Parallels between Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda

How can you guys fall for the bait every single time?



edit: Inserted obligatory bait meme.

ME was Xbox only at release.  For ME1 & ME2 Xbox had the Lion's share of the sales.  ME:2 wasn't even released on PS3 when it launched.  I think the sales for ME3 were closer between PS and Xbox, but PC has always been last for the games released on multiple platforms.

13th place? Sounds like an okay showing.

Not Amazing, not terrible, just okay.

Isn't it also only for the UK? And not digital sales?

That has nothing to do with being more popular on console. its about release, and do you have numbers to prove your points? And even if you had, these numbers are from 5 years ago, the mass effect franchise has long been multiplatform, tons of people that used to be console player are now pc player, tons of people who were on xbox are now playstation due to microsoft E3 conference DRM. So yeah things have change a lot

There needs to be a skin that hides the OP in the threads view... that would be fun!

Firstly, I'm highly skeptical of that $40 million dollar figure. Where did it come from? I've tried tracking down the source and all I got is a reddit thread pointing to a PewDiePie video where he read an estimated budget for ME3 and applied it to Andromeda. If that's the case, I'd argue Andromeda's budget was higher, simply from the fact they switched to Frostbite (not to mention the 5-year development) but I'm speculating here. Here's the moment in question from that video.

Secondly, even if that had been the development cost, there are certainly other costs to consider, such as marketing. I don't think there's an estimate for that.

Lastly, I would caution against using that logic. Videogame companies sometimes set themselves up for unreasonable (from where I'm sitting, but I don't know their numbers) expectations. Just look at the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot. It sold 3.4 million copies in 4 weeks and yet SE said it "failed to hit expectations." Their expectations were in the 5 million copies range. The game's budget was around $100 million and, according to SE, it needed to reach the 5m mark to break-even. 5m copies at $60, that's $300 million! SE argued it needed to make three times as much money as their estimated budget to break-even. All the numbers came from this article which, by the by, states Tomb Raider reached profitability towards the end of the year (2013).

Good to know. Thanks for the insight.

kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649
"In 2009, EA executive Rich Hilleman indicated in a speech that his company "now typically spends two or three times as much on marketing and advertising as it does on developing a game." This formula is not necessarily applicable to every potential blockbuster game—a "AAA game", in gaming parlance—or to every company, but it is fair to say the break-even point for the average AAA game is well above the development budget. Companies also need to recoup marketing and other expenses.

Four years ago, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot estimated that the average production budget for the generation of games following Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 would be $60 million. In an 2012 investor report, Take-Two admitted some of its "top titles" cost in excess of $60 million for development alone."

Seeing as this was 5 years ago, Andromeda's development budget was probably closer to $100m than $40m. Multiply that 2-3x by marketing costs...

I think it's very obvious no one spent 3x cost on marketing for Andromeda. 😂

Remember how the forum was filled with how the marketing strategy was bonkers because they never gave us anything? Until what, November? Barely? Total marketing on MEA was probably half the cost of the game (speculation and hyperbole).

Probably even lower than that, mass effect andromeda was barely marketed at all, I remember the weeks where it was released and yeah sometime you could find add here or here on youtube, but it was not that much, and once the 2 weeks of relase was done, I don't remember seeing much of it if at all.