post launch' thing, so its very much an expectations vs reality kind of thing.
However, are Destiny's sales really that good, i mean, its cross platform, xb1 360 and ps3&4 and yet it only managed 3m in sales? isn't that a bit low compared to most console releases?
okay GTA5 is a much more well known and supported title than Destiny is, after all HALO vs GTA, GTA will probably always win, its that kind of game, but even so, 2.75 million units sold is not that great a figure compared to what it should have been, but what other game recently, sort of, had the same kind of hype, oh yeah, Titanfall, huge hype at launch and again we have a couple of million sales again, followed by a certain amount of disappointment as reality set in.
maybe if they had released titanfall on the PS3/4 as well it would have hit near 3 million initially too, or even 4m by now. But there are a lot of similarities, not saying the games are clones of each other, but, end of the day, their just shooters, and they both have very limited player numbers involved.
Now, what i would like to see, is what kind of figures we get when Planetside 2 hits the PS4, personally, i think it will blow both of those games out of the water, though lets face it, both games are wallowing in deep water and there are a dearth of buckets for bailing.
The game is tight. Just awesome combat mechanics. Smooth as silk.
Actually, the story is good. Why be a content burner and not take your time? Explore. Do your patrol dailies. Hit the strike(s) on your current planet a few times. Roll each class, see which one suits your fancy.
Then you have the PvP aspect. The PvE content burner is next happy.
Takes me not more than 15 seconds to queue for a strike and have a group. The game is just hopping.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain
I have been reading mmmorpg.com for several years but I have never posted a comment myself. But this article, specially the title, ticket me off so badly that I can't let it go without saying anything. After reading this I know that I will not check out this website ever again. Because this article summerize what this .com has become. I must say you have no idea what criticism is. You haven't got the slightest clue why critics exist and what is their responsibility in the society. I am not writing this because it is a Destiny related article. But because you as a journalist came with up this concept and put together these words together and your editor-in-chief thaught it was a good idea. I also work in the industry and I'd fire if any of my staff evrr come up with this uneducated junk and tries to masquerade it as a 'article'. I am sorry that you people own this .com. And the writer should definitely think of another career because by carrying the same title you sully the name of every other critic out there. Maybe you should take a hint from your last name and look for an opportunity in that market.
Interesting discussion. I think the problem faced here however is multi faceted.
As stated somewhere earlier in this thread initial sales don't mean a thing. The hype train, promoting and so on and so forth is in full swing then, and yes, people fall for it. Then again, retainment IS a good measurement for quality, if you bought it and dislike it you won't be playing it anymore after the initial excitement has faded. To use the Mc Donalds analogy, if it tasted like crap the first time, why in the hell would you go back?
Quality is a fickle matter, besides game breaking bugs, things simply not working and stuff like that, quality is completely subjective. Saying something is of low quality because you dislike it is arrogant and shortsighted. I hate Mc Donalds, think its food is gross but millions love it. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to say all those people are wrong, it is just a different opinion, a different taste. People talking about low quality because they simply dislike something should REALLY get off their high horse, you. do. NOT. know. better. Something extremely popular always gets talked about as if it is something bad, WoW being a nice example, especially around these parts.... Something incredibly rare or no longer available on the other hand does not equate quality, I would say hello to SWG in this case ( opinion ofc ).
but there is more to the whole quality thing, we call it expectations. Destiny, no matter the quality, was not what people expected. Halo on different planets with Borderlands loot this game is not. And that was exactly what people thought. Massive open world planets, huge hubs etc. etc. What they got was what I describe as Global Agenda 2.0 I won't get into all the loading times plagueing the game, I don not think anyone was asking for that. But when expectations are not met, people are disappointed, it is not the KIND of quality they expected. It does however not say anything about the actual quality of the product on offer.
i can not say if Destiny is/was a good or bad game. I own the game and although it was nothing like what I expected I still like it. Your mileage may vary but that does not mean anything at all. Loads of people still play the game even after the initial rush, it has been extremely succesfull when it comes to sales, and retention seems to be quite good, it has no game breaking bugs that I am aware of. These are the only objective things that can actually be measured, all the rest, good or bad is just talk, highly subjective talk.
