Misunderstanding on FFXV Sales Break-even Point

There was a topic awhile ago that FFXV needed to sell 10 million units to break even. Turns out like other statements about games and money (Destiny costs $500 million!) it was misconstrued. Turns out he was talking about their hope for the game, not at what point they would be financially successful, and apparently they broke even the first day of the game being out. We don't know at what dollar value they broke even at, but they sold 5 million copies on day one.

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There was a topic awhile ago that FFXV needed to sell 10 million units to break even. Turns out like other statements about games and money (Destiny costs $500 million!) it was misconstrued. Turns out he was talking about their hope for the game, not at what point they would be financially successful, and apparently they broke even the first day of the game being out. We don't know at what dollar value they broke even at, but they sold 5 million copies on day one.

That's great, but the game still sucked donkey balls. I gave up after an hour.

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There was a topic awhile ago that FFXV needed to sell 10 million units to break even. Turns out like other statements about games and money (Destiny costs $500 million!) it was misconstrued. Turns out he was talking about their hope for the game, not at what point they would be financially successful, and apparently they broke even the first day of the game being out. We don't know at what dollar value they broke even at, but they sold 5 million copies on day one.

That's great, but the game still sucked donkey balls. I gave up after an hour.

I quite liked it, but I didn't make it more than probably 8 or 10 hours. I found the combat really fun, but I just could not make myself give a shit about the story and the sidequests were all bad and boring.

I know it's a basically a cliche now, but The Witcher 3 really has ruined most other open world RPGs for me. I'm currently about halfway through my fourth play through of that game and still loving every second of it. The attention to detail in that world continually astounds me.

I also started playing Morrowind again a few days ago, and I'm about ten hours deep into it. The combat in that game was always awful, but it's still the only open world game that I think competes with The Witcher 3. The world is varied and interesting, as are the quests (both the main story and most sidequests). Again, it's a cliche thing now, but it's amazing to me how much better Morrowind is than every other Bethesda RPG to follow. It's like they don't even know what it was that made Morrowind so good.

Then again, Pete Hines just said that Fallout 4 was their most successful game ever (but he didn't say how they measure "success," so who knows what that really means), and Bethesda is bigger than ever, so at I guess what they're doing is working for them, even if I have no interest in their RPGs any more. I'm really hoping Elder Scrolls 6 reworks the formula somehow, because I don't think I have any interest in playing Skyrim 2.

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I know it's a basically a cliche now, but The Witcher 3 really has ruined most other open world RPGs for me.

I was told by someone I trust that The Witcher 3 is the epitome of stupid easy busy work disguised as content.

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I know it's a basically a cliche now, but The Witcher 3 really has ruined most other open world RPGs for me.

I was told by someone I trust that The Witcher 3 is the epitome of stupid easy busy work disguised as content.

Some of it might be, but if it's disguised so well you don't know the difference, does it matter? Even the most basic of quests always seems to have a good through-narrative to it. It was the fact that not only did the game tell some great stories in it's larger quests but it made the standard fare that most RPGs include have more weight somehow. They didn't do everything like they were checking off a box ("100 side quests in this zone...check") but they added personality and granularity to all their content, even if the actual core of the content was quite plain.

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That's a very cynical way to look at it, but accurate from a certain perspective I suppose.

The game is definitely no Deus Ex. The combat is adequate and laughably easy on all but the hardest difficulty. The quests are basically all standard RPG fair of running around the world doing the bidding of whoever you took the quest from. But, as I said, the attention to detail is astounding. The world is just incredibly well designed and makes real world sense in a way that most other games don't. And the writing really stands out--even though the quests are pretty standard monster skating or treasure hunting, there's nearly always a twist on the formula, and there are deeper connections between seemingly random quests that all make sense as you play.

I really don't think you'd enjoy it, but I love it. It really depends on what you want in a game. TW3 goes deep with story and lore and just begs to be explored. It's a game that I never fast travel in, a game I just love to inhabit. It's not "fun" in the traditional sense. The moment to moment gameplay isn't noteworthy, there aren't any really deep mechanics for the most part. I spend 75% of my game time walking from place to place, enjoying looking at the world design, listening to NPC conversations, just feeling like I'm on that world. Describing why I like it so much is hard for me. Mostly it really just does come down to that attention to detail--it's a case where the overall product is so much more than the sum of its parts. Everything in the game just fits together and builds such an incredible experience for the players that are looking for that deep dive into a world. It's just so well realized and complete in a way that most modern open world RPGs aren't.

