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[Woopah]

The astroturfing of Avowed continues. Enjoy the game, but let's not pretend it's anything but a massive financial failure. Luckily Microsoft is the wealthiest company on the planet and can eat these losses, but eating losses isn't the same thing as being successful. And don't tell me Microsoft is "happy" with the sales because the same person who said that also said people were "raving" about the game, which we know is bullshit. Not even the critics were raving, and user scores are actually lower than them.

This is nonsense. Helldivers 2 sold 1 million copies in the first week, and that's with constant server issues until week 3. It was the best selling game of Feb '24, the month it released.

You're right in that I realised I was comparing a weekly chart to a monthly one.

But the main point still stands. Sawyer has made it clear he thinks it can't be good for a AAA game to rank 4th in an engagement chart during its first full week.

I want to ensure that he is consistent and applies this same standard to every AAA game release.

 

[Heisenberg007]

You're right in that I realised I was comparing a weekly chart to a monthly one.

But the main point still stands. Sawyer has made it clear he thinks it can't be good for a AAA game to rank 4th in an engagement chart during its first full week.

I want to ensure that he is consistent and applies this same standard to every AAA game release.

I think engagement is just inherently an incorrect metric to look at when you give away your game to ~20 million people to play at no additional cost.

Even if literally all of them play the game and the engagement data shows "20 million players," the game could still very well be a commercial failure if it doesn't generate any additional revenue (either by selling copies or by bringing in new subscribers).

With other non-subscription games, engagement metric is much more meaningful. Because if, let's say, Helldivers 2 shows ~1 million players, we know that's 1 million copies sold or $40 million in revenue. But that's not the case for a game launching on a subscription service.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

The astroturfing of Avowed continues. Enjoy the game, but let's not pretend it's anything but a massive financial failure. Luckily Microsoft is the wealthiest company on the planet and can eat these losses, but eating losses isn't the same thing as being successful. And don't tell me Microsoft is "happy" with the sales because the same person who said that also said people were "raving" about the game, which we know is bullshit. Not even the critics were raving, and user scores are actually lower than them.

It can be a good game but still financial failure. I, at least, am not arguing it's a runaway success because I have no idea or evidence to conclude that. I also don't trust anything Microsoft says - the only thing I'd trust are hard numbers which they never seem to release. I don't believe in "engagement" numbers. I mean, I'm sure if they say "x engaged" it's likely true, but that doesn't really mean a damn thing. Could mean they downloaded it and deleted it before getting past the title screen - could mean anything. All I know is it for sure is that it isn't a sale and even still, 12 dollars a month user "engaging" in it doesn't give me much faith. So in that sense, I agree with you despite liking the game a lot.

 

[Woopah]

I think engagement is just inherently an incorrect metric to look at when you give away your game to ~20 million people to play at no additional cost.

Even if literally all of them play the game and the engagement data shows "20 million players," the game could still very well be a commercial failure if it doesn't generate any additional revenue (either by selling copies or by bringing in new subscribers).

With other non-subscription games, engagement metric is much more meaningful. Because if, let's say, Helldivers 2 shows ~1 million players, we know that's 1 million copies sold or $40 million in revenue. But that's not the case for a game launching on a subscription service.

That would be a seperate argument though right? Like, we can't both say that engagement is the incorrect measurement to judge Avowed, but also say that its bad for it to be 4th.

Would "number of new and retained GamePass users" be a useful metric to have? Absolutely. Because getting people to stay subscribed is as important as bringing new people in.

But I don't agree that Avowed had a bad engagement ranking because it was lower than COD, Fortnite and Roblox.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Engagement means nothing. A million players ‘engaging’ through a $10 Gamepass subscription does not recoup the cost of the game, especially when that fee is paying for more than just Avowed…Avowed did not sell, its a flop, a all around average game but Xbox seems fine releasing average. Not interested in Outer Worlds 2 or anything from Obsidian any more, they aren’t RPG’s, just shallow pretentious wannabes.

One of the issues with being the Netflix of Gaming is that your goal becomes release mid quality slop regularly to keep the people subbed and paying monthly

Which is how Netflix works. Quality of content doesn't matter, only that there is a constant flow of it

 

[The Mad Draklor]

Should I have waited for the peak? I used the current-player list for ALL games. How is that biased?

And why are you showing Sony's PC results? That has been a complete failure for them, IMO. That's not a high standard.

Avowed hasn't sold well at all on Steam, and the CCU is evidence of that. Projected sales are also around 250K. How is that a good number or a success for a day one launch?

