PoE Sales Analysis Thread

[Morality Games]

There are *definitely not* 60-80K sales outside of Steam, lol.

The steamspy stats include retail, humble bundle ... everything except GOG is a steam key because Paradox. GOG is the only non-steam key, and the sales of the Hero Edition are probably around 12-14K including backers. Don't have data on the others.

Figures? I've been trying to understand GOG better.

 

[Sensuki]

Infinitron posted the sales of some game that is higher on the sales list than Pillars of Eternity or something and they had like 13K sales last year or some shit (was some dev interview or something).

Yeah that's really vague but I can't be bothered searching for his post.

 

[Morality Games]

Infinitron posted the sales of some game that is higher on the sales list than Pillars of Eternity or something and they had like 13K sales last year or some shit.

I find it very unlikely that 12-14,000 total sales have occurred when there are over 25,000 unaccounted for backers and the Infinity Engine/Black Isle/Troika gave have commanded such huge numbers on GOG.

I'm not saying your wrong, but games in the Forgotten Realms series have sold hundreds of thousands of copies a piece on GOG.

The old rule of thumb (not the best, but not worthless) in statistics is that every person that bothers to review or rate represents 1 of 100. This actually works well for the number of reviews on Steam scaled to the current number of owners; 350,000 owners, 3,710 reviews, as well as for DVDs and stuff like that.

Since Pillars of Eternity has 600 rates, it would imply about 60,000 have copies on GOG.

 

[Sensuki]

The old games are cheap, have been on sale multiple times and have often been made free (I got all the Fallouts for free on GOG and others for a pittance).

I don't think the KS achievement percentage is accurate, and the game has sold less than Expeditions: Conquistador has, which has ~123K owners on Steam (and the steam version of that game was included in multiple humble bundes and severely discounted)

If we were to go by your 15-20% non-steam rule - there'd be likely less than 20K E:C sales on GOG.

 

[Blackguard]

Infinitron posted the sales of some game that is higher on the sales list than Pillars of Eternity or something and they had like 13K sales last year or some shit.

I find it very unlikely that 12-14,000 total sales have occurred when there are over 25,000 unaccounted for backers and the Infinity Engine/Black Isle/Troika gave have commanded such huge numbers on GOG.

I'm not saying your wrong, but games in the Forgotten Realms series have sold hundreds of thousands of copies a piece on GOG.

Those games have been available for years, and are regurarly on sale for literally couple bucks per game.

 

[bonescraper]

there are over 25,000 unaccounted for backers

And you count them by looking at Steam achievements? That backer achivement is awarded only when you create your character, and it didn't work for a lot of people on release day (including me).

 

[Morality Games]

The old games are cheap, have been on sale multiple times and have often been made free (I got all the Fallouts for free on GOG and others for a pittance).

I don't think the KS achievement percentage is accurate, and the game has sold less than Expeditions: Conquistador has, which has ~123K owners on Steam (and the steam version of that game was included in multiple humble bundes and severely discounted)

If we were to go by your 15-20% non-steam rule - there'd be likely less than 20K E:C sales on GOG.

Logic Artists did claim they had better sales off Steam. I suspect that some indie games do better than GOG than Steam, but Pillars of Eternity is much more in the vein of The Witcher, an AA game, so I assumed that 20% was better. I was bolstered by the recent analysis where 52,000 backers must have activated on Steam, which is what almost everyone expected.

there are over 25,000 unaccounted for backers

And you count them by looking at Steam achievements? That backer achivement is awarded only when you create your character, and it didn't work for a lot of people on release day (including me).

Well, the number of KickStarter backers kept jumping up and down for weeks afterward, sometimes by half a percentage point, but eventually it stabilized it has just been going down.

 

[Sensuki]

The reason I don't think the KS achievement is accurate is because Feargus said that there was around 120K backers total at one stage including KS, Paypal and Slacker Backers.

The achievement is not based off keys, it's based off the Obsidian account and when the backer website was set up there were a lot of problems regarding forum badges and stuff like that. Moderators/Obsidian had to manually fix lots and lots of backers who were not recognized as KS backers.

Every key on my account says "Kickstarter Backer" as my friends got the KS achievement themselves. There will be lots of people who didn't get their accounts fixed, and thus won't have the achievement unlocked.

