Alpha Protocol - Sells 700k

Posters on the Alpha Protocol official board noticed some sales figures from recent Sega financial results. Here's a snip from an article at the Examiner:

Alpha Protocol was released for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in Europe on May 28th and North America on June 1st. As of June 30th, the role-playing game has sold 700,000 units.

More information.

Those number are better than i expected. I wonder if they take in to account the number of downloads. I remember a time when they didn't count those.

Yeah, that sounds like a respectable number to me. I guess they were aiming for a lot more.

A positive surprise. The average sales price is probably quite low though.

It probably isn't the entire amount since Steam and some other places don't report their numbers. I think that some of the download sites do report their numbers so it may count some online download distribution.

This isn't NPD Fungroup guys, this is a financial statement. Steam doesn't publicize its sales but I'm pretty sure SEGA knows how many copies it sold via Steam, and thus puts it in their financial statement.

700K, plus taking into account how soon this game's price was lowered, is not nearly enough to recoup the investment SEGA made into Obsidian.

The game's price was lowered but wasn't it put right back up again? I paid $50 for it a couple of weeks ago and Steam is selling it for $50 right now.

(And now I'm on the verge of uninstalling the game simply because of the computer hack mini-game. I hate that mini-game!)

That hacking mini-game is really not hard to avoid. A tier one skill allows you to use EMPs to auto-win mini-games of all kinds.

Remember though that 700k has been sold across three different platforms. Such is the power of dishonest reviewers these days. Funny how Alpha Protocol got flak for the same exact things that Bethesda and Bioware games are also guilty of. Only if you read the reviews for say Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3 the paragraphs on crappy AI or bad animation are nowhere to be found.

<— waiting for a patch before deciding whether to buy the game or not.

Remember though that 700k has been sold across three different platforms.

Yeah for a multi-platform game in development so long…. that's not a good number at all.

Originally Posted by tolknaz
Remember though that 700k has been sold across three different platforms. Such is the power of dishonest reviewers these days. Funny how Alpha Protocol got flak for the same exact things that Bethesda and Bioware games are also guilty of. Only if you read the reviews for say Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3 the paragraphs on crappy AI or bad animation are nowhere to be found.

Except that Alpha Protocol is guilty of plenty of more things than just crappy AI or bad animation. While ME2 and FO3 do some things bad, they both offer many gameplay elements vastly superior to AP. Where does AP shine, can you tell? The gameplay is close to broken, stealth and cover mechanics work arbitrarily, jerky mouse movement coupled with horrible hacking mini game, sub-par graphics, nonsensical timed dialogue mechanism…ugh. The only thing mildy good about AP is perhpas its writing and superficial C&C. Note that some reviewers whom you conveniently call 'dishonest' did in fact point out these 'good' points but I suppose that wasn't enough to satisfy blind fanboys. It is really not difficult to see how unpolished and buggy this game is within first 15 mins of playing.

Given the massive advertising campaign, that is pretty disastrous, I think. Not surprising of course given the reception.

Originally Posted by Aditya
The gameplay is close to broken..

Oh, please. Anti-fanboys are as bad as fanboys.

Originally Posted by Aditya
Except that Alpha Protocol is guilty of plenty of more things than just crappy AI or bad animation. While ME2 and FO3 do some things bad, they both offer many gameplay elements vastly superior to AP. Where does AP shine, can you tell? The gameplay is close to broken, stealth and cover mechanics work arbitrarily, jerky mouse movement coupled with horrible hacking mini game, sub-par graphics, nonsensical timed dialogue mechanism…ugh. The only thing mildy good about AP is perhpas its writing and superficial C&C. Note that some reviewers whom you conveniently call 'dishonest' did in fact point out these 'good' points but I suppose that wasn't enough to satisfy blind fanboys. It is really not difficult to see how unpolished and buggy this game is within first 15 mins of playing.

1. What exactly is broken about its gameplay? Granted it's mostly barebones stuff. Stealth is no Thief for example, but more close to Deus Ex if you could somehow remove retarded stuff like invisibility spells. It doesn't give you much feedback but it works surprisingly well if you've played other stealth games before.
2. Like Badesumofu said, hacking minigame is optional. And it is at least 10 times more entertaining than scanning the planets in Mass Effect 2 (which was pretty much NOT optional).
3. What exactly was subpar about the graphics?
4. Granted, i didn't like the fact that the dialogue was timed. Stance system however was a great deal more logical than the one in Mass Effect. Also dialogue was actually well written.

Gratz, Obsidian!

Hell, it would have been about 2 million had they let you guys actually finish the game.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Oh, please. Anti-fanboys are as bad as fanboys.

I'd like to emphasize that.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I'd like to emphasize that.

why don't we continue this quote defense of AP by inserting a defense of the original poster who has now been attacked twice for stating his opinion………AP sucked balls.

Thanks for listening.

Who actually is AP ? I only know APP.

Edit : Oh, you mean the video game ? I didn't know that a video game could suck something, especially balls.

Maybe in 50 years, with what's called now "augmented reality" ?

Originally Posted by Brother None
700K, plus taking into account how soon this game's price was lowered, is not nearly enough to recoup the investment SEGA made into Obsidian.

AP is still $50 at all the retail stores that I've seen it at recently. Best Buy, Gamestop, Etc.