• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Bethesda probably didn't release "successful" game since Doom (2016)

Status
Not open for further replies.
dex3108

dex3108

Member
Oct 26, 2017
22,567
First to clarify one thing, Bethesda is private company so we don't have official sale numbers or comments from Bethesda directly so this could totally be wrong. Also all of those still games could be profitable.

But based on other data like NPD, Steam Spy, UK sales data... All Bethesda published games (Prey, Dishonored 2, Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein 2, maybe Elder Scrolls Legends and Quake) after Doom in 2016 had really low sales compared to previous entries or in general.

It took Dishonored 2 more than a year to reach 1M sales on Steam and that is with heavy discounts, Death of the Outsider launch on Steam was below 30K I think, and so on.

And now we have Fallout 76 that is getting shredded to pieces by reviews and it is already 33% off on Xbox and up to 40% off on PC week after release. So while game still could be profitable (we don't know what budget was for development) there is big chance that won't meet expectations.

So IF all of this is true (again we don't have full data so all of this could be totally wrong) all Bethesda games in past 2 years underperformed. And IF that is the case that is bigger news than Bethesda breaking streak of good scores for their games with Fallout 76.

Also if mods think this topic is not worth discussing or ZhugeEX has more concrete data that shows different picture please close this thread.
 
OP
OP
dex3108

dex3108

Member
Oct 26, 2017
22,567
Skronk said:
But is Bethesda more doomed that Nintendo? That's what I want to know.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They are not doomed. But they are still failing to find big success this generation. They tried a lot of things, SP games, MP games, card game, mobile game... Fallout Shelter is one of their biggest successes this gen for example. But their AAA tries were not that successful si far.
 
Becks'

Becks'

Member
Dec 7, 2017
7,428
Canada
Skronk said:
But is Bethesda more doomed that Nintendo? That's what I want to know.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Never.

gj4tz.gif


Nintendo is always doomed even though it has the most money in the bank compared to all Japanese companies. /s
 
Bedameister

Bedameister

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,942
Germany
Yeah, things were not looking too good but I'm optimistic.
The skyrim versions sure did great. Fallout 4 did great. As you said, DOOM did great. TESO did great.
I think Starlink and TESVI are going to do great. DOOM 2 probably too. I'm a little worried about Rage 2 and the new Wolfenstein thing.
 
truly101

truly101

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
3,245
Its a shame Dishonored 2 didn't hit the numbers they wanted as I loved it way more than the original. I think not long after it came out, PSN had a "spotlight sale" on it for $30 so I jumped on that. I didn't get around to playing it to this time last year but it clicked with me big time, played it from beginning to end. I'm hoping Prey will click with me like that as well, the people who love it fucking love it. i'm guessing both titles have sold alright but nothing close to a Skyrim.
Wasn't Fallout 4 post Doom 2016. Whatever people thought of the game, I'm pretty sure it sold waymore than Doom. The Skyrim remasters probably did pretty well too.
 
bane833

bane833

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
4,530
They should have released TES VI instead of that pile of trash Fallout 76 and they would be raking in cash. Got nobody but themselves to blame.
 

Deleted member 19924

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,543
Getting a little bit of THQ vibes here but they should stay afloat for the foreseeable future unless Elder Scrolls, DOOM 2 and Starfield bomb.
 

Deleted member 8593

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
27,176
By now, everybody knows that Bethesda games get steep pricecuts mere weeks after release. Dishonored 2 was 50% off on the European PSN not even a month after release. About half a year later you could get it for as little as 24€ with PS+. Maybe if Bethesda put some more trust into their own releases, customers would as well.
 
K Samedi

K Samedi

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,989
All they need is to bring their franchises to a more modern state. Dishonored co op would probably do well. I think Wolfenstein co op will do very well too. They already are trying that with Fallout 76 so they know what needs to be done. I think they have lots of money in the bank to keep on going for a very long time. They had some great successes with Fallout, Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls online, Fallout Shelter.
 
Com_Raven

Com_Raven

Brand Manager
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
1,103
Europa
Without knowing actual sales numbers, nor budgets and sales expectations, it is pretty hard to judge a game's success. Is it safe to say that some of their recent AAA game's did not sell as well as other AAA titles. But did they sell "well enough"? Hard to jduge for anyone outside the company with insights into their budgets and expectations.

bane833 said:
They should have released TES VI instead of that pile of trash Fallout 76 and they would be raking in cash. Got nobody but themselves to blame.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Man, game development is so easy! Can't believe more companies don't hire you as an adviser or Creative Director!

