Actually only the Georgians one is relevant, the rest of those civs are now free with the base game
Let’s be generous and say even tho there’s a pre-order sale, that those 12k copies sold for $20.
That’s 240k revenue.
Let’s be “optimistic” and assume that every employee from all the studios are paid well below average. 40k a year.
Now FE has 100 employees, if you trust cysion…….., now not all of them are working on aoe2, but also people from other studios are.
Let’s be conservative and say only 50 people work on aoe2 amongst all the studios.
Let’s also be super generous and believe MS has no other costs, just labor, not even taxes on labor.
So 240k against an annual collective salary of 2mil, means this dlc has generously recouped six weeks of labor. That doesn’t even get you from the patch announcement to dlc release.
Now admittedly there are additional sales of older docs and he base game, so not all revenue is coming solely from the new dlc but I’m sure it’ll be the lions share.
TLDR, 12k copies isn’t enough. They need about 50k copies to break even with these generous assumptions.
4 Likes
Thanks for the explaination. If those numbers represent only last week then we can’t know for sure how much it sold total in Steam, let alone other platforms. But here’s hoping it performs in such a way that the game goes back to it’s roots, no more surprises.
2 Likes
Correct.
We can guess last week would probably have been less, and the week before more. I would suspect more people pre-ordering near the beginning and the end than the middle.
I am guessing on Steam they are likely in the 30-40k range. But no idea what the initial spike would have been, or what the other consoles contribute to this. So hard to tell.
Valve takes 30% of that
1 Like
Day 1, the preorder was within the top 10 if not just shy of the top spot.
and, as you accurately pointed out, theres usually a large bump the day of or shortly after release (when content creator advertising is in full swing and people who missed marketing or who were holding off to see gameplay go in)
But Quasibrodo is correct on the fact that they would need to sell a lot of DLC copies to break even. But I think the quick math investigation ignores a lot more things reguarding Age of Empires as a brand in Microsofts lineup.
First off, The DLC is actively part of the very advertised (including trailers) launch into the PS5 market, where a bundled copy of the definative edition and the new expansion sell for 60$ and the complete pakage goes for 100$. Even after Sony takes their cut (which is going to be similar to Valves cut from steam) they need to sell significantly less of those 100$ bundles to break even.
And Second off, this isn’t counting the fact that Age of Empires is included as part of Microsoft Game Pass, a subscription service that costs 11.99 a month and all the age games are bundled under. Microsoft may view maintaining WE as part of its expenses making game pass more attractive. and game pass brings in substantial cash. (if 18 million subscribers was pulling in 2.9 billion, Id imagine 34 million subs is pulling just shy of 6 billion a year)
Here’s something I haven’t seen brought up. The achievements haven’t gone up. Normally either hidden achievements or even just the achievements themselves would appear before a DLC launch.
But we’re about 36 or so hours out from release, and nothing. Not a sausage.
2 Likes
IIRC, The Immortal Pillars achievements only showed up when it was released. No “X Hidden Achievements” apeared before. Same thing to the wannabe-aoe-game last DLC
Yep. However, the last couple of DLCs, the new Achievements were added days, if not weeks in advance with Dynasties of India being added a whopping 3 months before the release. I remember everyone of us speculating about the DLC and its codename back in January 2022.
As for the 3K Achievements, I think some of them previously popped up on Xbox.
1 Like
Also was that speech about the Three Kingdoms civs being really advanced written by AI?
I know these checkers are not perfect…but that really does read like AI.
6 Likes
Yes, what I mean is that they most likely changed that to keep the achievements really hidden until the DLC is out 
Annnnnnnnnnd last ad before 3K and it’s just a recycled image of the PS5 release dates.
Never mentioned the 3K civs. Pure comedy.
7 Likes
Thats because this DLC is sick!!! (Pun ill-intentioned)
2 Likes
Pure coincidence!
We have a DLC that was:
Teased as a regular one
Branded as 3K
Advertised with 3K downplayed
Yet still sold the best of the entire history of this series because it attracted 3K fans /s
6 Likes
Yeah this baffles me. The claim it outsold any AoE DLC ever…yet somehow also had the poorest advertising I have ever seen in AoE2 (as in, not advertising the very 3K elements that supposedly people were buying it for) is a bizarre take.
The only time the 3K elements were lauded was the day it was shown off. Every other moment it’s been about pretending it’s something else, both before and after.
4 Likes
The brand is just a gigantic money magnet. You can make a random indie game with that setting and you’d become a millionaire even if nobody knows about your game. I see no other explaination!!!
There may be advertising in China that we are not aware of
No. 20 characters…
1 Like
#55 in top sellers in steamdb up to now
And in the relevant markets where the DLC is supposedly aimed at i.e. China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it’s currently 41, 21 and 6.
Sources (updates live, so you can refresh it once in a while):
China Top 100
Hong Kong Top 100
Taiwan Top 100
2 Likes