Support NeoGAF

[GHG]

So why do people want this game to fail?

I don't think anyone does (I certainly don't, I think it's very good).

The issue is that the numbers we have available point towards it doing not so spectacularly, and for some reason there's a bunch of people in denial about this.

It's not day 1 on PS5. Console warring.

At this point, posts like this are nothing more than low IQ projection.

 

[Aguero9320]

Feel like these endless agenda-laden gloating threads (from all sides) will merely speed up the demise of the publicly accessible Steam CCU data.
Companies won't allow such skewed (or in some cases, accurate) damaging discourse to continue without objecting I'm sure.

Inevitable really, monkeys are always going to throw shit, so you need to clean up the enclosure once in a while

 

[Dutchy]

Maybe visit the ridiculous thread you were in where everybody was laughing at your takes






Now do the same for Indiana Jones.

Thanks for the mash-up. I obtain great solace out of reading retarded opinions.

I'm not even a TLOU (or hellblade) fan and even I can see how dead wrong and emotionally fueled those posts are, yikes.

 

[onQ123]

So why do people want this game to fail?

Do people want it to fail?

 

[MacReady13]

Here we go again with the pointless Steam CCU lol. You know this game is 'free' on Gamepass, right?

Awesome. Let's show Microsoft we want more games we like by not buying it but by playing it on a sub service. You know, like plenty of you did with Hi Fi Rush. And we all know what happened there... BUY THE FUCKING GAME! Show Microsoft we WANT more of this quality game by purchasing it.

 

[Mortisfacio]

At this point, posts like this are nothing more than low IQ projection.

No, posters like demigod want this to fail. It's low IQ to think otherwise.

 

[Ribi]

Concurrent ≠ total players for the last fucking time

 

[GHG]

No, posters like demigod want this to fail. It's low IQ to think otherwise.

And you came to that conclusion how exactly?

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I don't think anyone does (I certainly don't, I think it's very good).

The issue is that the numbers we have available point towards it doing not so spectacularly, and for some reason there's a bunch of people in denial about this.

Oh, you can tell some in this thread want it to fail. I agree performance doesn't look promising, but $70 on Steam for a 20-30 hours game is a big ask, especially when it's on Game Pass too. Also, Indy is not a strong IP anymore.

 

[//DEVIL//]

Concurrent ≠ total players for the last fucking time

sure but that is still a very low number. even if the real numbers are double or tripple the CCU numbers.

With that being said. No disrespect to anyone but why would anyone buy this game on PC or Xbox when you can finish it in 1 month game pass ? sure even if you want to add it to collection to revisit later, you can just buy it when its much cheaper later and still finish the game day one unless you are super super indiana fan.

 

[GHG]

Oh, you can tell some in this thread want it to fail. I agree performance doesn't look promising, but $70 on Steam for a 20-30 hours game is a big ask, especially when it's on Game Pass too. Also, Indy is not a strong IP anymore.

I picked up a key from fanatical for $55.

$70 and being day one on gamepass hasn't stopped other titles doing much better than this is.

With that being said. No disrespect to anyone but why would anyone buy this game on PC or Xbox when you can finish it in 1 month game pass ? sure even if you want to add it to collection to revisit later, you can just buy it when its much cheaper later and still finish the game day one unless you are super super indiana fan.

And here's the exact conundrum that led to Tango Gameworks' demise.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I picked up a key from fanatical for $55.

$70 and being day one on gamepass hasn't stopped other titles doing much better than this is.



And here's the exact conundrum that led to Tango Gameworks' demise.

I also mentioned Indy being a weak IP now and a 20-30 hour experience. I think there are a lot of things at play.

 

[graywolf323]

People need to understand something important about Publishers and PC sales: They don't only mean Direct Steam/Epic/GOG, they also mean their advance sales to the PC key sites (legit and grey).

Yesterday I looked up Indiana Jones on GMG to see if they have an XP offer, but the game was "Out of Stock".. That would imply that they keep a stock of keys for every game, which is sold in advance and topped up when stock runs low or runs out entirely.

It's basically the old-school publisher/retail agreement, but played out in digital form.

This means that Microsoft could have sold 10,000 keys to say, GMG or Gamesplanet alone, and pocketed a portion (or all) of the money, meanwhile the game "only has 12k CCUs". Now apply this same logic to all games that are being sold on PC.

Steam CCUs only tell the full picture when the game is F2P on Steam, because then you won't be "buying" the game from a non-Steam store, and even then it only tells the Steam portion of the story.

err what? even if I bought the game from GMG (I bought it from Fanatical) I'd still turn up in the Steam CCUs since I play it on Steam

 

[CompleteGlobalSaturation]

I want the game to do well but it's simply not my style of game.

I hope the devs survive.