Also, the CCU trajectory is very unfavorable. Avowed's 2nd weekend peak was half of its 1st weekend peak. Compare that to Starfield, it reached ~79% of its all-time high during its 2nd weekend. Or if you want a more apples-to-apples comparison, The Outer Worlds had a similar all-time high as Avowed, but retained over 75% of it during its 2nd weekend.

 

[rofif]

She focuses a lot on just "awesome they shipped. THat's most important".
But it still didn't sell. How many chances should obsidian get?
Their games don't sell for a while now.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Their games don't sell for a while now.

They need to go big or go home.

Does MS understand this?

 

[rofif]

They need to go big or go home.

Does MS understand this?

This was them going big....

 

[KungFucius]

What is with people hyping up this mid ass game? I've seen nonstop posts on reddit saying 'Avowed is the best RPG i've played in the last 10 years etc etc' and just constant hyping up this mid ass product like they're bots with marching orders. Avowed is the netflix originals of games. It's just gamepass fodder that's thrown onto a subscription service and forgotten about in 3 months after release once newer and better games come along to bury it.

What game isn't forgotten after a few months?

 

[Fake]

Imagine being dumb to the point of saying people don't want to play game 'X' because they are afraid of women.


The game is mid as fuck. This is not the end of the world. Get over.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Imagine being dumb to the point of saying people don't want to play game 'X' because they are afraid of women.


The game is mid as fuck. This is not the end of the world. Get over.

Certain people would rather gaslight others instead of accepting that the game just isn't special.

 

[Raziel]

Did critics truly claim the art style was bad..? Game looks incredible, environments look awesome...

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Edit: I don't even care anymore.

 

[Buggy Loop]

That's a character. Of a certain race - invented 10 years ago for a completely different game. It wasn't "invented" for this game.

Coastal aumaua

Coastal aumaua are a sub-race of aumaua in Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. Coastal aumaua live in a conquered mainland region, mostly along the coast of the northern hemisphere - lands they conquered by displacing or conquering Thyrtan, Natlan, and orlan communities...

pillarsofeternity.fandom.com

But go on about "modern audience design", I know there's a narrative somewhere in there to follow. Would you be happier if every race in the game was just human? You forgot to post the furry. Stuff is so tiring.. Do you get up in arms when Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits, Goblins, Ewoks, Drow, whatever, show up in games if they don't look human enough?

Don't you know? Obsidian invented a time machine to insert modern audience designs 13 years ago in their kickstarter. Chris Avellone who was lead writer himself included the lore of these species but Shhhhhh.

 

[Kataploom]

What are those other plans by MS?

Microsoft is selling their game on Steam (and now on PlayStation + Nintendo) because they want their games to sell a lot of copies. That's the plan and the reason why this game is on Steam in the first place.

If the game sold well on Steam, it's a success. If it sold poorly on Steam, it's a failure. Simple as that.

Then why do they put them on game pass? Lol

 

[gow3isben]

It is obviously a flop guys stop the cope.


I will still play it on PS5 as I liked veilguard another similar flop.


I will play full third person if viable

 

[adamsapple]

I don't need to play a game to tell you the art design is unappealing. What you showed me doesn't impress. It's like something procedurally generated and lifeless with nothing hand crafted to it at all.

My man, you forgot to add the bigass /S at the end of this post cause that's the only way to read this

 

[Heisenberg007]

Then why do they put them on game pass? Lol

Because (1) they thought that Game Pass would be a runaway success and reach 100 million subscribers by 2030 and (2) then they promised they would put their first-party games on Game Pass, which they can't back out now.

In reality, Game Pass didn't hit any of the targets they set. But now they can't back out of their promise; they have to put these on Game Pass, unless they want massive backlash and a PR disaster. Having said that, they have been deliberately minimizing the number of players who could play the game with Game Pass on day one, which is why they removed day-one games coming to all non-Ultimate tiers.

If engagement was indeed such a big, winning metric, and Game Pass was such a huge deal, they would not be reducing the number of players who can play the game with Game Pass on day one.

They want more sales from these games, which is why they sell them on PC and now PlayStation and Switch.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Obsidian clearly has the chops to make an amazing game. Avowed wasn't it, but there's hope that with then bringing the band back together for the Outer World's 2, that game can be a big hit.

 

[Hookshot]

Considering I'm being pestered on my PC to buy it, I'm not sure it was.

 

[Kvally]

Since when has the bar been this low now? How hard is it just to own up to it that the game underperformed and they have just moved on to the next project?



This is what they said themselves:

Obsidian Lead Says Avowed Is The "Most Confident" He's Been For A Game's Launch​

Obsidian Lead Says Avowed Is The "Most Confident" He's Been For A Game's Launch

"This is the most confident I've ever been in my experience at this stage of the project."

www.thegamer.com

Makes sense. Game is awesome.