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That's a very cynical way to look at it, but accurate from a certain perspective I suppose.

The game is definitely no Deus Ex. The combat is adequate and laughably easy on all but the hardest difficulty. The quests are basically all standard RPG fair of running around the world doing the bidding of whoever you took the quest from. But, as I said, the attention to detail is astounding. The world is just incredibly well designed and makes real world sense in a way that most other games don't. And the writing really stands out--even though the quests are pretty standard monster skating or treasure hunting, there's nearly always a twist on the formula, and there are deeper connections between seemingly random quests that all make sense as you play.

I really don't think you'd enjoy it, but I love it. It really depends on what you want in a game. TW3 goes deep with story and lore and just begs to be explored. It's a game that I never fast travel in, a game I just love to inhabit. It's not "fun" in the traditional sense. The moment to moment gameplay isn't noteworthy, there aren't any really deep mechanics for the most part. I spend 75% of my game time walking from place to place, enjoying looking at the world design, listening to NPC conversations, just feeling like I'm on that world. Describing why I like it so much is hard for me. Mostly it really just does come down to that attention to detail--it's a case where the overall product is so much more than the sum of its parts. Everything in the game just fits together and builds such an incredible experience for the players that are looking for that deep dive into a world. It's just so well realized and complete in a way that most modern open world RPGs aren't.

I agree completely. I can't explain why witcher3 (I'm a first time witcher player) is so good, maybe it's because every mission has a story. There is no "treasure located here" missions, it's a dead man's note explaining how he was going to give his son his life's fortune but he had to make one more trade mission and died on the way, but before he died he managed to stash a small amount nearby. Oh and did I mention that you also find a trinket that you can give to his son to remember his dad by? Yeah, that is just one mission that you randomly find on the side of the road. (I also made that all up, but you get the idea)

Most games, I understand how much work it takes to make world feel authentic and everything. When I walk down some of the streets of the main cities and some of the buildings, it's mind boggling how much attention to detail they put into it. Even out in the world. Nothing, and I mean nothing seems cookie cutter about the environment.

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The best way I can describe The Witcher 3 is that when I feel it, I feel the same way I do when I'm reading The Lord of the Rings. I feel literally transported to another world, completely absorbed by it.

The Witcher 3 is far from perfect. I can see how looking at it very analytically might paint a mediocre picture. Every quest devolves into using your Witcher senses to press X on highlight environmental objects or following footsteps. It's the same thing over and over and over again, and I can see why that might bore some players. The RPG mechanics are adequate at best. The skills are mostly boring percentage increases. But I don't care about that--the world is so good and a place I want to be in, so it doesn't matter. Like I said, I literally walk (and I mean walk, not run) everywhere. I ride Roach at his slowest speed. I refuse to fast travel (even in Skellige when I have to sail everywhere).

I really enjoy the combat in the game. I really like the sword, sign, potion triangle of combat. I like stalking and researching monsters before hunting them down. But they could cut all the combat out of that game and make it literally a huge walking simulator crossed with a Telltale game (which it sort of feels like anyway at some points) and I'd love it just as much. Like I said, this is a prime example of the whole adding up to much more than the sum of its parts. It's so easy to see the passion and dedication of CDProjekt Red in this game, and that makes me love it all the more.

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This has been my experience of the Witcher series, front to back:

Witcher 1: incredible world, but the combat is so goddamn awful I still couldn't bring myself to play very much of it at all. Incredibly clunky and overly complicated controls at every turn.

Witcher 2: incredible world, decent combat. The hardest fight in the entire game is the first real boss fight you run into, and after that it's a pretty even level of difficulty until the end. It feels like Game of Thrones the game, except better than the actual GoT game because it's a real game and not a choose your own adventure. The only real downside is that the plot of Witcher 1 feeds into a lot of what's going on in Witcher 2, and that means that you're not going to know who some people are even though the game acts as if you obviously know who they are. Unless you're some kind of extreme gaming masochist or something.

witcher 3: incredible world, incredible everything. Play it. You don't even need to have played the earlier witchers for it to make sense.

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This has been my experience of the Witcher series, front to back:

Witcher 1: incredible world, but the combat is so goddamn awful I still couldn't bring myself to play very much of it at all. Incredibly clunky and overly complicated controls at every turn.

