Fallout 4 Surpasses Skyrim…huh.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fal…/1100-6447621/

Pete Hines has now offered a little more insight on the Fallout 4 vs. Skyrim comparisons. He said on Twitter that he was comparing Fallout 4 and Skyrim over the same period of time and that Fallout has in fact sold more copies than Skyrim.

To me this is amazing news since Skyrim is one of the highest sold games of all time. I know it is just comparing the sales of the two games over a 15 month period, but it is still noteworthy.

According to money inc: "For an indication of Skyrim’s success, it is important to note that it has sold more than 20 million copies since it came out in 2011. This translates to more than $1.3 billion in sales revenues, which in turn, translates to more than $1.2 billion in profit for Bethesda once its development and marketing budget of $85 million has been factored in. As a result, it is no exaggeration to point out that this makes Skyrim one of the most successful games of all genres on all platforms of all time. (1)

After all, more than 20 million copies is more than enough to make it one of the best-selling games of all genres on all platforms of all time, more so than famous names such as Halo, Gears of War, and even some of the less successful installments in famous franchises such as Mario, Pokemon, and Call of Duty. This is particularly notable because Skyrim’s success can be seen as a refutation to a number of common beliefs, which range from single-player games being on their way out to western fantasy RPGs having no appeal for a mainstream audience. (2)"

I wonder if Fallout 4 will continue to sell highly as Skyrim did. I personally thought it was a lesser game than Skyrim, but I prefer fantasy to post-apoc.

Bethesda's net worth must be higher than several countries. Goodness!

P.S. Eat it haters. Muwhahahahaha!

All I can say is that I loved FO4 (not buying DLC though) while Skyrim remained in my memory as an utterly broken and not fun product where I don't want to see anything similar ever again.

Thus more FO4 copies sold in the same time interval is not surprising to me, at least a few friends of mine bought it because of my recommendation while at the same time at least few didn't buy Skyrim based on my suggestion what to skip.

Dunno nothing about bethesda net although that could change. I'm Sims 3 fan and Bethesda just turned ESO into Sims Online so there's a chance I might bite now.

Bah, GTAV has sold 75 millions copies now, who cares about punny Skyrim and Fallout 4.

I personally think the difference in sale numbers between Fallout 4 and Skyrim has more to do with the year of release and game type. Skyrim is still crazy popular for a game released in 2011 and unlike Fallout 4, achieved pop-culture icon ranks (would would have expected this to ever happen, look at title track #5).

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Bethesda's net worth must be higher than several countries. Goodness!

P.S. Eat it haters. Muwhahahahaha!

You mean ZeniMax Media, the parent company. And yes, they're certainly a decent sized company, but they're still considerably smaller than the likes of Activision Blizzard and EA. All of whom are obviously flat out tiny compared to Disney etc.

As for FO4 vs Skyrim: I'm not really surprised. Keep in mind it also attracts shooter fans to a certain extent. I like them both, personally.

Oh yeah, I love them both and have played Fallout-4 for 400 hours or so already. I'm just amazed that a single-player crpg can reach these levels of popularity; especially a game and company that is so despised by certain members of this forum. These people foam at the mouth when Bethesda is mentioned and I love posting about the company's amazing success

Lots of <3

Being very active on Nexus and Flickr I have always been aware of how popular Beth games are with people and why the resonate so well as role playing games with a lot of folks. It is nice to see that RPG's are able to pull in such large crowds as it provides incentive for other companies, big and small, to consider making them - with enough variety for everyone's taste.

Personally I have no problem with Fallout 4 or Bethesda. Though I admit I do point out the same weaknesses in every game, but hey the masses do love the formula.

Anyway it seems were stuck with base building in every Fallout/Elder Scroll game now.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Anyway it seems were stuck with base building in every Fallout/Elder Scroll game now.

But base building is optional (mostly), unlike the dialogue wheel… >.>


Also, I'm personally not a fan of Fallout 4, but it's a setting thing (I can't get into post-apoc settings). I really liked the character creation, armor and weapon modding system though. If it was fantasy, I probably would have spent as many hours in it as I did in Skyrim (which is 200+).

Originally Posted by azarhal
But base building is optional (mostly), unlike the dialogue wheel… >.>.

True but without doing any base building the world of Fallout 4 is empty. So the point is you should build some type of settlements to populate the game world.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Also, I'm personally not a fan of Fallout 4, but it's a setting thing (I can't get into post-apoc settings). I really liked the character creation, armor and weapon modding system though. If it was fantasy, I probably would have spent as many hours in it as I did in Skyrim (which is 200+).

I'm also a fan of any type of post-apoc setting whether it be an RPG or not. A few things I enjoyed was the new power armor system, and the weapon customization.

The dialogue wheel can burn in fiery pit of hell though. As it was one huge disappointment compared to the last two games, but a mod does help fix that problem.

'Huh' indeed. Didn't see that coming. Is Bethesda a double digit billions company? I think there's almost no doubt.

Edit - Just saw Maylander's post. ZeniMax, word.

