Skyrim - 3.4M Retail Sales in 48 hours?

Originally Posted by HiddenX
Play on Expert for a greater challenge.

It seemed easy on normal difficulty at first (with a few notable exceptions like giants) but now that I am level 20 I regularly get my rear handed to me if I face more than 2, sometimes 3, foes at once. Even 1 on 1 they sometimes take me down. But boy if you get one guy on each side of you you are toast. Or if there are a bunch of mages zapping you…

Originally Posted by Jaesun
VGCharts are in no way any form of actual sales numbers. They mean nothing at all.

I did Sales Analysis for a living. I would have been fired had I used VGCharts "fake magical numbers" just FYI.

Can you elaborate on why it is considered "fake magical numbers?".

At least within the US, retail POS data is tracked and reported by key retailers, widely available to anyone who has an account with services such as Nielsen or NPD.

The overwhelming majority of domestic retail sales for media goods like DVDs, games and CDs is generated by a small number of key retailers.

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
14% of boxed sales were for PC. With digital sales I bet it's at least 20-25% of total sales. That's pretty good, and much higher than snooty Todd Howard said a while back ("95% of our audience is on consoles").

Good on you, PC community.

Well, first of all you might want to quote the venerable Mr. Howard correctly before assaulting him for stating something that he certainly knows a lot better than you . He said "90%", not "95%".
Secondly, I don't see any reason why not to trust him on that number. You can find comparable numbers from other publishers like UbiSoft whose sales by platform showed numbers of between 7% to 11% in financial statements.
Then there's also the fact that Oblivion had zero DRM and only a simple DVD check while Skyrim requires Steam. I don't even want to know how many people pirated Oblivion (which was available on the shady sites before the game's release contrary to the PC version of Skyrim which was "only" made available on the day of release but not before).
Finally, I think we all know about the sad state of affairs regarding our beloved platform so there is generally very little reason to doubt Mr. Howard's numbers since it seems to correlate just fine with the lack of love that we are seeing for PC gaming from publishers, developers, retailers and even PC gamers themselves.

So assuming that each copy sold for $50 that means that would total approx $170 million. I'm sure there's discounts and everything so lets round down to $150 million. That means being generous, Skyrim has made more than 5 times as much money in 2 days as the movie Titanic did on opening weekend. Although i'm sure there's some math not accounted for like pre-orders and stuff.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Finally, I think we all know about the sad state of affairs regarding our beloved platform so there is generally very little reason to doubt Mr. Howard's numbers since it seems to correlate just fine with the lack of love that we are seeing for PC gaming from publishers, developers, retailers and even PC gamers themselves.

PC gaming has never been doing better. Big releases like Starcraft and Portal sell both faster and in higher numbers compared to 5 years ago. Meanwhile, digital distribution means that every PC copy sold brings in greater revenue compared to brick and mortar.

In addition to this, smaller developers like GSC, Paradox, Frictional, Taleworlds are selling in numbers that could only be achieved by high profile developers in the past.

But I guess defeatist PC gamers such as yourself only see doom and gloom. As for Bethesda's statement, I can think of several reasons why they (and other console focused publishers) would want people to think that PC gaming was dying.

280000 were playing on steam at the same time and that is just PC.The sales are huge for an RPG, that is pretty clear.Bioware should take note.

Originally Posted by TheSisko
Meanwhile, digital distribution means that every PC copy sold brings in greater revenue compared to brick and mortar.

Yes, to see the whole story you have to see what the "margins" are for selling digital vs. hard-copy. Taking the middle men out of the picture (and all the costs related to distribution), the margins have to be very, very good in comparison. Granted, that's not enough $$ to make up the difference, but it means that the PC platform is definitely a viable gaming platform at this moment in time and, as the market moves more digital, should continue so into the future. In other words, the PC market is healthy, just not AS healthy as the console market which is just friggin' gi-normous in comparison.

Originally Posted by Falchor
Yes, to see the whole story you have to see what the "margins" are for selling digital vs. hard-copy. Taking the middle men out of the picture (and all the costs related to distribution), the margins have to be very, very good in comparison.

While I generally agree, I would like to point out that more often than not the middleman is not cut out. The DL provider is the new middleman. But the costs for replication and distribution are indeed close to zero now, and I doubt DL services have as much negotiation power as the 10 biggest retailers worldwide. So the margins are certainly much higher, the costs much lower and the risk (returns, upfront costs, unsold inventory) lower.

Those numbers are impressive, especially for an RPG, but it still pales in comparison to what Modern Warfare 3 did.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Those numbers are impressive, especially for an RPG, but it still pales in comparison to what Modern Warfare 3 did.

Of course it would, it's not as mainstream as MW3. Those numbers are amazing, and I hope this gets them started on a sequel quicker then 6 years from now.

I'm sure it will motivate them to produce DLC as fast as possible.

Im all about Bethesda DLC on this game , hopin its crystal caves or an underground city like Arx .

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.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Well, first of all you might want to quote the venerable Mr. Howard correctly before assaulting him for stating something that he certainly knows a lot better than you . He said "90%", not "95%".
Secondly, I don't see any reason why not to trust him on that number. You can find comparable numbers from other publishers like UbiSoft whose sales by platform showed numbers of between 7% to 11% in financial statements.

I'm sure for many games the PC version is 10% of less of the market share, even with digital sales factored in. That's not the case with The Elder Scrolls though, so he was talking out of his ass.

On day one we have at least 20% of the sales and since the PC has a longer tail who knows what it will be by the end of it.

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
since the PC has a longer tail who knows what it will be by the end of it.

Morrowind just re-entered Steam top 20 at full price.

Originally Posted by TheSisko
Morrowind just re-entered Steam top 20 at full price.

That is amazing! Long live Bethesda, I've already forgave you for Oblivion. Some day I may even forgive you what you did to Fallout.

Originally Posted by TheSisko
Morrowind just re-entered Steam top 20 at full price.

Fun part is that Morrowind is at 19 for 19.99€ while Ob deluxe is at 2nd position for 6.24€ , to bad DF is freeware , i 'd love to see it in #30 for 60€

Originally Posted by Falchor
Taking the middle men out of the picture (and all the costs related to distribution), the margins have to be very, very good in comparison.

There still is a middleman: Steam. I'm sure Beth is still making money hand over tit, but I would drop one of those 'very's.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
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.

To each his own, but of course it won't compare. How many people don't play video games? Even further, how many gamers don't play RPGs? Now compare that to how many people don't watch movies. The numbers are way unbalanced. With that in mind it becomes a lot more impressive. And those don't include comparisons like production and marketing costs.

It seems a press release from Bethesda has announced 7 million retail copies shipped at launch with about half of them sold in the first 48 hours.

So in this case at least, the info reported by vgchartz appears to be accurate:

http://kotaku.com/5860074/skyrim-lan…ews-will-likel