 

[Loomy]

Awesome. Let's show Microsoft we want more games we like by not buying it but by playing it on a sub service. You know, like plenty of you did with Hi Fi Rush. And we all know what happened there... BUY THE FUCKING GAME! Show Microsoft we WANT more of this quality game by purchasing it.

Oh I don't care where people play. But Microsoft does. And it's GamePass.

But here's something interesting.

Bob Iger was caught on a hot mic telling someone that Disney is trying to push more people towards the cheaper ad supported tier of Disney+

I assume Netflix and everyone else is doing the same because they've gotten to the point where money from advertisers per customer than the money per customer on higher ad free tier. For Microsoft's grand plan of gaming dominance to work, a lot more people have to subscribe to and play on GamePass.

 

[Astray]

err what? even if I bought the game from GMG (I bought it from Fanatical) I'd still turn up in the Steam CCUs since I play it on Steam

Not if you didn't redeem it, or if you didn't play it yet.

I bought like 10-20 games during last BF on a multitude of platforms, but I didn't play all of them, I picked them up because it would be a while before I can find them at that price again.

CCU is an anonymized snapshot in time of one platform. Theoretically, the 12k that were playing at 12:30pm and the 12k that are playing at 1:00pm could be entirely different people.

The only time it makes sense to use CCU as an indicator is for F2P games, since you want to know what is the game population like at the times you generally want to log on and play.

The other part that maybe you didn't see is, GMG/Fanatical etc had to buy a copy somewhere so they could sell it to you! They didn't get the keys for free!

 

[graywolf323]

Not if you didn't redeem it, or if you didn't play it yet.

but that is no different than if someone bought it on Steam and hadn't played it yet, they also wouldn't show up in the CCU count since that's ONLY the people that are actively playing the game

also who is going to drop that much money on a new AAA release and not redeem it right away?

 

[nemiroff]

I want the game to do well but it's simply not my style of game.

I hope the devs survive.

It wasn't my style of game either - But I'm enjoying the shit out of it right now. It's a surprisingly well-crafted experience. It's even exceptionally good at times, providing a rare sense of near-excitement in this ice-cold cynical soul of mine.

 

[//DEVIL//]

I picked up a key from fanatical for $55.

$70 and being day one on gamepass hasn't stopped other titles doing much better than this is.



And here's the exact conundrum that led to Tango Gameworks' demise.

Exactly. which is why gamepass day 1 release is not really a good plan in the first place. Neither releasing their games on a different platforms.

Gamepass should be cheap 10$ plan for all the semi old and old games / or indie games in general. but not a AAA game that cost millions in budget.

Hell we are getting so many cheaters in Call of Duty black ops because cheaters just create an account and game pass it and cheat till they get banned and make another account again. to lose 10$ on gamepass on PC is nothing compared to 70$ per game ban.

MS is basically making the Xbox a useless platform and I really highly doubt they are making money back from gamepass after all this development costs. aside from maybe Call of Duty thanks to the playstation userbase.

 

[BigLee74]

Awesome. Let's show Microsoft we want more games we like by not buying it but by playing it on a sub service. You know, like plenty of you did with Hi Fi Rush. And we all know what happened there... BUY THE FUCKING GAME! Show Microsoft we WANT more of this quality game by purchasing it.

Ranty, and wrong.

MS want you subscribed to Gamepass, and to stay subscribed. If they keep releasing games of quality (like good ol' Indy), then it will help.

Where they can't get you subscribed (PS) they will hoover up what sales they can. Their hand has been forced to give up exclusivity here (due to lower hardware sales), but they still make their platform attractive by releasing the games there first. 3-12 months is a long wait.

It's as simple as that really, no?

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I don't think anyone does (I certainly don't, I think it's very good).

 

[RoboFu]

As many people pointed out in this thread, we have apples to apples examples of day one Gamepass games having huge numbers on steam. The recent example is Stalker 2 which did 10x of what Indiana Jones did.

https://steamdb.info/app/1643320/charts/

This game under preformed compared to other Gamepass games.

Nah stalker is a very pc centric title. I can easily see that doing well in steam vs Indiana jones

 

[Thief1987]

Console warring.

Said console warrior.
Among worst of them.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

It did alright, alright enough to warrant another Gears entry.

Not on steam as per the above conversation.

I guess steam isn't always a good metric.
For what it's worth I didn't get my copy on there.

 

[Mortisfacio]

Said console warrior.
Among worst of them.

My bias is towards PC. I haven't touched my PlayStation or my Xbox in over a year.

 

[Thief1987]

My bias is towards PC. I haven't touched my PlayStation or my Xbox in over a year.

We have plenty of green camp warriors here who disguise themselves as pcmr or even neutral. You won't fool anyone.

 

[Humdinger]

Any potential truth to the idea that these numbers are low (in part) because the PC requirements for the game are unusually high?

