MEA Patch 1.09 removes DRM

Denuvo was removed from Doom once it was pirated, wasn't it? Of course Denuvo's official version was that it had "accomplished its purpose"   I suppose the reason is the same here.

Edit: About DLC feasability, while I'm getting more and more pessimistic as time goes on, I don't think this is really related. ME:A's initial sales window is already gone, and I doubt DLC on their own could make significant additional sales. Pirating is a way lesser concern now.

It makes sense to me, if I am remembering correctly most publishers only really want DRM around the launch month and maybe one more month after so when adding patches to a game after that critical window why have the extra hassle of working with an extra piece of software that really doesn't have a benefit. In reality Origin is probably still enough of a DRM solution anyway.

Oh? What livestream is that?

Don't worry.

Literally everything is proof that there's no DLC and no one liked the game, if you try hard enough.

Ah, well, my mistake...just about everything has a live stream now a days, so I admittedly made an assumption.

Truth is, nobody can say anything on profit margins. As I keep saying, number crunching what little data is available to the general public, leads exactly nowhere, since this isn't only about money invested, but also about manpower being tied down for the better part of half a decade. The only thing that could say something on how this game performed, would be knowing their prospected goals when they decided on starting the project. But that we will never know, since they will never release that kind of data.

I mean...math is still math.

No, I shouldn't make assumptions, but if ME 3 is the best seller of the franchise and they sold 3m in the first month and Andromeda sold something just shy of that (according to VGCharts), then, I really doubt they're far off the mark.

Unless they planned on making more than ME3 (which would be unrealistic from a financial perspective), they made enough.

Sure thing. In fact i's more than that. Ordinarily games that push DLC from Day One, receive no patching support and maintain invasive DRM are considered bad things and the armchair experts declare them evidence that the developers and game are going down.

'Course, MEA does the opposite and it's proof that... um... the developers and game are going down.

I suppose MEA isn't being accused of giving people cancer are being involved in Princess Diana's death. That's something, I guess.

Gotta start somewhere.

That's false.  People make estimations on market averages all the time.  That's the meat and potatoes of being a market analyst or any kind of financial advisor:  making an educated guess based off of market history.

The "educated" part of my guess is that, historically, there's no Bioware game that outsold ME3.  Since Andromeda is THE CLOSEST in sales at the end of the first month, it is therefore statistically safe to assume that they made enough money.  
It makes ZERO sense for them to plan on making more money than they ever have before.  That is a risk that is just stupid.  

Some education:
ME 3 sold something to the tune of 3m copies within the first month.  BioWare's best seller.
THAT makes it the market.  So you decide to create a new game.  Your market is that 3m worth of sales.  You do not 'plan' on hitting that mark because you're not making ME 3.  If you plan to hit the $3m worth of sales, you're making a grave mistake.  I know that and I only have an associates degree.  I assume EA/Bioware employs people with more financial experience than me because they will not hire me.

Therefore, while I cannot say for certain that they made their goals, I CAN say for certain if their goal was more than what they made, they need to hire new financial advisors.

While I'd agree that Abaris is very wrong about a lot here (in particular, the assertion that 'Math isn't math if you don't know the variables' is absurd, there's entire branches of mathematics based on this very concept and good programming is all about carrying out maths without knowing variables), I would point out that as daft as it is, companies can and do plan on making more money than they ever have before.

Square Enix has a terrible track record for doing this, for example. I think they declared Tomb Raider to be 'disappointing' because it 'only' sold 5 million copies in whatever window they defined as being the success threshold.

While EA isn't quite as bad as this, there's been at least one AAA game they've released in the last few years (DS3) which did perfectly well from a broad perspective but failed to hit their expectations, and it stalled it's franchise as a result. I don't think what we've seen so far puts MEA in that territory but since we're dealing with expectations that are by definition unrealistic, we can't know for sure if it will have an effect.

Oh, I'm not saying that companies don't do this.  
I'm saying that my experience has shown me that it is stupid.  Your market is the highest you've ever sold.  Planning for more is folly.  Getting more is a good product.

If it were me, I would evaluate several factors, but probably come back with a budget of some % of the market (3m sales) based on the average sales of the previous 3 titles.