Dardan Sandiego said:
By now, everybody knows that Bethesda games get steep pricecuts mere weeks after release. Dishonored 2 was 50% off on the European PSN not even a month after release. About half a year later you could get it for as little as 24€ with PS+. Maybe if Bethesda put some more trust into their own releases, customers would as well.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's a chicken and egg thing though. If the game sold exceedingly well on day 1, it would not get such a step cut shortly after, right?
 
Keasar

Keasar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,724
UmeĂĄ, Sweden
I blame people's shit taste.

Doom, Wolfenstein, Dishonored are fantastic games. People need to buy more of them rather than crud like Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout (if they do release however another one of those games made by literally anyone else than Bethesda, go to town on it).
 

JamesJoyce1882

Member
Nov 25, 2017
70
Well, at least Dishonored 2 and Prey are among the greatest games of the last few years. I'd rather they continue putting out fantastic games that don't sell than bad games that don't sell. Sadly they'll probably make more profit with the bad game.
 
Rodjer

Rodjer

Self-requested ban.
Member
Jan 28, 2018
4,808
Without knowing actual development cost and sales we can't say what was successfull, tanked and underperformed.

There's a difference between a game flopping and one underperforming.
 
Amnixia

Amnixia

â–˛ Legend â–˛
The Fallen
Jan 25, 2018
10,411

Deleted member 8593

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
27,176
Com_Raven said:
That's a chicken and egg thing though. If the game sold exceedingly well on day 1, it would not get such a step cut shortly after, right?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This isn't a new development. Bethesda's boneheaded review policy was a contributing factor to why their games sort of never got the attention they deserved. Jason Schreier wrote a good article on it and luckily they finally changed it but it's been so long that I feel the damage is already done.
 
RPG_Fanatic

RPG_Fanatic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,622
Kafkaswaffle said:
Evil Within 2 deserved so much better.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I agree. I ended up getting the game for half price during a Black Friday deal, but I would have played full price for it. Playing it also got me to buy the first game and play through that one as well. The first and second game do things differently, but both have their strong points. I will be sad if the series doesn't get another entry.
 
Com_Raven

Com_Raven

Brand Manager
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
1,103
Europa
Dardan Sandiego said:
This isn't a new development. Bethesda's boneheaded review policy was a contributing factor to why their games sort of never got the attention they deserved. Jason Schreier wrote a good article on it and luckily they finally changed it but it's been so long that I feel the damage is already done.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't think their review policy is doing them any favors (especially as a lot of the affected games have turned out to be be actually fantastic, like DOOM, D2 and New Colossus). I find it baffling not to get early reviews for them to stoke pre-orders right before launch with great reviews.
 
nickfrancis86

nickfrancis86

Member
Nov 10, 2017
427
Love the 3 Wolfenstein titles we've seen. I'd like more of that franchise. Wanted to like Prey, couldn't get in to it. Haven't tried TEW, got that horror fix elsewhere. Love Doom, still need to finish it though. Fallout has something against me, every time I play, my save corrupts. Twice with FO3 and once with FO4. Never finished an Elder Scrolls, but played enough to know that I'd probably pick up the next one at release, I've always been LTTP with them for some reason.

They're one of the devs I've always had a positive opinion of, and still have. I'm steering well clear of FO76 though, I was interested initially. By the time it's fixed (by Bethesda's standards) I won't care too much for it.
 
bane833

bane833

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
4,530
Com_Raven said:
Man, game development is so easy! Can't believe more companies don't hire you as an adviser or Creative Director!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This has absolutely nothing to do with game development. Fallout 76 was a business decision out of greed because Bethesda wanted to throw their hat in the GaaS ring. Which makes it all the more hilarious that it backfired.
 
Com_Raven

Com_Raven

Brand Manager
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
1,103
Europa
Ehoavash said:
Its okay. Bethesda still has that $500 Million they won from the Facebook lawsuit last year .

Lawl non of those failed games probably couldn't even reach the amount made from that lawsuit

https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/02/facebook-loses-500m-lawsuit-to-bethesda-owner-zenimax-6422273/
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's actually 250M, not 500M. Which is certainly a number a highly successful AAA game can reach. Less "lawl" more facts ;)

bane833 said:
This has absolutely nothing to do with game development. Fallout 76 was a business decision out of greed because Bethesda wanted to throw their hat in the GaaS ring. Which makes it all the more hilarious that it backfired.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If it was purely business driven, they would have gotten on "Skyrim 2" years ago as their highest priority. Looking at their portfolio, it is pretty clear that Bethesda as a published is not overly trend or purely RoI driven- if they were, they wouldn't make these big SP-only games, which are notoriously less-profitable.