And yes, I think they should have added a lot more content on launch....
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Originally posted by lahnmirAs stated somewhere earlier in this thread initial sales don't mean a thing. The hype train, promoting and so on and so forth is in full swing then, and yes, people fall for it.
So do arbitrary qualifiers...like the one quoted. Marketing strategy is an indistinguishible part of the product same way as is graphics, gameplay, price or distribution channel.
Sales are the only indicative what people think about the product. Opinions of "reviewers", forum warriors, bloggers or any pseudo experts do not matter.
As stated somewhere earlier in this thread initial sales don't mean a thing. The hype train, promoting and so on and so forth is in full swing then, and yes, people fall for it.
So do arbitrary qualifiers...like the one quoted. Marketing strategy is an indistinguishible part of the product same way as is graphics, art, design, gameplay w/e.
Sales are the only indicative what people think about the product. Opinions of "reviewers", forum warriors, bloggers or any pseudo experts do not matter.
Interesting train of thought but not what I meant. Initial sales do no tell you anything about what people think about the actual product because they bought it without knowing what its quality might be, it does not tell you how people 'feel' about the product, they do not know it yet. Marketing strategy creates this buying without knowing attitude yes, but I think you are stretching it by saying that it is an integral part of the product itself because it is not, it is an integral part of the SALES of the product, that is not the same. By that same logic, all external factors influencing the sales of the game are part of that same game, also the opinions of reviewers, forum warriors and all the others you mention because contrary to the silly article posted by mmorpg.com these do matter, although on a much smaller scale then we (apparently) like to think.
I can somewhat relate to the 'sales tell it all' attitude but I see no distinction between what you include and exclude specifically in your post, all contribute to more, or less, sales.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Sales are a product of advertisement and to a degree, pre launch hype, so people have raised expectations and inevitably, buy into it. Reviews are based on the actual game experience, and so are very much a 'post launch' thing, so its very much an expectations vs reality kind of thing.
However, are Destiny's sales really that good, i mean, its cross platform, xb1 360 and ps3&4 and yet it only managed 3m in sales? isn't that a bit low compared to most console releases?
As far as sales go the numbers Bungie released suggest 30 day sales of 8 to 9M. 3.2M was just the average number of players every day for 30 days. Average days played was 11.6 days - suggesting 8 to 9M sales. Activision's $325M sell through in 5 days announcement and Sony's announcements supports this type of big number.
"Sales are a product of advertisement and to a degree pre-launch hype". In part absolutely. Although pre-launch hype was somewhat limited as there were no pre-launch reviews. When it comes to "post- launch sales" however it gets harder to overcome consumer resistance. Word of mouth starts to kick in.
And word of mouth (seems to be) that people are playing the game - a lot. And marketing and hype cannot do that. It was a common thread in the reviews as well: the "can't stop playing". It was one of the things that didn't add up with a lot of the reviews: if the game was that bad why did the reviewers go on to say that they wanted to play it?
This is Bungie basically telling players "everybody's jumping on the bandwagon so you should too." This makes complete sense because they know the fact that the game isn't as good as planned risks player loss over the coming months.
But does that make Destiny a bad game? Even a middling one? I don’t think so. But thankfully, I don’t have to make that case; the facts do. Last week, we found out that Bungie boasts 3.2 million players logging in every single day for an average of three hours a day, a month after launch
They boasted 3.2 million players as a daily average over the first month, and not a daily average a month after launch. There's a huge difference between the two, and the reason why they used a monthly average is because its much higher compared to the number a month after launch.
If you're going to point out facts, at least get your facts straight.