There are people with slacker backer keys who got the KS achievement too.

 

[Morality Games]

The reason I don't think the KS achievement is accurate is because Feargus said that there was around 120K backers total at one stage including KS, Paypal and Slacker Backers.

The achievement is not based off keys, it's based off the Obsidian account and when the backer website was set up there were a lot of problems regarding forum badges and stuff like that. Moderators/Obsidian had to manually fix lots and lots of backers who were not recognized as KS backers.

Every key on my account says "Kickstarter Backer" as my friends got the KS achievement themselves. There will be lots of people who didn't get their accounts fixed, and thus won't have the achievement unlocked.

There are people with slacker backer keys who got the KS achievement too.

Then instead of 30,000 the real number I should have scratched out was 50,000. When Feargus said there were 120,000 backers he may have been referring to the number of keys sold.

 

[Sensuki]

When he said this, there were no keys generated. It was from 2013.

 

[Morality Games]

When he said this, there were no keys generated. It was from 2013.

The 52,000 number seems too perfect to be wrong.

 

[Kz3r0]

Are you their accountant perchance?
I don't make wild guesses, I look to the behavior of the various studios, Sven decided to expand his studio activities and projects thanks to D:OS sales, PoE has not even got near to the time of permanence of that game in Steam Top Ten sales.

How many months after release did he do that?

The point is that PoE has already sunk like a rock in the charts, I doubt that staying for months at the bottom of the Top Hundred sales on Steam will generate much profit.

 

[Athelas]

It's in the top 20 behind a string of new releases and games on sale.

Steamspy figures are more accurate, by the way, and they look pretty positive.

 

[Kz3r0]

Using rough estimates.

They're are at least 350,000 owners on Steam, according to SteamSpy. Given the Kickstarter achievement (14.8% at time of writing), that suggests 52,000 of 77,000 backers activated on Steam. That's a fairly believable number, so I have no reason to doubt them. So, we're to drop that to 300,000 in sales. Also, backers like Sensuki bought like 20 keys to fence for 20 dollars a piece, so I'm going to drop 10% (30,000) because cranberries.

However, historical trends (using mostly the Witcher franchise as an example, but also other games) indicate that 20% of early sales for an RPG of this type should have occurred on all of the other digital retailers, 16% from GOG and 4% from everyone else. So we're going to say 60,000-80,000 copies have been sold outside of Steam, tacking on some additional sales because of its association with the well established Infinity Engine/Forgotten Realms metaseries on GOG.

That's brings us to about 330,000-350,000. Multiply by $45 and you get about $15,000,000.

Steam and everyone else get 30% right away. Good-bye 4.5 million.

That leaves 11.5 million. Let's assume Paradox gets half and Obsidian gets half.

5.75 million each.

Taxes on software entertainment companies in the U.S. are about 14% state and federal.

So you lose 805,000, thereabouts.

Leaving just shy of $5,000,000.

However, a few tens of thousands of those sales were royal edition and/or upgrades, which would explain revenue remaining competitive with GTA5 for a week despite such a hugely lopsided difference in sales.

So we get over 5,000,000.

Rven if that is true it sonly means that without Kickstarter they woiuld have just reasched breack even.
Meaning that next time they have to use their own money or return to Kickstarter, in short, PoE doesn't pay for itself.

 

[Morality Games]

Rven if that is true it sonly means that without Kickstarter they woiuld have just reasched breack even.
Meaning that next time they have to use their own money or return to Kickstarter, in short, PoE doesn't pay for itself.

Well, it would, if Pillars of Eternity was anywhere near done.

I suspect Steam sales will climb to half a million before it experiences a price drop, then will climb to some middling figure between a million, and then over a million after the price drops to $20, if not before.

 

[Gruncheon]

Regarding the 50-50 split of profits figure between Obsidian and Paradox that's been suggested, I think I read somewhere that the deal with Paradox was actually quite minimal and mainly just dealt with the retail distribution of the game. The divide is probably much more heavily skewed in Obsidian's favour.

 

[Athelas]

Of course, the above assumes a worst case scenario (Paradox getting half of the profit).

