No i don’t wanna deny It but playing safety they released a game too traditional and similar to previous Aoe2 and this Is the main problem for the most of gaming sites and this Is the reason why Aoe4 received only a 81 score on metacritic (it’s a good score but not enough for the big return of a legendary franchise) . Most people were waiting for a logical Evolution in every aspects. But as you probably said, they wanted to play on safe with Aoe4 and we hope they’ll change different aspects for AOE5, from graphic to pop.cap.
Hmm, I don’t know how dead the genre is before AOE4. not only does AOE2DE AOE3DE have 30K+ players daily, SC2 still has daily 500k+ active players and not to mention similar games like DOTA and League of Legends.
oh of cuz they shouldn’t, shitty AAA game like AOE4 surely shouldn’t have the same sales number as other AAA games as, let’s say, Forza 5? don’t you forget the racing game genre is not popular as well.
I doubt it sold 300k on the full price tag, but even so that is only a good number for you, but surely is not a good number for the Corp, it’s not like AOE4 only took 5 people in a basement for a year to develop, it still cost much much more money and time than many other games that sold much much more. why would they invest money for more RTS games?
25 million franchises sold means AOE4 needs no introduction and no advertisement, so the expectation of the sale number would surely be above 300K even in the first month.
man, do you think I am comparing AOE4’s first-month sale to the whole franchise to prove my point??? the fact I had to explain this to you and you calling me stupid makes me feel weak. lol
No, you don’t, first you claimed AOE4 sold more than BF2042 then you found out it’s not even close, then you changed your point to 300K is a good number for RTS because it’s “DEAD”, not it’s not, and 300K is not a good number for any AAA game that cost millions and years to make.
I know pal, it’s the other dude said AOE4 surpassing battlefield 2042.
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It says the list is in a random order.
Hmm, Nah, it’s my post.
Bruh it was an error , I did only had one though , you did had a LOT OF THEM
I gave other sources as well lol , later I will respond to the big response
Yeah I am getting tired of repeating myself, it did start to feel like stupid.
the bottom line is, 300K ain’t good numbers for a AAA RTS game that costs millions and years to develop, it is a simple invest/return equation. it gives no confidence to the players or the company to invest in the future AAA RTS games.
but if that is true, 300k might be an Okay number.
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Yeah I am not really on anyone’s side in this discussion but if you think the game has been in development since 2017. that’s 4 full years of development. rough estimate of the average pay is $50k a year for each dev (managers and higher up people on more, QA and low level devs on less.) say there is 20 developers (that’s a super low estimate) 50k x 20 devs x 4 years = 4 million. and that’s without marketing or all of the other costs of bringing a game to market.
please correct my maths if that looks fishy. Math’s is really not my strong point. I want to discuss this, not argue!
AOE4 have to sell 0.8 to 1 million copies at the full 60 dollars price to make it even would be my estimate.
I don’t really understand a lot of the back-and-forth either, but 300k sales at full price is something like $18 million dollars. If we lowball “full price” to be $50, it’s still $15 million.
Of course, people can say “well it won’t have all been at full price”, but then we’re ignoring the logistics of video games, how much solvency Microsoft guaranteed, etc, et al. Everything we write down on a napkin here will be ultimately a simplification of the truth.
Like, we could half my estimate of $15 million and it’s still be almost double your suggested cost @orangejuice3683 (not knocking your work either). So I don’t understand why 300k sales would be bad in this context. We’re not that far out from release, it’s not like the game is selling for $5 or $10.
If we double orange’s work, but keep my upper-estimate, it’s still $8 (let’s say to 10) million for an $18 million return. I’m still not seeing what’s bad about this. What kind of profit margins are people in this thread expecting from Age IV? From RTS games in general?
EDIT
I’m of course completely discounting marketing costs and the like from these calculations, so that’s worth considering. But again, we don’t know Microsoft’s contributions wrt. the value they get from adding it to the Game Pass. There’s obviously an investment from Microsoft for the value MS gets from having Age IV on the Pass.
finally , we agree on something.
yes! I think your post there brings my involvement of this discussion to a natural end. Seems to me it was very successful from our rough workings. Also got the game pass for ranked to come which should earn a lot more.
Thanks for your input
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you aint hiring any dev with 50k in the developed countries. double even triple that.
Steam sells the game at a heavy discount in other countries compare to the US. and it’s usually more than 50% of the total sale.
Steam takes 30%.
it’s easy to estimate if you have the sales number.
and industry-standard is if a game makes money, the numbers would be flying, even badly received games, like Cyberpunk2077, as long as it makes money, the number is the first thing we would know because it boosts the stock price. the only time they hide the number is that the game didn’t make it even.
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You’re right on one point, I forgot about the Steam cut.
You’re wrong on the others. Games developers are frequently underpaid compared to their software counterparts, and while 50k in the States isn’t a huge amount, we’re normalising all values to the US dollar here just for the sake of argument. Relic are a Canadian studio (and from my outdated knowledge Vancouver isn’t cheap to live in, but I’m not sure about further out / commutable distances), so feel free to adjust as required. Specific games development roles can easily go in excess of 100k (USD), but in general, normalising across all departments, 50k is reasonable to guesstimate with. You could up the average to $60 (which is 45k GBP, which I can tell you for an absolute fact is a solid software wage here in the UK), it’d make little difference.
Regional pricing is at the behest of the publisher, and not Steam I believe. Regardless, here in the UK Age IV sells for £50 on Steam for the base edition (~$68 USD). I can’t speak for other markets, but considering we’ve covered the US and the UK (and I know for a fact games sell in Canada for a premium).
More important would be to ask you to actually give suggested figures: how much does an RTS game need to make, profits-wise, for you to consider it a success? Bearing in mind that regardless of Age’s popularity as a franchise, RTS is a niche genre compared to the mainstays (FPS, RPG / ARPG, and even TBS).
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A couple of points:
Games are rarely in full development for the whole time, there’s quite a bit of project planning that goes into things before development starts full time.
Also games are projects at the end of the day, and projects leverage a lot of outsource partners. Artists, testers, etc are all usually contractors that do a portion of the work for a T&M rate or fixed price. You don’t need these people on the payroll full time for the lifecycle of the project.
Also I want to second what @GorbMort said above. Game developers are NOT paid as well as FAANG developers, although it depends where you work.
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Viper got knocked out of the recent Winter Series 2 by DonArtie in the QF round, and honestly didn’t look convincing. He lost a Rus mirror to someone who was clearly an underdog and hasn’t looked like his macro style of play has been able to adopt to the new meta.
DauT has performed worse than Viper and doesn’t seem like he’s taking AOE4 seriously at all.
Both DauT and Viper got demolished in 2v2s by TheMista and Hera.
Hera is a bit more sensible saying he’s going to give AOE4 6 months, and he has been performing well in team games, but he also has been under performing in 1v1 tournaments.
Meanwhile Lucifron, VortiX, DeMuslim, and MarineLord have all risen to the top. All SC2 players…. And now suddenly the GL AOE2 pros are complaining about the meta and throwing their toys out of the cot.
Mmhmm they’re just getting schooled by the StarCraft players. At least Hera is sticking around and being sensible, the other AOE2 pros are shooting themselves in the foot and are just going to fall further behind.
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We AoEO players proudly remind you that the Mistaa is ours.
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When Hera and Viper leave the scene, sure, but since they are the two of the greatest aoe2 players of all time, still focused mostly on aoe4, lol no.