It seems going forward that style of game is going to only get bigger for them. Once VR is figured out, yikes.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
According to money inc: "For an indication of Skyrim’s success, it is important to note that it has sold more than 20 million copies since it came out in 2011. This translates to more than $1.3 billion in sales revenues, which in turn, translates to more than $1.2 billion in profit for Bethesda once its development and marketing budget of $85 million has been factored in.

I don't doubt that Skyrim was a smashing success for Bethesda and I'm happy for them that it did well but I don't quite get this calculation from money inc.
Are they seriously suggesting that the average sales price of every Skyrim copy sold was $65?

How the hell could that be true? Did they sell millions of CEs for full price to make up for the discounted sales?
OK, technically they said "more than 20 million copies" but still…
And do the 20 million include copies of the DLC or not?

Also, what happened to Sony's and Microsoft's $10/copy console fee? Or Steam's 30% cut of every digital sale? Or the cost of goods of every physical copy for consoles and PC etc.? $85 million development and marketing budget does not cover all of that, right?
I remember calculations made public by insiders that a publisher makes approximately $20 to $25 from a $50 physical copy. The rest is taxes, cost of goods, shipping/handling/packaging, the retailer's cut etc.

It is more than massively doubtful that they made $1.2bn profit from $1.3bn. It is massively doubtful to begin with that they really made those $1.3bn unless it includes the DLCs, merchandising etc.

Well, now we know that haphazard world building elements in a game sells it. Its because of all the minecraft fans that suddenly want to play the game. Well done i guess.

In future all Bethesda games to have world building elements in it.

Hmm it seems I echoed couchpotato a bit, sorry dude.

Not surprising, they pretty much designed it to appeal to as many players as possible…Imo, not a good design direction.
As for Bethesda "hate" as it's seen by it's stalwart defenders, it basically comes from three reasons:
- Zenimax/Bethesda publishers…currently, all things considered, levels below even EA or Ubisoft. Some of the things they pulled off are outright criminal, than simply going by not so "customer friendly" practices.
- The "dumbing down" outrage by old school fans…this is unavoidable and happens with with all franchises ( Resident Evil, all recent Bioware games, etc)
- General lack of quality/technical skills in comparison to similar AAA companies ( compared to say, Naughty Dog, they are almost amateurs). They achieve huge profit , but without seriously investing it into technical improvement of their games ( as they could)

Not sure though why players/fanboys would salivate on this…far as I know, most of the profit in AAA goes to managers, CEO's, etc instead of actual developers working their butts off. ( for example, many Rockstar and Blizzard employees are actually heavily underpaid).

Personally, when it comes to (my) favorite developers, I want to see them achieve enough commercial success to aim for more ambitious projects in the future, but not to the point of their design goals becoming more centered around profit margins.

Hearthfire was the beginning of that mess and it was begged for by fans. People didn't want Breezehome and Vindrel Hall, they wanted to build their own home. However, they took it to a whole other level with Fallout 4. F4 is more builder than anything else.
I thought the companions were improved from Skyrim though.

Bobo, you went that whole post without mentioning CDPR and Witcher 3. You're slipping!

I have strong opinions about the "dumbing down" and things like this, but really there's enough indie RPGs and retro-styled RPGs that I can just play those for that type of experience (although I would love to see more pen-and-paper-style RPGs come out that do unique and old-school things that new RPGs, even Kickstarter and retro ones do not do , but that's another topic.). Bethesda RPGs are not likely to start adding back more stats, attributes, branching dialogue choices and this sort of thing, so just enjoy them for what they are - huge fantasy RPGs that have hundreds of hours of content to explore, 150 dungeons to delve into, lore books and great fantasy lore overall and on and on. If anything, turn up the difficulty to Master, download some mods (maybe even something that re-balances the game and makes it more "old-school"), and just have fun.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to plot the design for my One True Elder-Scrolls-Esque RPG To Rule Them All! Mwahaha!

Fallout 4 to me looks like such a boring game. Basically a shooter with much less options than Skyrim.

When will the fanboys learn that your generic game is not popular because of quality but rather consumer markets that grow with each passing year, ballooning marketing budgets, and little open-world competition.

Of course this sorry excuse for a Fallout title is going to be more popular than Skyrim! Just as TES VI? VII? What are we up to again? will be more "successful" than FO4.

No offense meant, nut!

Well, it is what it is. Bethesda isn't going to start adding in old-school elements, they're going to keep trying to streamline as well as innovate in the style they do, etc.. But honestly, their games are still a bunch of fun for me. They gain big points in the open-world, the atmosphere and the overall mysterious feeling of the game, like there is a lot more to see and do around every corner of the huge fantasy world they've built.

So while I'd love to have even more RPG elements rather than getting rid of 'em, I guess what I'm saying is I just enjoy them for what they are. I do agree that FO4 looks boring, but I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi in that style anyway. That said, I'm sure if/when I do play it I'll spend hundreds of hours crafting weapons mods. Damn you, Bethesda!

Originally Posted by wolfing
Fallout 4 to me looks like such a boring game. Basically a shooter with much less options than Skyrim.

Maybe it looks that way but it's not. Everything in FO4 is at least twice as better and more interesting than in Skyrim. I'm saying if a person played Skyrim for 1000 hours, expect them to play FO4 for at least 2000.