I'm not a PC or Steam guy, so I don't know. I'm just asking because it's an explanation I heard elsewhere, and I hadn't seen it mentioned here. I'm not "taking sides," just wondering.

Returnal - 6,691
Ratchet and clank rift apart - 8,757
Uncharted Legacy of thieves - 10,851

You had me scratching my head there for a moment, but I think the answer there is that each of those were late PC ports. Indy is different because it's day and date. Also, I believe that R&C sold below expectations (overall, not just on PC) - at least that was my understanding. I don't think Returnal did all that well, either. So you're comparing to games that didn't do very well.

Horizon zero dawn - 56,557
Days Gone - 27,450
God of War - 73,529

Spider-man had reports of selling 1.5M+ units, ccu peak 66,436

They're bigger numbers for sure but there's no extrapolation to be made here between the sales numbers and the CCU.

Those are all late ports, too. I don't think you can equate games that first come out on console exclusively and then are later ported to PC (with variable quality) to games that release day and date on PC. There are a lot of PC players who also own PS5. They would have played those games on PS5 when they came out, rather than wait for PC ports, so the potential audience would be smaller.

However, I do agree with your more general point - it's tricky business trying to correlate Steam CCU numbers to actual sales. It's all we've got, so people go nuts over them, but it's not even close a 1-to-1 correlation. For instance, I saw 4 different websites that attempt to estimate sales based on Steam numbers, and the estimates varied wildly, by a factor of 10 or more.

 

[Banjo64]

You've got a survey on here where 60% of the overall participants are playing the game via Xbox or PC Game Pass (and that percentage figure includes people who are saying they have no intention of buying the game).

If that's a snap shot of a hardcore forum, and it's safe to say Indy is going to appeal to a pretty niche crowd of older gamers, the game has no chance of getting reasonable sales figures on Steam.

Microsoft's own subscription service is hanging their own talented developers.

 

[00_Zer0]

I think word of mouth and discount sales will get the numbers higher, because it's a really fun, well optimized game. People including me were expecting the worst out of this game and I am glad to say I was wrong.

I think the weaker sales could be attributed to Indiana Jones recent movie being a shitty movie, as well as people being apprehensive about that Machine Games writer that was showing off his LGBTQ shirt and bragging about the game being developed for a modern audience. Also, initial previews looked boring.

It could also be attributed to people like me who has a system that can't even run the game. From the various videos I've seen on YouTube this game runs really well on various cards with 12gb ram and above even 3000 series Nvidia cards, as well as 6000 series AMD cards. So once I buy a midrange GPU to run it I will buy this game, but as of now my 5700 XT is too weak sauce to handle it.

After the first of the year I may be getting an 8800 XT, but I definitely don't want a card without 16GB of Ram. It's a shame that the 4070 Super Ti is the only "midrange" Nvidia card with 16gb of ram on the nvidia side, because it's so expensive and hardly has any gaming benefits that the regular 12GB 4070 Super doean't already have, but I don't think in 2025 any gamer should be without a card that has at least 16gb of ram.

 

[Denton]

Its sad how much sales Stalker 2 lost to gamepass.

And to being released prematurely.
If STALKER 2 was not on gamepass and was released in perfect state and had therefore MC of 85+ and resulting word of mouth, it would be attacking 300K CCU, probably more.

 

[Badlucktroll]

i didnt really think this game was all that special. i mean its ok

 

[Mortisfacio]

We have plenty of green camp warriors here who disguise themselves as pcmr or even neutral. You won't fool anyone.

I'm not green camp (StarField, for example, I trashed and hated - how is that green bias?) nor neutral (PC is better)

If you want to believe in conspiracy theories, more power to you, but I've been pretty honest and up-front about my views.

 

[Danknugz]

imagine caring about this and arguing literally all day about it

 

[Hookshot]

8 pages about the Steam CCU in a day, Lego Horizon hasn't managed that after nearly a month. I wonder why that is?

 

[Klayzer]

We have plenty of green camp warriors here who disguise themselves as pcmr or even neutral. You won't fool anyone.

PC gamer

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Microsoft's own subscription service is hanging their own talented developers.

I think we've known this for a long time now despite the nonsense propaganda about "Game pass increases sales" that the rodents were pushing here literally earlier this year

 

[graywolf323]

8 pages about the Steam CCU in a day, Lego Horizon hasn't managed that after nearly a month. I wonder why that is?

you don't have people on GAF defending stuff like Lego Horizon as if their paycheck depended on it instead of just ignoring trolls

 

[Klayzer]

you don't have people on GAF defending stuff like Lego Horizon as if their paycheck depended on it instead of just ignoring trolls

What-about-ism, on full display.

