Come to aoe3 forum to tell us …what exactly? Im guessing not to engage with the actual community
literally posts 0 data or evidence, dismisses all offical earninf reports or logic
cant do anything but “I trust then bro”
accuses others of lying, of trust me bros without shred of irony
gets mad
Ok. Well have a nice day
I stand corrected then regarding Conqueror’s sales figures.
You need to touch some grass if you think I got mad regarding this discussion. I just know when to quit, because I see this conversation going nowhere.
I choose to believe in real, official data, and that’s somehow wrong? I don’t care; I choose to believe Microsoft and Relic, and when the day comes and we know all the sales figures for both games, then we shall truly know. Until then, I’ll stick to the official statement that is out there.
I think it was more of a work flow issue.
They have not made any content for AoE3DE in years. They moved all the people over to AoMR which had significant technical improvements oder AoE3DE.
So going back to AoE3DE means either upgrading the engine to the AoMR engine or going back and restarting the AoE3DE pipeline.
That’s also the reason why they stopped supporting AoE1DE and then later made it part of AoE2DE. This way they only have one version of the engine to manage.
Porting AoE3DE to AoMR would be a lot more work because it has orders of magnitude more content then AoE1DE.
Those are just Steam numbers. AoE4 has similar player numbers on Microsoft Store (mostly because of Gamespass) and also an Xbox version.
AoE2 was only on PC and Mac with a PlayStation Version never getting the Expansion.
They said “Expansion” not DLC so it clearly includes the Conquerors.
It could of course be an error and they only consider Expansions since the Definitive Editions or something like that.
What offical data? Where is it? Where is the data? Statement is not data you know that right? Why not show the data? Or just admit you chose faith or empericism.
Also saying bye 2x and you cant let go is the classic mad sign. You should probably take your advice and go outside kid
Id love to see these tbh.
The problem with Gamespass is that there are effectively no sales numbers.
You need to buy the DLC to get the DLC content even if you have Gamespass so I don’t know how many people own the DLC without owning the base game.
Also you could do the same thing with the original Conquerors Expansion.
One of my friends owned AoK so I installed it with his CD and then bought AoC for myself. Since I only needed the AoC CD to play the game.
A 3rd friend also only bought AoC. So between the 3 of us only one owned the base game.
that depends on how many copies aoe4 itself sold, which i have reasons to doubt was above 4 million based on non existence of numbers to back that up, hard to guess with WE having communication ability that makes someone mute sound loud by comparison
Even if Microsoft store, gamepass, Xbox doubles the number of AOE4 numbers (which given this analysis is unlikely: Finally! Data on the number of Xbox GamePass users | AoEZone - The International Age of Empires Community), the math still isn’t there for the Sultans Ascend to beat the Conquerors.
I’m going to use the 1.5 number from that analysis (meaning Microsoft store, gamepass, Xbox is 50% of Steam) as the methodology is solid. So, assuming 50% extra sales, per Xbox achievements, 11% of players have won as the Byzantines and 1% as the Japanese, meaning max of 12% evidenced playing the DLC. Using the same methodology I used earlier, double that number (call it 25%) and the best estimated steam sles (4 mil), the 50% proportion for microsoft store, and that leads us to estimating 500k sales of the Sultans on Xbox
That means the absolute best estimate for the Sultans Ascend is 1.7M. The Confirmed sales for the Conqs in the US and UK before 2006 is 1M-1.2M.
Now this is going to be a bit of a stretch, but follow me here. Per player base stats of AOE2DE ((I wish we had anything like this for OG): Country ranking and active players/country | AoEZone - The International Age of Empires Community and tourney winnings for legacy Top Countries For Age of Empires II - Esports Player Rankings :: Esports Earnings, we get an indication of interest in AOE2. US and UK don’t even rank in the top 10 for any of these. Now obviously this doesn’t indicate sales, but it does give us an impression, and that is clearly that the US and UK do not provide the lionshare of sales for AOE2. Thus, we can be reasonably confident that the majority of sales of AOE2 in general, and by similarity the Conquerors, was outside of the US and UK. Meaning we can quite easily assume >2M sales for the Conquerors.
Other metrics and evidence bear out this line of reasoning. We know there were 20M total sales of AOE under ensemble The Death of Ensemble Studios | Features | Edge Online. We know AOE2 outsold AOE and AOE3, so probably the bulk of these sales were AOE2 (>10M). The percentage of that was the Conqs? No clue🤷But we can be certain it was decent.
We also know that Asian sales were so lucrative to Ensemble/Microsoft that they deliberately included the Koreans in the Conqs Blast from the past: Sandy Petersen explaining how and why Ensemble decided on the 5 civs for ‘The Conquerors’ (source in the comments) : r/aoe2.
Big Asian Market. More ranked/tourney players outside of the US/UK market. Estimated 1M-1.2M sales in the US/UK. Sales after 2006 not included in that estiimate. The circumstantial evidence that the Conqs outsold the Sultans Ascend is honestly overwhelming.
And realistically, that 1.7M potential sales is way to high. That is absolute best case scenario. Realistically, if we go with steamdbs concensus numbers, it’s closer to 3M sales of AOE4, which brings total sales down to 4.5M. And the dlc purchase rate is extremely generous based on achievement completion is extremely generous; the true number is probably closer to 20%, which would bring total Sultans DLC sales to 900k. Or less than the Conquerors sales in just two countries.
Sultan Ascend was an expansion as well…
It’s a mistake of course, AOE2 and AOEII2 have the same genre and stuff why play an imitation when you can play the original, there’s too much overlap.
If they were focusing more on AoM that’d be more strategic.