Yeah, I feel the same way. The combat isn't hard, it's just boring and unfun. I can sort of respect what they were trying to do--the way Witchers fight is always described as sort of dance-like in the books. They basically all focus on cutting throats or arteries with only the tips of their swords, using weird acrobatics to avoid having to bang swords together. The Witcher 1 tries to make that a reality with it's weird rhythm based combat. It just doesn't feel good to play.

Witcher 2: incredible world, decent combat. The hardest fight in the entire game is the first real boss fight you run into, and after that it's a pretty even level of difficulty until the end. It feels like Game of Thrones the game, except better than the actual GoT game because it's a real game and not a choose your own adventure. The only real downside is that the plot of Witcher 1 feeds into a lot of what's going on in Witcher 2, and that means that you're not going to know who some people are even though the game acts as if you obviously know who they are. Unless you're some kind of extreme gaming masochist or something.

The Witcher 2 has some great story, but yeah, if you aren't caught up on TW1, it doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense. The combat is really just a clunkier version of TW3 combat, so it's fine but not spectacular. On the upside, the forest level in that game is still gorgeous, and probably still one of the best representations of a forest in a videogame I've ever experienced. The forests in The Witcher 3 are great in their own right, but they don't feel dense enough, which is not a problem in that level of The Witcher 2.

witcher 3: incredible world, incredible everything. Play it. You don't even need to have played the earlier witchers for it to make sense.

Obviously, I really think The Witcher 3 is something special. But I really think it's worth noting how well they made the game for fans of the first two games (Lots of call outs and characters from past events) while not leaving new players feeling confused. I played TW3 first, and I never felt confused. Every time Geralt meets a character he knew from the past games, TW3 does an excellent job of giving context for who that character is, but it does it without it feeling unnatural. They just give the player dialogue options that Geralt would reasonably ask and it all just fills in naturally.

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Obviously, I really think The Witcher 3 is something special. But I really think it's worth noting how well they made the game for fans of the first two games (Lots of call outs and characters from past events) while not leaving new players feeling confused. I played TW3 first, and I never felt confused. Every time Geralt meets a character he knew from the past games, TW3 does an excellent job of giving context for who that character is, but it does it without it feeling unnatural. They just give the player dialogue options that Geralt would reasonably ask and it all just fills in naturally.

I'd agree except for that shave and answer session with the Nilfgard general after you leave White Orchard. (Heh, I almost typed Whiterun!) He's all like "And then, obviously, you stopped the ultimate evil at the Tower of of the Boss Fight. Did you save <Person I do not know> or did you let <other person I have no clue about> escape."

But yeah, the initial interactions with the huge cast of characters are all fairly well written with context and past history in mind. What's more, the story was able to move forward without being stuck on the past. Part of it was the way that so much had changed with the war and all that past betrayals or friendships were reset enough to make things flow well.

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Obviously, I really think The Witcher 3 is something special. But I really think it's worth noting how well they made the game for fans of the first two games (Lots of call outs and characters from past events) while not leaving new players feeling confused. I played TW3 first, and I never felt confused. Every time Geralt meets a character he knew from the past games, TW3 does an excellent job of giving context for who that character is, but it does it without it feeling unnatural. They just give the player dialogue options that Geralt would reasonably ask and it all just fills in naturally.

I'd agree except for that shave and answer session with the Nilfgard general after you leave White Orchard. (Heh, I almost typed Whiterun!) He's all like "And then, obviously, you stopped the ultimate evil at the Tower of of the Boss Fight. Did you save <Person I do not know> or did you let <other person I have no clue about> escape."

That's definitely true. Honestly, I feel like they could just make a series of checkboxes at the beginning of a new game to simulate old saves. That presentation of the guy questioning you is bad. I'd honestly just simulate an old save, except that if you don't do it, the game automatically chooses the option that means you don't get to meet Letho again.

But yeah, the initial interactions with the huge cast of characters are all fairly well written with context and past history in mind. What's more, the story was able to move forward without being stuck on the past. Part of it was the way that so much had changed with the war and all that past betrayals or friendships were reset enough to make things flow well.

That is probably the biggest factor. Hardcore fans of the first two games tend to be at least a little disappointed that some old threads from the first games are just abandoned. There was apparently supposed to be some stuff with Iorveth and the Scoia'tael in Novigrad. Not sure if that would have been side-quest stuff or if that would have taken the place of the whole hunt for Dandelion section.

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Misunderstanding on FFXV Sales Break-even Point (Off-Topic)