Additionally, last years top seller COD: Ghosts had the same kinds of reviews. And now I will go play Borderlands the pre-sequel, it also had reviews in the mid 70's. Its fun, but it doesn't make anything new and it has its fair share of flaws.
In all fairness, this is kind of splitting hairs. It's like saying, "Sure, WoW got 600K new subs a month before expansion launch to give them nearly 8 million subscribers, but it's nowhere near their peak of 12 million!"
What you seem to be forgetting, even though you make a point to aim at the "marketing lingo" being thrown around instead of the "facts", but then you completely defy any sort of logic yourself. There may have been an influx of users at the beginning, some of whom went on to trade the game in, etc., but let's remember one simple thing every single person who bought the game did NOT log in every single day for the first month for an average of 3 hours. So what are we talking about here? 10 million copies? 15 million copies? I know that I've probably been online for 20 days myself in the first month, which I consider a lot, but I definitely wasn't playing 3 hours per day.
I think that you're trivializing the numbers. You're casting them off like, meh, they're not so big. I would say that, conservatively, we're talking about 8 million copies, which is a success for any game. If they manage to maintain half those people, or even 1/8th of those people through a quarterly release cycle, we're talking about a very successful game. Nevermind we haven't been through Christmas yet, and we will likely also see a GOTY edition. No, it's not COD, it's not GTA, but it is successful and will probably be a financial success on an ongoing basis and will, hopefully, prove that a sub-through-DLC model s viable.
In all honestly for a game with over 500 million development & marketing costs you should at least sell 10 million copies. And it looks that they have done it.. so at least they get their money back.
However the article points at metacritics but doesn't say that user critics give it a 6.4 User Score.. and that is below the 76 from reviewers. Yeah.. it sold a lot of copies.. yeah a lot played it the first month.. yeah, they have invested more in advertising for that month as all other games together.
Is it a bad game? Most probably not.. User Score from 6.4 and Reviewer score from 76 just taking metacritics isn't that bad.. but it is not great either. It is what it is.. a very expensive, highly advertised, quality AAA game.
And Activision has created another brand to make expansions, new games and new content. And over time it may even become great. There is always a good chance that something becomes great when you throw endless money at it.
Originally posted by lahnmirInteresting train of thought but not what I meant.
This is precisely what you meant and you keep doing - setting arbitrary qualifiers. They are buying without knowing, it's marketing, it's sales, that does not belong to the product, etc excluding all factors and parametrs that do not fit your perception how product should be evaluated and compared.
It is like saying that football team did not actually lost their match because it was raining, team got uncomfortable accomodation and over starched briefs. None of that matters, what counts is the score on playfield and so do the sold units because sold units = numer of people finding the product worthy to spent money on, no excuses.
In all honestly for a game with over 500 million development & marketing costs you should at least sell 10 million copies. And it looks that they have done it.. so at least they get their money back.
However the article points at metacritics but doesn't say that user critics give it a 6.4 User Score.. and that is below the 76 from reviewers. Yeah.. it sold a lot of copies.. yeah a lot played it the first month.. yeah, they have invested more in advertising for that month as all other games together.
Is it a bad game? Most probably not.. User Score from 6.4 and Reviewer score from 76 just taking metacritics isn't that bad.. but it is not great either. It is what it is.. a very expensive, highly advertised, quality AAA game.
And Activision has created another brand to make expansions, new games and new content. And over time it may even become great. There is always a good chance that something becomes great when you throw endless money at it.
Destiny is actually a Bungie game not an Activision game. And the $500M figure is another story as well.
However if we look at Metacritic user scores we see - perhaps surprisingly given the 64 score - is that the game has been getting positive reviews (75+) from the majority of people. Which just goes to show that a lot of people can't distinguish between quality and crap even if it hits them in the face. Goes back to the comments about WoW and McDonald's in this thread. "You" may not like them but there are far worse things on th emarket.
