Parallels between Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda

That certainly goes to show how ludicrous EA's sales goals are, especially for more niche games. DS and ME ain't CoD. They ain't gonna sell gangbusters like CoD seemingly always does.

Question is, how well did DS3 sell?

If VGChartz is to be trusted, a little less than 2.2m retail copies. No idea how many digital copies.

And, from what we can gather, ME:A sold much better than that. Hmm. I would say ME:A sold well enough to get by, but not as much as EA would have liked.

OdanUrr found data that puts DS3 at 2.2 million. Sources we have put ME:A at ~3.2 million or something like that.

ME:A's numbers are much better than DS3's.

Actually, here's what they said about Dead Space 3 after it's perceived lacklustre release.  Sound familiar? 

"While we have not announced sales for Dead Space 3, we are proud of the game and the franchise remains an important IP to EA," an Electronic Arts spokesperson informed Joystiq.

So they said that to a journalist, not to investors. Not the same thing they did with MEA.

Again, I'll say take it for what you will.  All I'm getting out of it is that there is no way to accurately obtain sales data on video games.  Even the methodology page at VG Chartz calls their data "estimates" and explains that they use tactics such as just "passively polling" gamers to find out what games they are playing and polling their "retail partners"  and then extrapolating that data into their charts.  I admit I'm not scouring their site, but I couldn't even spot a list of their retail partners to judge, for instance, whether or not Xbox Live is sending them data. Also, the most recent weekly chartz on the site is for June 10th... that means no data yet correlating to Bioware's opening up the free trial on all platforms... and most of that probably results in a digital sale, even on the consoles since very few people would bother to run out and buy a disk and reload everything from the disk if all that's needed is to  unlocked the rest of the game after their free trial.

www.vgchartz.com/methodology.php

Not quite.  I bought MET in 2014.

Let's do some reading between the lines.  EA just happened to have a recent franchise that had a perceivedly weak instalment akin to Andromeda.  Thoughts?  Or are these similarities just happenstance?

DS3: "While we have not announced sales for Dead Space 3, we are proud of the game and the franchise remains an important IP to EA," an EA spokesperson told Eurogamer.
MEA: "We’re very happy with how BioWare is doing and how BioWare is treating Mass Effect.  Our expectations for the Mass Effect IP are strong for the future."

DS3: "VideoGamer's source claims EA executives informed Visceral Montreal last month... with details of the company's restructuring plans."
MEA: “With our BioWare and Motive teams sharing studio space in Montreal, we have BioWare team members joining Motive projects that are underway. We’re also ramping up teams on other BioWare projects in development.”

DS3: "EA believed Dead Space 3 could comfortably outsell its predecessors, with company CEO John Riccitiello saying he could see the game selling 5 million units. EA announced Dead Space 3 pre-orders were "outpacing" those for Dead Space 2 in January's earnings call, although the publisher didn't disclose by what margin."
MEA: "EA didn’t actually mention Mass Effect: Andromeda in its earnings release, even though this was the publisher’s only major game that came out during the fourth fiscal quarter ended March 31." "EA has gone on the record to say its core game franchises need to sell upwards of five million copies to remain viable."


www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-05-ea-cans-dead-space-series-following-poor-sales-of-dead-space-3-report
www.engadget.com/2013/03/05/report-dead-space-4-canceled-after-poor-dead-space-3-sales/
venturebeat.com/2017/05/09/eas-ceo-still-has-faith-in-bioware-after-mixed-mass-effect-andromeda-reviews/

Better put all of this in the new thread made by suido, he has made a thread just for that...