Dragon age was, objectively, a huge success.

[Dakkar]

Over 2 million copies sold.
IGN, Gamespot, Polygon, Etc, all praising it, giving it their highest score.
Reviews are "Mostly positive" rather than "Negative."

Why are people saying this game was a failure?

[Time Traveler]

Originally posted by !RJ_Truth:

Originally posted by Time Traveler:

The "over 2 million copies" was a projection (ie estimated guess) of what sales would be.

https://steamdb.info/app/1845910/charts/

What's that Steamspy esitmate of 2.32M?

What's that estimate of 251.4K by PlayTracker? What's that estimate of 766.1K By Gamalytic? What's that estimate of 1.03M by VG Insights?

Considering the average is a whopping 1.09M, how about we use sense and just meet in the middle?

[Karlack]

Maybe because the game isn't very good and just sold copies because of the name DRAGON AGE and it isn't even near what someone expect for a Dragon Age game

[TheGrimReaper00]

Oh boy. Research and math must be hard huh?
The game sold somewhere between 1,5 and 2 million. I'll play it very favorably and say 2 million. If everyone bought this at launch full price, that would be 140 million dollars.

Companies take a 30% cut unless it is EPIC. So let's say around 40 million goes to those companies and that leaves around 100 million. Most of this money goes to EA for funding the game.

Now the development cost. We have no confirmation on this but let us be realistic. Inquisition released in 2014 so 10 years ago and this comes from Bioware interviews, the game cost around 150 million to make. Now take inflation into account, the troubled development time where they started again and the 9 year development cycle, this game will absolutely have cost more than 200 million dollars. No doubt in my mind about that.

But even if you take the 150 million dollar budget (there is no way in hell it cost LESS than Inquisition), the game would still not recover from its development cost and therefor didn't make a profit. Even if I high ball it at 3 million copies sold, the numbers would be 210 million but after the 30% cut, it would be -63 million so 147 million dollars. Still not enough.

The estimate sales expectations for this game before launch was around 10 million. They didn't sell anywhere NEAR 10 million! So in conclusion. Yes. The game is a failure. Even with no concrete budget numbers, it is very easy to concern this.

The reviews are mixed because not again, not that many played this game so the ones that reviewed it wanted to play or try it out regardless and what they found was a very average to disappointing game that doesn't live up to the Dragon Age name.

And one more thing. If this was an actual success, then companies boast about it for their investors but they didn't. If a big company is quiet about a game's success, then it wasn't a success. This ALWAYS happens.

[TheGrimReaper00]

Originally posted by talemore:

Originally posted by Sir_Blaze:

Bioware has been given too much time. And with it you get a mess of people who have too much time to think about everything else than their task.

Funny enough, they also got all the time in the world with Anthem and look how that turned out. Whatever Bioware made the older games is long dead and gone. They simply do not know how to develop games well anymore and I am willing to bet, Mass Effect is gonna be a disaster. Mark my words.

[!RJ_Truth]

Originally posted by Time Traveler:

Originally posted by !RJ_Truth:

https://steamdb.info/app/1845910/charts/

What's that Steamspy esitmate of 2.32M?

What's that estimate of 251.4K by PlayTracker? What's that estimate of 766.1K By Gamalytic? What's that estimate of 1.03M by VG Insights?

Considering the average is a whopping 1.09M, how about we use sense and just meet in the middle?

I was asking a question. Given that it was not answered, I'll assume you do not know. I don't know what these "estimates" are based on. I assumed somebody would know, but apparently, we just want to talk about everything but what the question that was asked.

[TheSlyFawkes]

Originally posted by The Yeen Queen:

Originally posted by Sassy The Sasquatch:

maybe because the game was factually, a financial failure? making grand total of $0 profit so far.

Citation needed. A verifiable source, not "some anonymous insider that nobody can verify".

EA stated it cost over $250 Million to produce the game; even if every single one of the 2 million copies sold were at full price ($59.99) which is doubtful then they still haven't hit the $200 Million mark. That right there means it's a flop

[STARS!!!]

Game flopped, company lost money, employees have left, player numbers dropped massively since release. Players spend more time here in forum saying how good of a game it is rather than playing it.

[Hajime Saito]

Originally posted by Estevan Valladares:

The stupid people talking about "flops" or "lost money" are really, really making a fool of themselves. It is like saying you would be "homeless" because someone offered 4 million on your house worth 500 thousand and you have to sell "now". Leave the finance to finance guys.

There is one thing I see as a pattern in all these things though.
When a game is "woke", "politicized" and/or "too monetized", it often goes below the radar. Most people might not even be aware of over half of the games launched in an year. And that is not only about small studios. There are games people hear about that comes from big studios but get just "there".

The coverage people give to Dragon Age: The Veilguard can only be that much of a "problem" because of what it does right, not because of what it does wrong. People need to keep pounding a handful of things that it does wrong to prove their point.

I had said I would not buy the game at full price because it does not worth the cost, I stand by it for the reasons I cited, but I have the game, because it was gifted to me (not by steam or anyone on the game's anything). I have been playing to assess the comments and I gotta say, while it does go heavy handed on the culture war stuff that is really detrimental to the game, I go with that YouTuber Dantes when he says the game could be entirely like the main parts. Because it is a good game, which very good features. It gets right a lot of things BG3 and other games get wrong. And the cultural stuff it has is not worse than BG3 or any other game people are singing their praises like there is no tomorrow.