Also, don't project your preferences onto others- there are plenty of developers who actually love and want to work on multiplayer or GaaS titles :) Especially considering that they recently absorbed a studio with a lot of experience and talent in that area (Battlecry) into the Bethesda Game Studios structure.
 
Last edited:
Andri

Andri

Member
Mar 20, 2018
6,017
Switzerland
Shugga said:
Can we leave doomed shitposting at the door ?
Sales have been weak since doom, not catastrophic, but low. It's a fact.

Hope eternal is great and sells well, and wolfenstein 3 corrects the course.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The only fact here is that Bethesda is a private company and thus does not release numbers.

AKA nobody but they know if sales have been weak, low, doomed or fantastic.
 
wrowa

wrowa

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,372
It's probably fair to say that most of their recent games failed to satisfy at launch. However, it's difficult to measure success just by launch sales alone these days. Low initial sales, but a steady flow of sales at discounted prices can still lead to profitability and beyond.
 
Dennis8K

Dennis8K

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,161
You could well be right but since 2016 there has been no release of big mainline games, Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6, and those monsters can prop up the less than stellar other games.

Bethesda will be OK though I would hope they learn from their mistakes with dumbing down the franchises but they probably won't.

Rather they will look at Dishonored and Prey and decide: "hey these too weird, lets dumb down more!"
 
Sotha_Sil

Sotha_Sil

Member
Nov 4, 2017
5,052
A shame because outside of Fallout 76, they've been really excellent games.

DOOM, Fallout 4, TES Online, and Fallout Shelter were all really good money makers, for obvious reasons. The market wants these games.

Wolfenstein, Dishonored, Prey, and Evil Within are not for obvious reasons. Even though I'd say those are better than the former, the market does not want these games.
 
Isee

Isee

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,235
I'm still disappointed by Prey sales. It's a very good, modern dungeon crawler.
For the rest: They are probably doing fine, from a financial perspective. Doom II will, probably, sell well and Rage 2 looks promising. They also made some money with Skyrim Remastered and VR...
 

Hasan Ali Almaci

Member
Sep 12, 2018
656
dex3108 said:
First to clarify one thing, Bethesda is private company so we don't have official sale numbers or comments from Bethesda directly so this could totally be wrong. Also all of those still games could be profitable.

But based on other data like NPD, Steam Spy, UK sales data... All Bethesda published games (Prey, Dishonored 2, Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein 2, maybe Elder Scrolls Legends and Quake) after Doom in 2016 had really low sales compared to previous entries or in general.

It took Dishonored 2 more than a year to reach 1M sales on Steam and that is with heavy discounts, Death of the Outsider launch on Steam was below 30K I think, and so on.

And now we have Fallout 76 that is getting shredded to pieces by reviews and it is already 33% off on Xbox and up to 40% off on PC week after release. So while game still could be profitable (we don't know what budget was for development) there is big chance that won't meet expectations.

So IF all of this is true (again we don't have full data so all of this could be totally wrong) all Bethesda games in past 2 years underperformed. And IF that is the case that is bigger news than Bethesda breaking streak of good scores for their games with Fallout 76.

Also if mods think this topic is not worth discussing or ZhugeEX has more concrete data that shows different picture please close this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is from an interview I conducted with Devolver founder Mike Wilson:

But that is what happened after Doom, they scaled up.

Yeah but not immediately, with Quake it was still just 13 people and a few biz people and the biz people yeah they don't really count so it was a slow scaleup and well once Bethesda bought them well they really needed to become huge and well I don't know if the last Doom made much or any money for them, I mean it's a good game, its huge but you have to be really huge you know when you spend nearly a Billion dollar on development, marketing, operational costs, the plastic you are shipping in and stuff you know, that is a lot of money to make up so I think a lot of the people doing games like that are scratching their heads. Especially Bethesda because they are not a public company so they do not have to do this, the big public companies have no choice they have to go big big big because of the shareholders they have to grow.
 
HeisenbergWW62

HeisenbergWW62

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,092
Atlanta
Keasar said:
I blame people's shit taste.

Doom, Wolfenstein, Dishonored are fantastic games. People need to buy more of them rather than crud like Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout (if they do release however another one of those games made by literally anyone else than Bethesda, go to town on it).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
this pretty much. the games have been mostly fantastic, people just dont buy quality anymore

although fallout 76 bombing means the gaming community isnt as hopeless as i thought
 
Status
Not open for further replies.