Is 400,000 Units Sold Significant?

SBFord

Is 400,000 Units Sold Significant?

The announcement by Daum that Black Desert Online had sold 400,000 copies was quite a surprise. Not because I wasn't expecting some sort of announcement but because the figure struck me as particularly low. For what could be argued as the last AAA title for some time and one that - seemingly - has been anticipated for an age, it's odd to think it's had sales of less than half a million.

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Deltois

As long as people are having fun, that's all that matters. I personally didn t like it, and it seems not as many people are interested in this hybrid style as some thought.
Those numbers are quite low IMO.

kinido

Subs are going to explode when they release the last 4 classes in the next month and a half, I know from the forums that there is an outcry for the new classes which is why a lot of people are holding off on purchasing it.

We are getting caught up to KR extremely fast, I can see them hitting the million mark by the end of Summer for sure.

koljane

300.000 was sold cause of hype and marketing, rest is more or less fan based and at the end it will be community for like 100 - 150k people.
For this kid of game i think that is alright.

ButeoRegalis

"It does away with so many conventions - while retaining just enough that we’re used to - that it was never bound to be as popular as its peers."
Does this strike anyone else as crazy, in the light of people whining about every new game that it's just another WoW-clone, and that there is no innovation? How crazy is it that people drop new games that don't provide you welfare epics at every turn, while flocking back to the same old WoW's next expansion - NOW with GARRISONS!!!!!!!! But a game has no tab-targetting? Pfff, failure right there, ded gam is ded!! Game has quests? Pfff, WoW-clone, might as well keep my $15 to the Blizz-Victory-fund going.

Rusque

Doesn't seem low to me at all, seems pretty high for a owPvP MMO, so that means it's doing pretty well.

People who like PvP games tend to play PvP games (like Dota, LoL, CS, etc). The cross section of people who want owPvP and MMORPGs is smaller than people seem to want to admit. They are a very loud group, but game after game after game, we keep seeing that the numbers aren't there.

I'll even go out on a limb and say that if BDO was a PvE game or at least had PvE servers they would already have passed the 1 million mark easily. Hell lots of people currently playing it are just doing the PvE stuff and aren't even bothering with the PvP. So even out of the 400k a chunk of them aren't even participating in the PvP portion.

SEANMCAD

Perspective:

There are currently about 10 titles in Early Access with over 1 million copies sold.

SEANMCAD

Aori said:

I think a lot of people were waiting to see how it plays out. The big recommendation was to wait for guest passes before buying. Also the hype was pretty moderate for the game, it wasn't heralded as the next new WoW killer like everything before it.

gender locking for me was a huge negative. I wonder if that alone made many people not even bother to look more into it

laserit

SEANMCAD said:

Perspective:

There are currently about 10 titles in Early Access with over 1 million copies sold.

You're talking Steam i take it

Curious as to how many copies they would sell if they released on Steam?

Galthon

I think it may be a bit of a sleeper. My wife and I hadn't been particularly interested, but  after enough reviews highlighting the econ/housing/node systems, I took the leap last weekend and got hooked. I will admit the genderlocking and overall lack of class options is a bummer, but my overall feel is less that they half-assed character options and more that they put the time and effort into most of the underlying systems instead.  Makes me feel like when I started playing EVE, just with more relatable avatars.

kjempff

A few things that might have en effect.

-The closed beta weekend clashed with the Division open beta, and also there were no open beta so most had to rely on second hand knowledge to decide.
-It is a pvp game, despite the many who try to make it sound like it isn't - And pvp mmo's have a limited audience, also considering the market is saturated with pvp mmo's already.
-The learning curve may scare off potential buyers.
-Box price is a barrier especially when you are in doubt if you will like a game; the 7 day trials help some but still you'd have to know someone.
-A game with similar combat system and style just released weeks? before, Blade and Soul.

But still 400k is a decent number and probably matching the quality of the game pretty good. Well in my opinion there are some really awesome specific features, while also some horrible designed features. So it is not that the game is average and dull (far from), more that its features are very polarized with amazing mixed with horrible design choices.

fs23otm

Depends on how much they are reporting... They had 400k pre-orders, as was documented in a well researched forum post. So if these are the pre-orders... it did okay... if it is 400k + pre-orders - refunds... then it did better then suspected. I have a feeling it is sitting between 400k-500k when all said is done... with 100k concurrent players... that is a solid playerbase...