 

[CyberWhale]

 

[Morality Games]

In my paranoid mind its worse than 50%. In reality I'm sure its far less.

I don't really trust Feargus to make ... well, lets say the same business decisions I would make.

Otherwise, there would be no publisher involved at all.

The Obsidian Entertainment of Kotor 2, NWN2, and Fallout: New Vegas places a great deal of importance on being a respectable mainstream developer, so I'm afraid Feargus would give a lot of Pillars profit for the sake of building a long term partnership with Paradox.

 

[vonAchdorf]

In my paranoid mind its worse than 50%. In reality I'm sure its far less.

I don't really trust Feargus to make ... well, lets say the same business decisions I would make.

Otherwise, there would be no publisher involved at all.

The Obsidian Entertainment of Kotor 2, NWN2, and Fallout: New Vegas places a great deal of importance on being a respectable mainstream developer, so I'm afraid Feargus would give a lot of Pillars profit for the sake of building a long term partnership with Paradox.

What for? To me the partnership looks like the couldn't be bothered with anything outside the development and so they got Paradox to do the marketing and especially the fulfillment (and customer service). They didn't get money nor was Paradox involved in the development process, all they got was Paradox' expertise in marketing to PC gamers / tap into their Youtuber pool and staving off customers who want fixes for their broken games

 

[ArchAngel]

Using rough estimates.

They're are at least 350,000 owners on Steam, according to SteamSpy. Given the Kickstarter achievement (14.8% at time of writing), that suggests 52,000 of 77,000 backers activated on Steam. That's a fairly believable number, so I have no reason to doubt them. So, we're to drop that to 300,000 in sales. Also, backers like Sensuki bought like 20 keys to fence for 20 dollars a piece, so I'm going to drop 10% (30,000) because cranberries.

However, historical trends (using mostly the Witcher franchise as an example, but also other games) indicate that 20% of early sales for an RPG of this type should have occurred on all of the other digital retailers, 16% from GOG and 4% from everyone else. So we're going to say 60,000-80,000 copies have been sold outside of Steam, tacking on some additional sales because of its association with the well established Infinity Engine/Forgotten Realms metaseries on GOG.

That's brings us to about 330,000-350,000. Multiply by $45 and you get about $15,000,000.

Steam and everyone else get 30% right away. Good-bye 4.5 million.

That leaves 11.5 million. Let's assume Paradox gets half and Obsidian gets half.

5.75 million each.

Taxes on software entertainment companies in the U.S. are about 14% state and federal.

So you lose 805,000, thereabouts.

Leaving just shy of $5,000,000.

However, a few tens of thousands of those sales were royal edition and/or upgrades, which would explain revenue remaining competitive with GTA5 for a week despite such a hugely lopsided difference in sales.

So we get over 5,000,000.

Rven if that is true it sonly means that without Kickstarter they woiuld have just reasched breack even.
Meaning that next time they have to use their own money or return to Kickstarter, in short, PoE doesn't pay for itself.

wtf? No. It means those 77 000 backers (or 120 000) would pay at least 45$ for the game and not 20$.

 

[imweasel]

I suspect Steam sales will climb to half a million before it experiences a price drop, then will climb to some middling figure between a million, and then over a million after the price drops to $20, if not before.

A low budget game that sells one million copies is extremely rare. D:OS was in the top 10 on Steam for months, I even saw it on sale once too, yet it still hasn't surpassed 1 million sold copies (and if it did then not by very much).

I mean, PoE could eventually sell one million copies, but it would take quite a long time seeing that it dropped like a rock in the charts.

 

[Country_Gravy]

I'm a backer and only paid $20.

 

[Doktor Best]

Rven if that is true it sonly means that without Kickstarter they woiuld have just reasched breack even.
Meaning that next time they have to use their own money or return to Kickstarter, in short, PoE doesn't pay for itself.

Now if we assume that tomorrow a meteor will hit earth and bring a sudden halt to all POE sales, your statement would actually be true.

 

[tuluse]

The point is that PoE has already sunk like a rock in the charts, I doubt that staying for months at the bottom of the Top Hundred sales on Steam will generate much profit.

Well if the argument is that PoE didn't sell enough for Obsidian to open more studios in other countries, I agree.

However, I think they have earned enough to fully fund a sequel.