Sales for Sim City 5

[oldbrokenlink 43]

i bet that 99.997% of the people who bought it bought it because they were thinking they were getting a different game and many would not have bought it if they knew what they were getting

[jcole4lsu 32]

UPDATE: Sim City sells over 1 million units in first two weeks!

 

http://news.ea.com/press-release/company-news/simcity-sells-more-1-million-launch

 

“SimCity had a great weekend with sales strong across both North America and Europe, adding to overwhelming demand at launch that has us tracking well beyond expectations for the game,” said Peter Moore, Chief Operating Officer for EA.

 

two things:

1) i call BS on a million units being "well beyond" expectations.  if they didn't expect somewhere around that many they wouldn't have bothered with such a major marketing campaign.

2) that number includes all set sales to big box stores (both physical and keys), those units have not necessarily been sold retail.  (in other words, they are counting wholesale sales in addition to retail sales through origin).  in addition, those numbers do not include chargeback/refund requests.

 

I think EA set themselves up for failure with a massive reduction in sales over the weeks following launch week due to the bad PR of the launch.  I'll be very interested to see the 30 day total sales

[jcole4lsu 32]

It includes batches (boxes but also key packs) bought by retailers. It's not the same as sales to end-users.

 

so basically wholesale sales in addition to origin/EA retail sales.   I can't wait to see the drop off between launch week and say week 3 or so. 

[McFluffy 4]

The free game giveaway would also help sales numbers. And it has been extended. Anyone who wants Battlefield 3 for instance will as well just buy SimCity.

[TheJackalope 0]

http://simcityds.ea.com/ states in history that as of sometime on 2007 17 million copies of the series had been sold. One person puts sales at 2 million original, 2 million SC2, 5 million SC3000, and 2 million SC4 which is 6 million short of where it was in 2007.  This powerpoint from Lucy Bradshaw in January 2002 puts original at 1.2 million Sc2 at 3.4 million Sc3000 at 4.6.  That means eight million copies between SC4 and post 2002 sales of the other 3 titles.

 

SC4 has had massive staying power.  It sold 294k boxed copies in 2007 making it the eighth best pc game of 2007 FOUR years after originally released.  It also has continuously popped back up on NPD top 10 rankings in years since especially around gift times(November and December).  It's the only older game I continually see in stores like Best Buy and Walmart(who sure don't put stuff on their shelves that doesn't sell). In may of 2009 it's bundle with Societies( a move to boost Societies sales) was 14th for the month http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24061 That is Six countem SIX years after release!

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

SC2013 1.3 mil sales first two weeks is not impressive at all. This is 2013, not 2002. Diablo3 sold 6.5mil first week, is a $ucce$$ from pure investment point of view. It definitely inspired resurrection of ignored classic titles like SimCity, but also raised the bar for corporate profit expectations. The more they invest, the higher their expectations.

 

SC2013 profitable or not thus far, it depends on dev cost + server cost. But whether it is a "success", that depends specifically on corporate expectation.

 

If $50 mil cost, around 900,000 copies to break even

If $60 mil cost, around 1,300,000 copies to break even

 

But breaking even is not "profitable" nor guarantee of "survival". Server cost is more than the initial setup, rental and human labor costs will be staggering. They've just increased server capacity by 400% among other 4X extra costs. If sales momentum fails to sustain (they usually don't and tend to taper off sharply as shown by posted graph above)... What do you think is going to happen SOON?

 

And as to sales figure to date meeting corporate expectations, EA top dog is "stepping down" and getting fired precisely because Simcity sales expectations have not been met. See EA CEO steps down amidst SIMCITY DRAMA.

 

Point is, it doesn't matter SC2013 sold 1.3 mil or 1.6 mil. The obvious is - SC2013 has severely underperformed.

 

As if that's not enough, as CEO get fired, Amazon pulled down SimCity due to overwhelmingly negative review. It's really not that easy to earn ONE star with almost 1000 reviews. Nevermind reputation, now the Amazon sales line is gone too. Congratulations, how did EA-Maxis manage to pull this stunt on such a sure-hit title?

 

More importantly - what does "SimCity sales figure not meeting EA expectations" mean for fellow gamers?

 

Right...

 

They are hoping most who have bought into the game will not notice what's coming.

 

Many diehard fans saw this coming many moons ago, and here we are. Oh no, I'm not celebrating this vindication. I'm just glad I abstained in time, no pre-order, no post-order. Spared myself the pain and disaster that I knew 300% was to come.

 

I still hope SimCity will recover from this disaster of corporate idiocy and myopia.

 

There is still a chance EA-Maxis could keep the sales figure up - by going the very simple Offline Expansion Pack route.

 

But will they do it?

[azxcvbnm321 17]

I'd be surprised if the game were to become the 2nd highest Sim City game unless major fixes can be worked out.  My take is that a lot of people were duped by the great reviews and hype.  I was VERY close to pre-ordering myself because the most searched for reviews (highest in order on Google) were so positive.  Then I read a few not-so positive reviews, did some more digging, and decided to hold off on buying the game.  Right now, I have no plans on buying the game until they fix the myriad of problems, if they can be fixed at all.  I think a lot of people have heard of the problems and are not going to buy the game.  This is not like a normal release where the sales can continue on like a Skyrim for example (next on my list, waiting for a sale).  

[Catchin22 299]

SC2013 1.3 mil sales first two weeks is not impressive at all. This is 2013, not 2002. Diablo3 sold 6.5mil first week, is a $ucce$$ from pure investment point of view. It definitely inspired resurrection of ignored classic titles like SimCity, but also raised the bar for corporate profit expectations. The more they invest, the higher their expectations.

 

SC2013 profitable or not thus far, it depends on dev cost + server cost. But whether it is a "success", that depends specifically on corporate expectation.

 

If $50 mil cost, around 900,000 copies to break even

If $60 mil cost, around 1,300,000 copies to break even

 

But breaking even is not "profitable" nor guarantee of "survival". Server cost is more than the initial setup, rental and human labor costs will be staggering. They've just increased server capacity by 400% among other 4X extra costs. If sales momentum fails to sustain (they usually don't and tend to taper off sharply as shown by posted graph above)... What do you think is going to happen SOON?

 

And as to sales figure to date meeting corporate expectations, EA top dog is "stepping down" and getting fired precisely because Simcity sales expectations have not been met. See EA CEO steps down amidst SIMCITY DRAMA.

 

Point is, it doesn't matter SC2013 sold 1.3 mil or 1.6 mil. The obvious is - SC2013 has severely underperformed.

 

As if that's not enough, as CEO get fired, Amazon pulled down SimCity due to overwhelmingly negative review. It's really not that easy to earn ONE star with almost 1000 reviews. Nevermind reputation, now the Amazon sales line is gone too. Congratulations, how did EA-Maxis manage to pull this stunt on such a sure-hit title?

 

More importantly - what does "SimCity sales figure not meeting EA expectations" mean for fellow gamers?

 

Right...

 

They are hoping most who have bought into the game will not notice what's coming.

 

Many diehard fans saw this coming many moons ago, and here we are. Oh no, I'm not celebrating this vindication. I'm just glad I abstained in time, no pre-order, no post-order. Spared myself the pain and disaster that I knew 300% was to come.

 

I still hope SimCity will recover from this disaster of corporate idiocy and myopia.

 

There is still a chance EA-Maxis could keep the sales figure up - by going the very simple Offline Expansion Pack route.

 

But will they do it?

 

Just a note, Amazon closed sales do to issues with the servers, not the rating, amazon does not remove products do to ratings. After the issues were fixed with the servers (except game saves) they started selling it again.