 

[poppabk]

if we can't rely on the PR Talk from xbox and it's executives. the only thing we have is their financial reports and hard confirmations like copies sold or game pass growth (numbers of subscribers)

but here's the thing: games like this are expected to sell 10-15 million copies to be considered an unmitigated success

and if it is not about sales, it has to be about it's revenue.

i don't think it's realistic to expect around 30M NEW Game Pass subscribers thanks to this game.

So, the amount of revenue generated from copies sold on Xbox, PC (Steam/MS Store), and Game Pass (PC/Console) is always going to be less than what the game would have earned by just selling the game outright.

But how do you apportion the recenue from existing subscribers? When Netflix lost subscribers it didnt mean that everything released in those quarters (ie stranger things) lost money - sub services just don't work that way.
The other things is that games have to sell that much to cover dev costs and often huge advertising costs. Now to be fair this game is the biggest advertising push from MS I have seen in awhile - my Google TV had a banner on the front page and I heard one podcast ad. MS arent really pushing the boat out on advertising.

 

[Plague Doctor]

I think word of mouth and discount sales will get the numbers higher, because it's a really fun, well optimized game. People including me were expecting the worst out c of this game and I am glad to say I was wrong.

I think the weaker sales could be attributed to Indiana Jones recent movie being a shitty movie, as well as people being apprehensive about that Machine Games writer that was showing off his LGBTQ shirt and bragging about the game being developed for a modern audience. Also, initial previews looked boring.

If this did have an effect, and the debate is to what extent, and really it was nothing compared to the Avowed shitstorm, I am thinking Phil is going to have to put on his serious t shirt and swing by the studio offices. Cause the Machine Games thing was not as even remotely close to as antagonizing as the fuckery with Avowed Devs.

 

[xrnzaaas]

If you have Series S equivalent hardware then the game will "run" perfectly fine.

If you define it running at the same level as it does on that console as fine.

It's about time moved on from hardware that isn't capable of ray tracing, it's been long overdue IMO.

Funny thing, I tried the game on my RTX3060 laptop and it DOESN'T run fine because there's not enough vram to meet the minimum requirements.

 

[DirtInUrEye]

So why do people want this game to fail?

Thicko culture.

 

[ValiantInstance]

The Stalker player numbers are hard to ignore, but that is a game some will spend 1000 hours playing over time, so it makes sense to buy it. Indiana Jones can probably be finished in a week, so why wouldn't you get it on game pass.

If it came out 20 years ago it would have been very popular at Blockbuster.

 

[Gamezone]

Sea of Thieves launched on steam at like $30.

70,000 players at $30 sounds better than 11,000 players at $60.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

This place is a little dead lately so patiently waiting for the Concord like drop in CCU for a bit of excitement

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

Eight pages of this

Pure adventure game entirely SP with a pretty weak IP isn't going to sell gangbusters, what a shock.

 

[Syphon Filter]

thats odd,. i expected it to not fail.

 

[Kokoloko85]

They kind of killed the potential sales momentum of the game on the ps5 since the hype for this game might decline as time goes by. It should have been launched day one on PS5 for maximum sales potential. I guess they prioritised Gamepass subscription over unit sales.

I think its obvious why MS did it, they have to give some value to Gamepass.
Maybe it will be like Rise of the Tomb Raider. Just because something doesnt get released day 1 doesnt mean it wont get some sales when released on another platform. Theres been a few timed exclusives that do well when they go on another platform.

My attention span isnt great but 3 months wait isnt too bad for me. I wont be able to buy it till summer as Im away

 

[twilo99]

8 pages about the Steam CCU in a day, Lego Horizon hasn't managed that after nearly a month. I wonder why that is?

Phil Spencer

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

But how do you apportion the recenue from existing subscribers? When Netflix lost subscribers it didnt mean that everything released in those quarters (ie stranger things) lost money - sub services just don't work that way.

i know. i was talking about how the existence of Game Pass hurts sales/revenue.

The other things is that games have to sell that much to cover dev costs and often huge advertising costs. Now to be fair this game is the biggest advertising push from MS I have seen in awhile - my Google TV had a banner on the front page and I heard one podcast ad. MS arent really pushing the boat out on advertising.

i think people are taking about big events, physical banners and special trailers around the world.

so, by itself, this game ain't selling 10-15M/ generate the equivalent revenue via new subscribers to GP.

People can argue one way or another. my point is:

GP is not creating a new source of revenue but cannibalizing the primary one.

now then, we can talk about the money around GP.

let's say GP is making 6B in revenue (40M subs at 12usd per month) Phil said that they spent 1Billion to bring content to the service.

now we can say that a AAA game cost 300M(with marketing) and a dev time of 5 years. (60M a year)... the math add up. GP's revenue can afford infinite AAAA games.....But clearly things are not that easy or straight forward.

the biggest issue MS is facing is the lack of growth. and we are going to see how bad really is in the next 2 quarters.