{"id":17721,"date":"2025-02-12T15:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T14:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/top-of-the-flops-just-what-does-the-games-industry-deem-success-any-more\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T15:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T14:38:08","slug":"top-of-the-flops-just-what-does-the-games-industry-deem-success-any-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/top-of-the-flops-just-what-does-the-games-industry-deem-success-any-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Top of the flops: just what does the games industry deem \u2018success\u2019 any more?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has reached 1.5 million gamers around the world \u2013 yet its developers have labelled it a disappointment. With unfair expectations, it\u2019s the niche and left-field titles that will suffer<\/p>\n

Back in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider starring a significantly less objectified Lara Croft. I loved that game<\/a>, despite a quasi-assault scene near the beginning that I would later come to view as a bit icky, and I wasn\u2019t the only one \u2013 it was extremely well received, selling 3.4m copies in its first month alone. Then Square Enix came out and called it a disappointment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sales did not meet the publisher\u2019s expectations, apparently, which raises the question: what were <\/em>the expectations? Was it supposed to sell 5m in one month<\/em>? If a book sells 10,000 copies in a week it\u2019s considered a bestseller. Even at the height of its popularity in the 90s, no Tomb Raider game ever sold more than a few million. Square Enix\u2019s expectations were clearly unrealistic. It wouldn\u2019t be the last time; in a 2016 interview with Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XV\u2019s director, he told me that game needed to sell 10m to succeed.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nDragon Age: The Veilguard has reached 1.5 million gamers around the world \u2013 yet its developers have labelled it a disappointment. With unfair expectations, it\u2019s the niche and left-field titles that will suffer
\nBack in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider starring a significantly less objectified Lara Croft. I loved that game, despite a quasi-assault scene near the beginning that I would later come to view as a bit icky, and I wasn\u2019t the only one \u2013 it was extremely well received, selling 3.4m copies in its first month alone. Then Square Enix came out and called it a disappointment.
\nSales did not meet the publisher\u2019s expectations, apparently, which raises the question: what were the expectations? Was it supposed to sell 5m in one month? If a book sells 10,000 copies in a week it\u2019s considered a bestseller. Even at the height of its popularity in the 90s, no Tomb Raider game ever sold more than a few million. Square Enix\u2019s expectations were clearly unrealistic. It wouldn\u2019t be the last time; in a 2016 interview with Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XV\u2019s director, he told me that game needed to sell 10m to succeed. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has reached 1.5 million gamers around the world \u2013 yet its developers have labelled it a disappointment. With unfair expectations, it\u2019s the niche and left-field titles that will suffer Back in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider …<\/p>\n

Top of the flops: just what does the games industry deem \u2018success\u2019 any more?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17721"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}