It tells me that it estimates 800,000 copies through 2006.
It has only been a little over 1 year since the expansion of the Sultans.
“it’s the best-selling expansion in Age franchise history!”
The claim was given with no caveats. No time frames. It is phrased as an absolute.
My two breakdowns earlier in this thread clearly show that it is mathematically impossible, as things stand today, for the Sultans Ascend to have exceeded the sales of the conquerors. That’s not saying it can’t in the next 5 years (although, frankly, it won’t since AOE4 is much less popular than AOE2 now, and even more diminished compared to AOE2 at it’s height). It’s saying their claim, given Dec 12th, 2023, was patently false. And even if it were issued today would be false.
Yes, a bit off on my part. 800k usa 100k UK. Lets include say another 100k minimum for europe and asia. 4.1 was total sales of games of aoe at that point. Divided up it gives AoC roughly 900 to 1.5 million range I estimate minus known aoe1 aoe3 and aoK sales
But aoe4, the source I found had at best 2.1 million copies sold. So we need half of any aoe4 player to own the dlc to tie if we are being extremely generous
1.1 million in roughly 1 year. On steam, which isnt perfect, which stephen pointed only 12% of any player who bought the base game has a single achievement. So unless 38% of players on avg are simply buying and not playing, i dont see still sultans is getting to 1.1 million copies sold. Again this isnt perfect math but its more compelling to suggest as myself and others have said gamepass, bundles, etc are used to pad stats- we may have had 1.1+ million people play sultans but likely far lower actually own a copy directly. Which would not make it the best selling dlc.
Between Xbox and Steam we are probably talking about 3M copies of the base game.
The fair thing to do is to compare an expansion in the same time frame, not to compare an expansion that sold for 5-6 years with one that has been selling for much less. Maybe I’m being a bit biased, but if one DLC has sold more than another in the same time frame, maybe that’s where it’s going. On Gamepass you couldn’t play the DLC as far as I know.
It’s best to always show the numbers, but what is clear is that I know that the AoE4 DLC sold a lot.
Sure, but that’s not what they did. World’s Edge said very clearly, and plastered it all across the Internet that "it’s the best-selling expansion in Age franchise history!” They implicitly compared all-time sales of Sultans Ascend sales to the Conquerors.
And it is a bald-faced lie.
Do not try to build caveats and exemptions for them. Hold them to their word.
Plus, it’s worth noting the Conqs originally sold for $30 in 2000, worth $55 today. That’s way more than the Sultans Ascend
($6mil in sales, 221k units.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20010211205819/http://www.quartertothree.com/features/pcdata_top_10/years_bestsellers3.shtml
No they made the claim. If I claimed KotM sold more in some month than sultans therefore it’s better selling everyone would call me out for being flawed or contrived.
I made no such claim only held them to their word. If worlds edge marketing wants to make bold claims and be taken seriously you need bold stats. They can come by and drop data. Hell given what a shitshow aoe3 was handled as it would benefit their image greatly to actually demonstrate aoe4 is popular and not just painted rust. Until then I can only use the data available and common sense.
That sounds, like OP wants to “blame” AoE4 for canceled AoE3 DLC
I think, they explained it by themself - they annouced DLC and later recognized, that they do not have capacities (manpower, resources) to develop it
It would be good to take into consideration, that “Chinesse” DLC for Age of Mythology tis not released yet , and it was annouced long time ago. it seems, that it is also not going by plan.
In effect, and curiously only few days ago i even make a theory about the true reasons of why the DLC was actually cancelled:
While the strategy of making it Free to Play with limited features to attract new audiences really worked and increased the number of players, it wasn’t enough.
I’m skipping any problem or triviality that could be scaring away new players, but apparently there aren’t enough people who bought the game, and it’s taken “Too long” to release new DLC.
If we consider that in reality the teaser was a lie and they had nothing, then not even the writers had any idea. And paying writers without ideas to make a DLC out of nothing, was not profitable for them.
Continuing the previous one or complementing it, I think that the rumor of the new civs that was leaked from some game file, “wasn’t real”. They were new revolutions or “discarded” ideas that were left in the editor, one of them was to turn Sweden into Denmark, but since they saw that it didn’t make sense, they discarded it.
However, as the developers’ response mentions: They felt forced to include AoE3 in the event, and that’s why they included 2 flags. But it was an oversight, they really didn’t have ANYTHING.
Then they told the writers that they made 2 civs based on those ideas. I have suspicions that they got Writer’s Block, and on top of that they were already working on other ideas for other civilizations, and they didn’t advance this idea enough.
They were still paid to develop ideas, but the reality is that they couldn’t finish them. Finally, since progress wasn’t made on schedule, the order was simply given to delay the DLC. And now the order to cancel it, because the artists have no ideas on how to make it happen.
I wouldn’t blame them for that. In that case, if you have more ideas for the game, other than for those civs, it will be well received, the game still has a fandom, which will buy the DLC.
In any case, I will wait for more DLC to be released at some point (maybe not this year, but the next, when the imagination and resources of the devs let them make it) , and hopefully the game can feed on new players to continue maintaining the multiplayer servers.
On the other hand, the game still does not have the ability to create “Custom Campaigns” in the Editor. I think that limits the creativity of the same fans, who would have created some Napoleon or Spain fandom campaigns a long time ago otherwise.
Finally, it is the opportunity for the MOD “Age of the World” to make its own Poland-Lithuania and Danish-Norway civs in Fandom mode (As far as I know when user answered me, there are already some, it would be a matter of trying them out).
I think they don’t like the era the game is about and it’s uncomfortable for them, that’s why they closed the complete collection.
