Did this game not sell well?

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

Didn’t this game just came out like a few months ago? How is it on discount so fast? Haven’t gotten to actually looking at game play or decided to get the game myself but am just surprised that the game is already on sale at a discount this fast.

[Solid Snake]

it being on sale has little to do with it not selling well.

[HighPriest]

In theory, I agree with Solid Snake that it being on sale does not necessarily equate to it not selling well.

That said, Midnight Suns has had a top concurrent players of 15,400 people on Steam, and is currently at 3,400. Unless it has a much larger player base elsewhere, these are very bad numbers for a recent release with a big licensed name behind it.

Just to compare it to another obvious Firaxis squad tactics game, XCom 2 peaked at 132,000 players and currently has about 3,600 players despite being almost 7 years old.

[Com_Raven]

Almost any AAA game (maybe apart from Nintendo's) goes on sale very quickly these days, especially during the Holiday season, so that alone is not an indicator.

However, it sadly seems like the game hasn't been selling great, which is a shame since I am having a blast apart from some technical issues (like the cloud saves).

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by HighPriest:

In theory, I agree with Solid Snake that it being on sale does not necessarily equate to it not selling well.

That said, Midnight Suns has had a top concurrent players of 15,400 people on Steam, and is currently at 3,400. Unless it has a much larger player base elsewhere, these are very bad numbers for a recent release with a big licensed name behind it.

Just to compare it to another obvious Firaxis squad tactics game, XCom 2 peaked at 132,000 players and currently has about 3,600 players despite being almost 7 years old.

I'm not sure it's fair to compare to Xcom, which is a well established and loved franchise with multiplayer and modding support. But then, it does have the Marvel name on it so who knows. A better comparison might be Chimera Squad (which this game resembles more.) But then again, that was released at a lower price to begin with.

I don't know, the game probably didn't sell as well as hoped, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with going on sale.

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

I don’t recall xcom2 being on sale this fast though, just saying.

[Nikibanzai💀]

they just want to get as much money as possible because they knew if an un-optimized game could sell that many with positive reviews, why bother patch it up, just make it cheaper and get more money instead

[HighPriest]

Originally posted by RasaNova:

Originally posted by HighPriest:

In theory, I agree with Solid Snake that it being on sale does not necessarily equate to it not selling well.

That said, Midnight Suns has had a top concurrent players of 15,400 people on Steam, and is currently at 3,400. Unless it has a much larger player base elsewhere, these are very bad numbers for a recent release with a big licensed name behind it.

Just to compare it to another obvious Firaxis squad tactics game, XCom 2 peaked at 132,000 players and currently has about 3,600 players despite being almost 7 years old.

I'm not sure it's fair to compare to Xcom, which is a well established and loved franchise with multiplayer and modding support. But then, it does have the Marvel name on it so who knows. A better comparison might be Chimera Squad (which this game resembles more.) But then again, that was released at a lower price to begin with.

I don't know, the game probably didn't sell as well as hoped, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with going on sale.

I'd go the other direction in the franchise comparison - I know a lot of people love XCom, myself included, but the root of that is old-school strategy nostalgia, compared to Marvel literally being the most profitable franchise of all time. The Firaxis connection should have sealed the deal for strategy diehards as well, but it doesn't seem like it really helped.

I definitely wouldn't compare it to Chimera Squad - that was always a discount game, starting out $20 on Steam if I recall. Nowhere near the ambition of a big tentpole release.... and also had peak numbers of over 20,000, so even if you do want to make the comparison, it probably still beats Midnight Suns.

As for the multiplayer and modding support... sure, XCom 2 does have the advantage of being a much better game. I suppose "being better" is an unfair advantage for sales, but if I were trying to explain poor numbers to my corporate overlords, "we made a mediocre game with few of the features players of the genre were looking for and it didn't sell" probably isn't the excuse I'd go with.

[Zebedee]

Originally posted by HighPriest:

[
As for the multiplayer and modding support... sure, XCom 2 does have the advantage of being a much better game. I suppose "being better" is an unfair advantage for sales, but if I were trying to explain poor numbers to my corporate overlords, "we made a mediocre game with few of the features players of the genre were looking for and it didn't sell" probably isn't the excuse I'd go with.

They spent most of the time pre-release making it very, very clear that it wasn't X-Com. So I think they are very aware of this being something different which doesn't tick the boxes in the way Phoenix Point tried to do.

Hard to tell what is success or not for them in sales terms without 2k or Firaxis themselves commenting. Critically well received but clearly not breaking any records for shifting copies in those places we can measure (Steam and boxed console). It's not even on the sort of deep post release sale we saw with games like DoW3 or even more recently Gotham Knights.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by HighPriest:

Originally posted by RasaNova:

I'm not sure it's fair to compare to Xcom, which is a well established and loved franchise with multiplayer and modding support. But then, it does have the Marvel name on it so who knows. A better comparison might be Chimera Squad (which this game resembles more.) But then again, that was released at a lower price to begin with.

I don't know, the game probably didn't sell as well as hoped, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with going on sale.

I'd go the other direction in the franchise comparison - I know a lot of people love XCom, myself included, but the root of that is old-school strategy nostalgia, compared to Marvel literally being the most profitable franchise of all time. The Firaxis connection should have sealed the deal for strategy diehards as well, but it doesn't seem like it really helped.

I definitely wouldn't compare it to Chimera Squad - that was always a discount game, starting out $20 on Steam if I recall. Nowhere near the ambition of a big tentpole release.... and also had peak numbers of over 20,000, so even if you do want to make the comparison, it probably still beats Midnight Suns.