Wylf

Rusque said,

Doesn't seem low to me at all, seems pretty high for a owPvP MMO, so that means it's doing pretty well.

People who like PvP games tend to play PvP games (like Dota, LoL, CS, etc). The cross section of people who want owPvP and MMORPGs is smaller than people seem to want to admit. They are a very loud group, but game after game after game, we keep seeing that the numbers aren't there.

I'll even go out on a limb and say that if BDO was a PvE game or at least had PvE servers they would already have passed the 1 million mark easily...

And frankly I think he nailed it.

carvalho677

I'm sure the number would go up if half the world wasn't region locked tbh

Azaron_Nightblade

Well, the devs seem excited with their numbers... which is always a good sign.

SEANMCAD

Aori said:

SEANMCAD said:

Aori said:

I think a lot of people were waiting to see how it plays out. The big recommendation was to wait for guest passes before buying. Also the hype was pretty moderate for the game, it wasn't heralded as the next new WoW killer like everything before it.

gender locking for me was a huge negative. I wonder if that alone made many people not even bother to look more into it

Gender locking in a fantasy game has never been an issue for me so I'll never personally understand peoples complaints.

I never even knew it was a thing until this game. it was the first time I heard of the concept.

anyway, you might be right maybe not that big of a deal, just a biggy for me

rojoArcueid

Like i said in another thread, their(both Pearl Abyss and Daum) brilliant(not) idea of ip blocking half of the American continent on NA servers and parts of EU for EU servers is biting them in the back. Those sales numbers would have been A LOT higher.

Sovrath

Didn't the article say that it sold 400k in the first month? What about everyone who bought prior to the first month?

Andistotle

You have to remember that Black Desert is also realesed in China, Japan, russian and Korea. And the game is doing very well especially in Japan and russia.
in addition many countries are still IP blocked. Pearl Abyss Intend to realese 1 more version for those IP  blocked countries.

if you add upp players from all regions into 1, then you have 1 pretty sucessful game IMO.

pantheron

I think the game has done pretty well considering we're not really the target demographic for the game. Personally Idc if it is a "failure" in other people's eyes, As long as there are enough people in my server for me to have a good time, I feel like its a success.

Talonsin

I think too many people feel burned by AA to want to jump right into another eastern MMO.  I'm waiting for a bit longer to see what the players have to say about endgame before pulling the trigger myself.

Alverant

Well right now their system requirements are more than what my poor old machine can handle so I can get a better idea of how well BDO is going to do long term (5+ years) before I decide if I want to play it. But after Wildstar, I may take a break from MMOs for a while. I'm tired of the games I enjoy getting sundowned. At least when I buy a regular game I can play it for as long as my hardware supports it.

This wait will also give BDO time to stop locking classes by gender and other such restrictions. If I want to make a big burly wizard, I should be able to do that instead of someone who looks anemic.

Does anyone know if they're going to release the character creator again? I'd like that as a stand-alone product.

Lunarpac

Tried buying it, website didn't accept credit card, checked forums to see if anyone else had the same problems, turns out a lot of people had the same problems, found out customer service was terrible, checked some more player opinions, no longer interested in game.

Oyjord

SEANMCAD said:

Aori said:

I think a lot of people were waiting to see how it plays out. The big recommendation was to wait for guest passes before buying. Also the hype was pretty moderate for the game, it wasn't heralded as the next new WoW killer like everything before it.

gender locking for me was a huge negative. I wonder if that alone made many people not even bother to look more into it

Yep. I would've bought in had there been no horribly regressive and restrictive gender locking.

Blinkenn

.

SEANMCAD said:

Perspective:

There are currently about 10 titles in Early Access with over 1 million copies sold.

Two of the more obvious reasons: PvP and Cash Shop. Not so obvious, the realigning of the genre. Although 500k subscribers back in EQ's day was king of the hill. Maybe the market is settling back to pre-WoW normalcy, with the vast majority of previous MMO players either sticking with WoW or moving on, to mobile or console games, etc.

Mikeha

For a port to a foreign territory it is great.