BG3 is a Tencent financed game, full of "woke stuff", poor writing, bugs, and it delivered less than 45% of what it promised, and that is after all this time they added stuff since launch.

So not only these clowns focusing on a handful of things give the game more exposure it would have otherwise, they also make a point of exposing their lack of logic or reason.

And one thing is true: I have Taash game mechanic stuff all sorted out and high level, and I havent needed to go through ANY of the things YouTubers show. Maybe because these YouTubers do not show, or they maybe honestly not know that you can level up companions without having to deeply get yourself in their content. Even YT who claim they "tried", if they saw the Barve stuff, or the "I am non binary", it is because they actively elected to. You can skip those parts if you really do not want to see them.

El juego es objetivamente un fracaso comercial Costó 200 millones de dólares (sin contar la inversión en publicidad) y tras dos meses de su lanzamiento solo tiene 4000 jugadores simultaneos ahora mismo.

Para que te hagas una idea, Wukong costo unos 70 millones, se lanzó en Agosto y tiene hasta 60.000 jugadores simultáneos en un día normal. The Veilguard ni ha generado beneficios hasta ahora, ni los va a generar nunca. En un año pasate por aquí y mira como tiene ya al menos un 75% de descuento y en menos de 2 años lo verás al 90% y lo meteran en alguna suscripción como Amazon Prime o lo regalaran en la Epic Store.

No le han metido Denuvo ni el primer mes. Lo han sacado sabiendo que iban a tener pérdidas, pero les da igual porque como empresa ya generon enormes ingresos con otras franquicias.

Además, recordemos que aunque Bioware pertenezca a EA, se trata de una empresa canadiense. No cabe duda que a cambio de recibir las habituales subvenciones para I+D, han diseñado el juego cortado por el patrón de la idelogía woke.

[Elyrien Valkyr]

Originally posted by bunny de fluff:

Is Two million copies a success? To me, hell yeah. To ea? Hmmm...

They officially didn't make their money back. So heads are going to roll. There's a reason they're refusing to say exact numbers. Steam also reported a huge refund wave as well.

[mhsiea]

Originally posted by Elyrien Valkyr:

Originally posted by bunny de fluff:

Is Two million copies a success? To me, hell yeah. To ea? Hmmm...

They officially didn't make their money back. So heads are going to roll. There's a reason they're refusing to say exact numbers. Steam also reported a huge refund wave as well.

The refund wave was caused by review bombers. Initially there were a ton of reviewers who played for .01 hours and left a negative review. Miraculously, they were all getting upwards of 500 helpful ratings on their reviews.

I'm sure that none of this was in the least bit suspicious.

[James McCoy]

Originally posted by STARS!!!:

Game flopped, company lost money, employees have left, player numbers dropped massively since release. Players spend more time here in forum saying how good of a game it is rather than playing it.

To be fair, for a singleplayer game, player count doesn't mean anything.

Not defending the game.

[mps]

Even if they sold 2 million, it was at 50% discount not even 2 months after release, and this is over Christmas. Talk about padding of sales.

Edit: oh, and we're on the precipice of 'mostly negative' review scores.

[Flynn.dll]

B/C sadly humans are currently being sucked into a negativity vortex by social media and a broken profit model for mass news organizations. People now mistakenly strive to feed on this energy, b/c their lives are so misdirected and destitute of authenticity.

Our species is at worst doomed and at best we have an extremely dark century in front of us. Act accordingly and try to surround yourself with solid friends and family. Don't dwell for too long in any Steam community or any forum for that matter. It is filled with keyboard bridge dwellers that want nothing else but to trigger and feed that monster.

End of line.

[Rewański]

As a huge Dragon Age series fan I can only say The Veilguard indeed IS a success. The game might not be as good as the previous ones in terms of script, but it crushes all of them in terms of overall gameplay. It's one of the best thought out games I've ever played and you can't deny it makes DA2 or Inquisition look like half-baked school projects. Lastly, it's gorgeous and still runs flawlessly on PS5, not to mention it's polished to the point of being bug-free from basically day one.
All of this makes me sad tho, as the game deserved to sell way better than it did. I'm fully convinced it's a result of hate-mongering among the community, but that only shows what social media did to people. The public dialogue is officially dead, but I won't let anyone kill my enjoyment of a hobby I cherish so deeply. And that's why I basically quit all the socials, including YouTube. I feel WAY healthier this way.

[Anticitizen 1]

Originally posted by Flynn.dll:

B/C sadly humans are currently being sucked into a negativity vortex by social media and a broken profit model for mass news organizations. People now mistakenly strive to feed on this energy, b/c their lives are so misdirected and destitute of authenticity.

Our species is at worst doomed and at best we have an extremely dark century in front of us. Act accordingly and try to surround yourself with solid friends and family. Don't dwell for too long in any Steam community or any forum for that matter. It is filled with keyboard bridge dwellers that want nothing else but to trigger and feed that monster.

End of line.

I wonder how the "negativity vortex" missed Wukong, PoE2 and Space Marine 2....

Weird how that works.