"On to Fallout 76, which launched third in the chart this week but with just a fraction of the sales of its bigger Fallout brothers - down 82 per cent on Fallout 4."
The digital revolution was already well under way in 2015, I don't think that can be the sole reason for an 82 percent drop.
Fallout fans aren't buying it. If it continues to show poor numbers, it will be a pretty good indicator that the recent trend of deserting one's core base is probably not as good an idea as these publishers thought.
Unfortunately, nobody will know but Bethesda. Box sales ONLY these days are tough to gauge, especially for online only games, which Spyro is not.
I don't think we're going to see Bethesda reverse course here. All that it comes down to is the metrics they see on their backend, which, as far as we know, could be way better that the UK physical charts show.. or they could be worse globally.
But Bethesda will be more apt to fix what they can and release content updates to bring people in, changing things bit by bit as they did with ESO then cater to the people that don't like the vision of FO76.
I don't disagree. Not sure they would ever get a handle on things if they tried to inject the narrative content they had in prior entries.
However, like Blizzard, I think Bethesda will find their core base isn't going to lemming along. They supported Bethesda for a specific reason, and they aren't interested in Bethesda trying to segue them into the FOTM genres with their favorite coat of lore paint covering the walls.
As these things happen, I keep being reminded of Superman's comment about how too many devs and publishers these days are the biggest fans of their own work. That seems to be true here for Bethesda, just as it was Blizzard at Blizzcon, just as it was at Trion.. The list of examples to support his opinion is growing.
I'll tell you one thing, I'm mad a the bugs. As I progress through, and have hit level 50, I've seen some crazy ones, and just some frustrating ones recently where I'll crash on the PS4.. which never used to happen.
But overall I still like the game, and get mad when things don't work because overall it's fun and I like it.
I have several friends that are playing it too, and they seem to still be playing it everyday... that's not really a good gauge either on who is interested in playing it, but it's a good indicator for me that I'm not alone in enjoying it.
A study in 2017 showed that out of all game sales, 80% are digital compared to 20% of them are box sales. Even with an 80% drop in boxed sales, it doesn't look like their core sales would have been there anyway.
I do believe that if they do really well, it's more of an indicator that they don't have to rush to fix these things because the game is "good enough" in its launch state...
FO76 isn't their first online only rodeo, they should have known better. That being said, still... I play.
Yeah, box sales are tricky, which is why I dislike looking at them without a relatively recent related data point.
Many expressed concern with the fact that mod communities had to provide a lot of bug-squashing support for all of Bethesda's past titles. It's yet to be determined if Bethesda is capable of providing this service in full in the modder's stead. I think that will make or break FO76 as an ongoing online only title.
If they can get the PR disaster of a bugged build corrected, some of the faithful will enjoy it regularly and I think it will become an "accepted" entry into the franchise itself. They just have a long way to go from what I've seen.
Comments
Many expressed concern with the fact that mod communities had to provide a lot of bug-squashing support for all of Bethesda's past titles. It's yet to be determined if Bethesda is capable of providing this service in full in the modder's stead. I think that will make or break FO76 as an ongoing online only title.
If they can get the PR disaster of a bugged build corrected, some of the faithful will enjoy it regularly and I think it will become an "accepted" entry into the franchise itself. They just have a long way to go from what I've seen.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!