Some of the metacritic comments are hilarious as well - there were some compilations done a few weeks ago. The person who gave Destiny a 10 on XB1 but a 0 on PS4 ... because he/she didn't like the PS4. Duh. Or the person who tried the beta and didn't like the game but bought it anyway expecting it to be a different game and - what a shocker - it wasn't. So they gave the game a 1. Duh. Easy to hate; easier to over praise as well; harder to be "objective".
Interesting train of thought but not what I meant.
This is precisely what you meant and you keep doing - setting arbitrary qualifiers. They are buying without knowing, it's marketing, it's sales, that does not belong to the product, etc excluding all factors and parametrs that do not fit your perception how product should be evaluated and compared.
It is like saying that football team did not actually lost their match because it was raining, team got uncomfortable accomodation and over starched briefs. None of that matters, what counts is the score on playfield and so do the sold units because sold units = numer of people finding the product worthy to spent money on, no excuses.
I deleted my long, long reply about pots and kettles, let me just say this:
No, you do not know what I mean, I mostly agree with you about the 'sales tell it all' attitude, unfortunately for you my post wasn't about just sales, no matter how selectively you quote me. It was about the disparity between the sales and the perceived quality and how that came to be.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Comments
what you are pointing out is that hype=$
if people are playing it that doesn't denote quality. just wait for the next big thing.
Just like some poorly reviewed movies become cult classics(Clerks anyone?) so do poorly reviewed games become fan favorites.
It's not the first time, and not the last time!
The first Monster Hunter got god awful reviews and despite that people were obsessed with it.
Sometimes the things reviewers are looking for are not the same as the players. Or the players are just more willing to overlook a game's flaws when it does something else they really like.
I earlier expressed an opinion that Destiny is "average" at best and that Bungie still hasn't let go of Halo in a sense. I would like to add one thing to those thoughts. Destiny, though now released, is an un-finished game and I think Bungie would be the forst to agree. Usually that would spell doom for a game but in this era of dlc that problem can be fixed over time if the effort is made and so there is hope that Destiny may evolve into a better state than it now is. So, good luck, Bungie, no hard feelings. Again, these are just my opinions.
Mystery Bounty
lol
+
and are we there now? I mean does sales = good game? in that case the ebst music made last year was justin beiber... just check the sales.
Herald of innovation, Vanquisher of the old! - Awake a few hours almost everyday!
This just in: Advertising works.
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
"[Column] Destiny: Destiny Sales Prove Review Scores Wrong"
I find it hard to find sales and review co-relates to each other, because of advertisement and hype.
Is there an increase in troll articles on this site or is it me? One day its " the MYTHS of paid reviews" because no review in gaming history was ever paid for and then we get " reviews must be wrong if something sells".
I mean seriously, sega master system was the more powerful system over the NES, we know how that turned out. Marketing trumps all or does Mcdonalds really make one fantastic burger...
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
They're not related.
Sales are a product of advertisement and to a degree, pre launch hype, so people have raised expectations and inevitably, buy into it. Reviews are based on the actual game experience, and so are very much a 'post launch' thing, so its very much an expectations vs reality kind of thing.
However, are Destiny's sales really that good, i mean, its cross platform, xb1 360 and ps3&4 and yet it only managed 3m in sales? isn't that a bit low compared to most console releases?
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/522748/Destiny-doesn-t-compare-to-GTA-5-game-sales-facing-42-per-cent-drop
okay GTA5 is a much more well known and supported title than Destiny is, after all HALO vs GTA, GTA will probably always win, its that kind of game, but even so, 2.75 million units sold is not that great a figure compared to what it should have been, but what other game recently, sort of, had the same kind of hype, oh yeah, Titanfall, huge hype at launch and again we have a couple of million sales again, followed by a certain amount of disappointment as reality set in.
http://www.lazygamer.net/24/titanfall-passes-the-2-million-mark-in-sales/
maybe if they had released titanfall on the PS3/4 as well it would have hit near 3 million initially too, or even 4m by now. But there are a lot of similarities, not saying the games are clones of each other, but, end of the day, their just shooters, and they both have very limited player numbers involved.