As for the multiplayer and modding support... sure, XCom 2 does have the advantage of being a much better game. I suppose "being better" is an unfair advantage for sales, but if I were trying to explain poor numbers to my corporate overlords, "we made a mediocre game with few of the features players of the genre were looking for and it didn't sell" probably isn't the excuse I'd go with.

Originally posted by HighPriest:

Originally posted by RasaNova:

I'm not sure it's fair to compare to Xcom, which is a well established and loved franchise with multiplayer and modding support. But then, it does have the Marvel name on it so who knows. A better comparison might be Chimera Squad (which this game resembles more.) But then again, that was released at a lower price to begin with.

I don't know, the game probably didn't sell as well as hoped, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with going on sale.

I'd go the other direction in the franchise comparison - I know a lot of people love XCom, myself included, but the root of that is old-school strategy nostalgia, compared to Marvel literally being the most profitable franchise of all time. The Firaxis connection should have sealed the deal for strategy diehards as well, but it doesn't seem like it really helped.

I definitely wouldn't compare it to Chimera Squad - that was always a discount game, starting out $20 on Steam if I recall. Nowhere near the ambition of a big tentpole release.... and also had peak numbers of over 20,000, so even if you do want to make the comparison, it probably still beats Midnight Suns.

As for the multiplayer and modding support... sure, XCom 2 does have the advantage of being a much better game. I suppose "being better" is an unfair advantage for sales, but if I were trying to explain poor numbers to my corporate overlords, "we made a mediocre game with few of the features players of the genre were looking for and it didn't sell" probably isn't the excuse I'd go with.

Yeah I don't really disagree with any of that. The reason I'd compare it to Chimera Squad is that it's the most similar in terms of gameplay loop (other than the social/exploration parts.) And the reason I wouldn't compare numbers to Xcom is that both workshop and multiplayer puts them in very different categories.

It is a bit surprising to me that the Marvel name wasn't a bigger draw, though. I think it's a mix of bad marketing, and people expecting something different than what it is.

[Captain Worthy]

Originally posted by HighPriest:

In theory, I agree with Solid Snake that it being on sale does not necessarily equate to it not selling well.

That said, Midnight Suns has had a top concurrent players of 15,400 people on Steam, and is currently at 3,400. Unless it has a much larger player base elsewhere, these are very bad numbers for a recent release with a big licensed name behind it.

Just to compare it to another obvious Firaxis squad tactics game, XCom 2 peaked at 132,000 players and currently has about 3,600 players despite being almost 7 years old.

Xcom 2 sold over 500 000 copies on Steam during its launch week, I don't think there's a single superhero game that has ever done the same on this platform because superhero games are a very niche category here, much less popular than tactics/strategy games. Even the most selling superhero game ever(20+ million copies on console) lost to Xcom 2 when it(Spider-Man by Insomniac Studios) eventually arrived on Steam.

On consoles though superhero games tend to sell millions of copies, having even stronger launches overall than games like Xcom 2.

Midnight Suns did not do very well with its console launch either though(UK charts placement 26th), but that most likely has a lot to do with how much smaller the ownership base is with the current gen consoles. Last gen consoles are owned by more than 200 million people, current gen console owners don't even make 50. And the game hasn't yet launched on last-gen consoles.

[Captain Worthy]

Originally posted by RasaNova:

It is a bit surprising to me that the Marvel name wasn't a bigger draw, though. I think it's a mix of bad marketing, and people expecting something different than what it is.

MCU phase 4 and the D+ shows have actually been eroding the brand value of Marvel by a tremendous amount, the Marvel name is not that much of a draw these days. Even Marvel games of superb quality like the Guardians of Galaxy by Square Enix tend to be financial failures despite getting 93-95% positive user review scores.

Even if 2k hadn't screwed Midnight Suns with their terrible launcher and the game had received 90%+ positive user reviews, it wouldn't have sold much more than it did, especially since it didn't get a simultaneous launch on the last gen consoles.

[bshock]

Originally posted by HighPriest:

In theory, I agree with Solid Snake that it being on sale does not necessarily equate to it not selling well.

That said, Midnight Suns has had a top concurrent players of 15,400 people on Steam, and is currently at 3,400. Unless it has a much larger player base elsewhere, these are very bad numbers for a recent release with a big licensed name behind it.

Just to compare it to another obvious Firaxis squad tactics game, XCom 2 peaked at 132,000 players and currently has about 3,600 players despite being almost 7 years old.

It's also a single player only game that released amongst a swathe of other games for the holiday season. Not unreasonable to think a lot of people played through it and bounced off to the next game. Xcom 2 is an outlier, in that it has a dedicated base of players who continue playing with mods.

[Potches]

We don't know howmany grandmas bought this game via Amazon/Gamestop for their grand children who don't play on Steam but it's an easy stocking stuffer

[Saica-Fox]

pretty much elden ring wasnt on sale till 10 months after release cuz it sold so well so this is very telling of poor sales

[mudpuppy510]

Well I can't speak for everyone else only for me, but I added this game to my wishlist during the sale but still didn't buy it. Even at the discount it's 40 something dollars before taxes ans that isn't counting the season pass that adds another 40 bucks. With everything getting more expensive these days that price is too much for me to pay. I'm just going to keep an eye on it until the discount gets to 50+% or they drop the base price. I have a huge backlog of games to play anyway.