BioWare Video: N7 Day 2018

I finally got home from work and had a chance to watch it, and I think that's really the takeaway here (and for this year). Again just reassuring the fanbase that the ME franchise lives on.

Yes, my mug has it also
And true

I doubt we'll get anything close to hinting a new ME game until after Dragon Age 4 is announced. Right now, sure, we get the idea that Bioware has a plan and probably a rough idea about the story of a new ME title, but that's basically it though (just a few ideas). With the entire studio going 100% on Anthem, and then moving most of the team to DA4 once Anthem is in post-release, it's gonna be awhile for ME fans.

But good thing is, I'm currently half-way through a new ME3 run. I've just seen that some of the mods updated their stuff yesterday, so I guess a new run will need to be done later.

I think Bioware wants to do another ME game, but they have no idea what it's going to look like. I honestly believe they are back at the drawing board as far as ME is concerned, and if they don't come up with something that EA thinks is viable we won't get another game.

Bioware has yet to produce a game that didn't generate profit, so the idea they are in some sort of "dog house" with EA seems like nonsense to me.

That being said i also believe they must be at the drawing board after all Anthem and later Dragon Age are the priority for now.

www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-very-happy-with-battlefield-hardline-sales/1100-6427131/

"Electronic Arts is "very happy" with how well Battlefield Hardline has sold, according to chief executive officer Andrew Wilson".

Still didn't stop Visceral Games from being gutted...

It has never been about making a profit as opposed to generating a certain profit range to appease investors. A lot of games out there still make a profit and fail expectations.

People confuse profitability with success.  At the end of the day Solo turned a profit, but I guarantee you internally at Disney no one was happy with how that movie performed or would call it successful.  If you set certain expectations, and those expectations aren't met, the project was not successful, whether it turned a profit in the end or not.  


If EA expected to sell 6 million copies and only sold like 4 million.  Yeah, that would be profitable, but if you missed the expected sales by 33% you have to figure out what went wrong and decide if and how you can get that part of the market back.  It's not being in the 'dog house' it's just business.  

I think it's a given it didn't meet their expectations.  We don't get many concrete things from Bioware and EA, but someone from EA said they expected to sell three million at launch, which would make up 30-50% of the lifetime sales.  That puts the range at 6 to 10 million.  10 million seems a little aggressive to me, but 6 million makes sense.  ME3 sold 6 million, and in theory, you think you would grow your fanbase each game, so each release would sell better than its predecessor.

We never heard anything about ME:A having a better launch than ME3, and with the bad press it was getting we definitely would have.  Just like they said ME3 was the best selling ME game, and DA:I had the best launch of any Bioware game.  So if ME:A was behind ME3's pace from the start and had a much, much shorter lifespan, there's no way ME:A came anywhere near ME3's overall sales, which were the bottom end of the expectations. 

Also, they expected the game to have legs, with 50-70% of the sales coming after launch.  However, with such a short lifespan, the launch sales probably make 60-70% of the game's overall sales at this point, which is problematic.  People don't pre-order or buy day one based on the merits of the current game.  They do it based on the merits of previous games, or your brand name.  So since the game was abandoned so quickly, they don't know what the market is for future content.  I'm sure they can and did look in Origin at things like hours played, how many still had the game installed, and the last time it was played.  But no one knows what they saw though except Bioware.

Just looking at it logically without letting like or dislike of the game factor in I can't see any way the game came near what they expected of it.