Now, what i would like to see, is what kind of figures we get when Planetside 2 hits the PS4, personally, i think it will blow both of those games out of the water, though lets face it, both games are wallowing in deep water and there are a dearth of buckets for bailing.
Actually, the story is good. Why be a content burner and not take your time? Explore. Do your patrol dailies. Hit the strike(s) on your current planet a few times. Roll each class, see which one suits your fancy.
Then you have the PvP aspect. The PvE content burner is next happy.
Takes me not more than 15 seconds to queue for a strike and have a group. The game is just hopping.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain
I must say you have no idea what criticism is. You haven't got the slightest clue why critics exist and what is their responsibility in the society. I am not writing this because it is a Destiny related article. But because you as a journalist came with up this concept and put together these words together and your editor-in-chief thaught it was a good idea. I also work in the industry and I'd fire if any of my staff evrr come up with this uneducated junk and tries to masquerade it as a 'article'. I am sorry that you people own this .com. And the writer should definitely think of another career because by carrying the same title you sully the name of every other critic out there. Maybe you should take a hint from your last name and look for an opportunity in that market.
Interesting discussion. I think the problem faced here however is multi faceted.
As stated somewhere earlier in this thread initial sales don't mean a thing. The hype train, promoting and so on and so forth is in full swing then, and yes, people fall for it. Then again, retainment IS a good measurement for quality, if you bought it and dislike it you won't be playing it anymore after the initial excitement has faded. To use the Mc Donalds analogy, if it tasted like crap the first time, why in the hell would you go back?
Quality is a fickle matter, besides game breaking bugs, things simply not working and stuff like that, quality is completely subjective. Saying something is of low quality because you dislike it is arrogant and shortsighted. I hate Mc Donalds, think its food is gross but millions love it. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to say all those people are wrong, it is just a different opinion, a different taste. People talking about low quality because they simply dislike something should REALLY get off their high horse, you. do. NOT. know. better. Something extremely popular always gets talked about as if it is something bad, WoW being a nice example, especially around these parts.... Something incredibly rare or no longer available on the other hand does not equate quality, I would say hello to SWG in this case ( opinion ofc
).
but there is more to the whole quality thing, we call it expectations. Destiny, no matter the quality, was not what people expected. Halo on different planets with Borderlands loot this game is not. And that was exactly what people thought. Massive open world planets, huge hubs etc. etc. What they got was what I describe as Global Agenda 2.0 I won't get into all the loading times plagueing the game, I don not think anyone was asking for that. But when expectations are not met, people are disappointed, it is not the KIND of quality they expected. It does however not say anything about the actual quality of the product on offer.
i can not say if Destiny is/was a good or bad game. I own the game and although it was nothing like what I expected I still like it. Your mileage may vary but that does not mean anything at all. Loads of people still play the game even after the initial rush, it has been extremely succesfull when it comes to sales, and retention seems to be quite good, it has no game breaking bugs that I am aware of. These are the only objective things that can actually be measured, all the rest, good or bad is just talk, highly subjective talk.
And yes, I think they should have added a lot more content on launch....
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
So do arbitrary qualifiers...like the one quoted. Marketing strategy is an indistinguishible part of the product same way as is graphics, gameplay, price or distribution channel.
Sales are the only indicative what people think about the product. Opinions of "reviewers", forum warriors, bloggers or any pseudo experts do not matter.
Interesting train of thought but not what I meant. Initial sales do no tell you anything about what people think about the actual product because they bought it without knowing what its quality might be, it does not tell you how people 'feel' about the product, they do not know it yet. Marketing strategy creates this buying without knowing attitude yes, but I think you are stretching it by saying that it is an integral part of the product itself because it is not, it is an integral part of the SALES of the product, that is not the same. By that same logic, all external factors influencing the sales of the game are part of that same game, also the opinions of reviewers, forum warriors and all the others you mention because contrary to the silly article posted by mmorpg.com these do matter, although on a much smaller scale then we (apparently) like to think.
