Arcania - German Charts: #1 & #2

JoWooD sent out a PR praising Arcania's early sales success on German market. Their RPG climbed to the #1 spot in the official PC full price charts and reached #2 in the XBox charts.
The PC version sold 27.000+ units within the first week while the XBox 360 game was sold through 3.600 times.
More information.

The PC version sold 27.000+ units within the first week while the XBox 360 game was sold through 3.600 times.

Is that a typo in regards to the Xbox 360 version? It only sold 3600? Or did they mean 36,000?

I dunno, is that much? ?__?

You got to remember this is the German market where the PC is far more popular then the console market.

And how is that measly number a "success"? I admit - I don't know much about sales in Germany, but it's a huge country, a bastion of euro-rpgs, and those numbers look just tiny (for an opening week). Also now that everyone is giving it less than stellar reviews I don't see how they'll continue that sales trend.

Gothic 3 sold 150.000 units in the first week …

#2 in the XBox charts sold 3600? Sounds like Jowoods PR is just full of it.

Originally Posted by Hindukönig
Gothic 3 sold 150.000 units in the first week …

Gothic 3 did even worse in review scores, though. Could it be that the decision to go dumbed-down and generic has backfired? I would certainly like that to be true. Despite its problems, Gothic 3 was a great game at its core, and certainly interesting. Arcania, however, seems uninteresting, bland and mediocre all the way through.

I guess the reason why JoWood is trying to put a positive spin on Arania's sales might be this.

By the way, Hindukönig, do you know the sales numbers for Risen?

Kay

No, I don't know them. I have my informations regarding the sales of Gothic 3 from here. And the first reviews of Gothic 3 were more positive, at least in Germany, as far as I remember.

[edit]According to gamezone.de, Risen sold 100.000 units in the first three weeks in the German-speaking countries.[/edit]

The number probably went up, but about 10 years 100.000 sales in Germany was considered a big success.

Arcania is in the top ten for best sellers on Steam

Must be nobody reads reviews

In fact, it's almost exactly as predicted.

It looks to me as if sites like this one weren't read - or that graphics are still the most important thing to players.

I tend to believe this is the mass market which is buying it. Has Gothic already become kind of "mainstream" ?

But it could als be a "Strohfeuer", I think it's "straw fire" in English ?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Is that a typo in regards to the Xbox 360 version? It only sold 3600? Or did they mean 36,000?

It's no typo.

IMHO the XBox number is terrible and the PC number not good. The 36k don't include DL sales, and channels not covered by Media Control, so the real number will probably closer to 50k. But on the other hand it also includes the preorders.

In two weeks we'll know how much these numbers are worth. Fallout's coming.

JoWooD needs to sell ca. 800k units for full price (or the equivalent at budget and DLC) to make the game a success.

Sounds like a flop, even though these are just the German numbers.

Originally Posted by Gorath
JoWooD needs to sell ca. 800k units for full price (or the equivalent at budget and DLC) to make the game a success.

Surely not.. that's a huge target for this style of game unless you are EA or Bethesda.

I suspect being a 'best' seller on Steam isn't worth that much in a slow period. It's one place above Counterstrike: Source Not that I know how they compile their best-seller list. Still Lost Planet 2 came out at the same time and is no longer on the list so it's doing better than some.

I don't know what a straw fire would be in English, possibly 'sleeper hit', which would have been appropriate for Gothic I!

Originally Posted by kalniel
Surely not.. that's a huge target for this style of game unless you are EA or Bethesda.

You could have used the search function.

http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3475

This is 3 years old. Now assume that Arcania cost "a high one-digit number in Millions" to make. JoWooD has to pay this money back and earn a couple of millions to start the next big game. For the sake of the argument let's say that there are 20€ per sold unit to split between the involved parties.

The formulas for the revenue split can be created with the help of the newsbit linked above.

Now happy calculating.

Originally Posted by Alistair
I don't know what a straw fire would be in English, possibly 'sleeper hit', which would have been appropriate for Gothic I!

I was rather thinking of a fire that burns fast, hot and high - but is out too soon.
Like some sort of flash.

Ah - that's probably a flash in the pan, derived from a musket where the powder goes off but the ball is unmoved…

Yes … that's the image I had in mind.