Skyrim - 3.4M Retail Sales in 48 hours?

I don't know Oblivion's overall sales, I suppose I'd have to look at the numbers somewhere, but I'm sure Skyrim will outsell it very soon if 3.4m is accurate.

Of course it will. Sequels almost always outsell the the previous game, especially in a series like TES where there's 5-6 years between titles. They're selling to a larger base of gamers for the most part.

The only time a sequel doesn't outsell the previous game is if a developer really screws up... like Dragon Age 2. :)
 
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Not to be over-dramatic or anything, but Skyrim just might turn out to be the "savior" of triple-AAA RPGs.

I tend to like your posts, but that's a bit too melodramatic for my tastes, mate.
I mean, you recently questioned people's placing Obsidian on a high pedestal in the Tim Cain thread but yet feel quite comfortable enough to express this rather worshipful sounding sentiment? Not to be slightly cynical or anything, but I do believe your favourite pantaloon colours are showing Nev. ;)
 
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I tend to like your posts, but that's a bit too melodramatic for my tastes, mate.
I mean, you recently questioned people's placing Obsidian on a high pedestal in the Tim Cain thread but yet feel quite comfortable enough to express this rather worshipful sounding sentiment? Not to be slightly cynical or anything, but I do believe your favourite pantaloon colours are showing Nev. ;)

I think you're misunderstanding what I meant; my comment was not meant to be praise, but rather it had to do with the effects that a relatively complex RPG with this amount of sales might have. Keep in mind how bad the AAA market has become with RPGs in the last few years. One of the few AAA companies left, Bioware, has been telling anyone who will listen that RPGs have "evolved" into piss-poor hybrids and continue to dull down/dumb down their games, all because RPGs "don't sell well" and the market has "moved on." The Witcher 2 was a really solid game, but it didn't really have the sales to make other companies take notice, unfortunately. What I mean by "savior of the AAA RPG" is not that Bethesda is some God-like, infallible entity of video games (they clearly aren't ;)), but that with these kinds of sales numbers and high quality of the game in general, other companies can realize that an ambitious, relatively complex RPG can absolutely be successful in the AAA market, and that you won't scare players off by making a game that has a lot of depth and a decent amount of challenge.
 
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You guys are supposed to hate bethesda...come on!
 
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All I know is that this game deserves every sale it gets. It's amazing. I shudder to think what the DLC is going to look like. What if they add a whole new continent like they did with Shivering Isles? I'm already giddy with anticipation. Goodbye life, hello Skyrim!

And let's not forget KOA:Reckoning will be here in February. What an amazing time to be an RPG fan. I see myself playing both of these games for the next few years and ignoring everything else, easily.
 
LOL at the comparison to the movie Titanic, that movie made close to 2 billion dollars in box office worldwide, lets see how close the final numbers for Skyrim are to that in time. I'm betting it will be a tiny percentage of that number. Sorry, but I thought that was a lol worthy comparison.

So they are at 10 million shipped, with $650 million in retail sales now. That does not include digital downloads. And it's the best selling game in the history of Steam. Would you call that a tiny percentage?
 
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I think you're misunderstanding what I meant; my comment was not meant to be praise, but rather it had to do with the effects that a relatively complex RPG with this amount of sales might have. Keep in mind how bad the AAA market has become with RPGs in the last few years. One of the few AAA companies left, Bioware, has been telling anyone who will listen that RPGs have "evolved" into piss-poor hybrids and continue to dull down/dumb down their games, all because RPGs "don't sell well" and the market has "moved on." The Witcher 2 was a really solid game, but it didn't really have the sales to make other companies take notice, unfortunately. What I mean by "savior of the AAA RPG" is not that Bethesda is some God-like, infallible entity of video games (they clearly aren't ;)), but that with these kinds of sales numbers and high quality of the game in general, other companies can realize that an ambitious, relatively complex RPG can absolutely be successful in the AAA market, and that you won't scare players off by making a game that has a lot of depth and a decent amount of challenge.

I agree 100%.
 
...but rather it had to do with the effects that a relatively complex RPG with this amount of sales might have.

I would suggest it will have relatively little impact - or, if it does, little quality impact. There's no doubt publishers will pay attention to the numbers and maybe a few more RPGs will get greenlit but few will embrace this properly. There is a crazy amount of content in Skyrim and most publishers will see there are easier paths paved with gold - an FPS, for example.

And on the other hand, history has shown most publishers err on the side of mainstreaming in spite of themselves. Remember how once upon a time every game was a Diablo-clone hack'n'slash? How many were good? I know a lot of people here look down on Diablo but the key is the character / loot complexity - the copy games only saw click-click-click, which isn't the heart of Diablo, and stuffed it up.
 
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