I can somewhat relate to the 'sales tell it all' attitude but I see no distinction between what you include and exclude specifically in your post, all contribute to more, or less, sales.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
As far as sales go the numbers Bungie released suggest 30 day sales of 8 to 9M. 3.2M was just the average number of players every day for 30 days. Average days played was 11.6 days - suggesting 8 to 9M sales. Activision's $325M sell through in 5 days announcement and Sony's announcements supports this type of big number.
"Sales are a product of advertisement and to a degree pre-launch hype". In part absolutely. Although pre-launch hype was somewhat limited as there were no pre-launch reviews. When it comes to "post- launch sales" however it gets harder to overcome consumer resistance. Word of mouth starts to kick in.
And word of mouth (seems to be) that people are playing the game - a lot. And marketing and hype cannot do that. It was a common thread in the reviews as well: the "can't stop playing". It was one of the things that didn't add up with a lot of the reviews: if the game was that bad why did the reviewers go on to say that they wanted to play it?
This is Bungie basically telling players "everybody's jumping on the bandwagon so you should too." This makes complete sense because they know the fact that the game isn't as good as planned risks player loss over the coming months.
In all honestly for a game with over 500 million development & marketing costs you should at least sell 10 million copies. And it looks that they have done it.. so at least they get their money back.
However the article points at metacritics but doesn't say that user critics give it a 6.4 User Score.. and that is below the 76 from reviewers. Yeah.. it sold a lot of copies.. yeah a lot played it the first month.. yeah, they have invested more in advertising for that month as all other games together.
Is it a bad game? Most probably not.. User Score from 6.4 and Reviewer score from 76 just taking metacritics isn't that bad.. but it is not great either. It is what it is.. a very expensive, highly advertised, quality AAA game.
And Activision has created another brand to make expansions, new games and new content. And over time it may even become great. There is always a good chance that something becomes great when you throw endless money at it.
This is precisely what you meant and you keep doing - setting arbitrary qualifiers. They are buying without knowing, it's marketing, it's sales, that does not belong to the product, etc excluding all factors and parametrs that do not fit your perception how product should be evaluated and compared.
It is like saying that football team did not actually lost their match because it was raining, team got uncomfortable accomodation and over starched briefs. None of that matters, what counts is the score on playfield and so do the sold units because sold units = numer of people finding the product worthy to spent money on, no excuses.
Destiny is actually a Bungie game not an Activision game. And the $500M figure is another story as well.
However if we look at Metacritic user scores we see - perhaps surprisingly given the 64 score - is that the game has been getting positive reviews (75+) from the majority of people. Which just goes to show that a lot of people can't distinguish between quality and crap even if it hits them in the face. Goes back to the comments about WoW and McDonald's in this thread. "You" may not like them but there are far worse things on th emarket.
Some of the metacritic comments are hilarious as well - there were some compilations done a few weeks ago. The person who gave Destiny a 10 on XB1 but a 0 on PS4 ... because he/she didn't like the PS4. Duh. Or the person who tried the beta and didn't like the game but bought it anyway expecting it to be a different game and - what a shocker - it wasn't. So they gave the game a 1. Duh. Easy to hate; easier to over praise as well; harder to be "objective".
I deleted my long, long reply about pots and kettles, let me just say this:
No, you do not know what I mean, I mostly agree with you about the 'sales tell it all' attitude, unfortunately for you my post wasn't about just sales, no matter how selectively you quote me. It was about the disparity between the sales and the perceived quality and how that came to be.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Another article I completely disagree with the point it is trying to make.
Should be: Successful hype makes Destiny's profits soar regardless of the final product