Why Aren’t People Buying Good Games?

The last month has held a few surprises for major publishers, and not the good kind. Sales are down quite drastically compared to 2015, with a 52% drop in sales the week before last – ending November 12th – compared to the same time last year. Major games like Watch Dogs 2, Dishonored 2, Titanfall 2 and even the once implaccable Call of Duty series have all underperformed quite significantly.

A lot of people might be left scratching their heads wondering what on Earth has gone wrong? As always, the answer is not going to be a simple one.

One thing is quite striking about all of these games, in that they’re all high profile sequels. Dishonored 2’s lackluster launch saw it charting just fourth in its debut week, and this is perhaps the most surprising failure to me. The first game was very well regarded, it sold well and the sequel has built upon those excellent foundations.

Perhaps it’s a victim of Bethesda’s own success. Last week is largely so disappointing because it compares so unfavourably to the same week last year, when Fallout 4 had just launched. That was a game that effortlessly broke into the mainstream, where far more than the regular gamers were talking about it. It sold millions of copies within hours of release and made more than $750 million in its first 24 hours globally. Let’s put that in perspective: GTA V made $800 million in its first day on sale…

In the UK 2016 is down on 2015 as a whole to the tune of 13.1% revenue. It’s a strange end to the year as well, as we’ve seen a number of high profile hardware launches from Sony, and all the retail supply restrictions that so often entails.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Battlefield 1 has sold exceptionally well for EA, Mafia III was the fastest selling game launch in 2K Games’ history – GTA, it should be said, effectively lives under its own brand at Take Two. Mafia III’s performance means that those pondering whether or not having a black lead character sent Watch Dogs 2 tumbling can probably put that as a secondary factor, when Lincoln Clay’s revenge trip was one of the better selling games last month.

Other things about the game might have also hindered it, though. Alongside having Marcus as the lead, there’s a much chirpier, more youthful and excessively colourful look to the game which might grate with some people. But there was also the last minute wash of bad news for prospective buyers, as Ubisoft had to give notice that the seamless multiplayer wasn’t working – and still isn’t, in what is fast becoming a major failing for the publisher.

Yet this was a game that was almost universally well received and is considered to be a much better game than the original. The first game was dark, it was a bit stodgy, it didn’t make the best use of its theme. When 300,000 fewer people buy a game compared to its predecessor, the quality and perception of the original has to be taken into account.

Of course, timing has to be a factor as well. The first game wasn’t ready in time for its November release back in 2013 and luckily fled the awe inspiring release of GTA V to launch the following May instead. Releasing in the always jam packed pre-Christmas rush of October and November is a very different prospect.

That May launch also came at a time when people were constantly crying out for actual games to release for their shiny new consoles. The PlayStation 4 was selling like hotcakes – and to a lesser extent, so was the Xbox One – but what could you play on it? The story is the same for Titanfall 2, where the first released early in the console cycle and early in the year, only for the sequel to be released sandwiched between Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

You could easily argue that it was afflicted by the same negativity that Infinite Warfare was greeted with – the millions of downvotes on Call of Duty’s early trailers was clearly a sign of things to come, even if the game was still the second biggest launch of the year – but I’d argue that it was more apathy and an understated marketing campaign in a busy release window. With Battlefield 1’s sales tracking well against Infinite Warfare, EA clearly backed the right (war) horse, but they didn’t give Titanfall 2 room to breathe or the right amount of support. You have to worry for the future of a series that delivered easily one of the best single player first person shooter campaigns of the last decade.

I see shades of 2008 in all of this. I distinctly remember hemming and hawing about whether to pick up certain games at launch, having just purchased a PlayStation 3, but a scant few weeks after their launch, I could so easily grab games like Mirror’s Edge, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift and LittleBigPlanet for £20. Like this year, 2008 was also a massive shock to world politics and financial stability. With the way that the EU Referendum and US presidential election panned out, perhaps wallets are tightening once more in the UK.

It’s almost certainly for this reason that Black Friday has been blown out of all proportion in the UK this year. It’s no longer a single day, but a fortnight on Amazon, and there’s tons of other retailers going early with their sales and promotions to spur on purchases. That messaging is everywhere, and there’s no doubt plenty of people who are simply happy to wait a couple of weeks and pick up games on the cheap.

You could also be fooled into thinking that, with most of the games I’m talking about here being November releases where US figures have yet to be released, this could be a flash in the British pan. It’s not. NPD results for October say that Titanfall 2 wasn’t just down in the UK, but also plummeted 79% in the US compared to the original. Gears of War 4 only equalled sales of Judgement, the lowest bar for the series, while Rise of the Tomb Raider and Skylanders Imaginators also poorly. As a whole, October’s console game sales were up 31% year on year in the US, but simply looking at that one statistic hides a number of notable failures.

In the end, there’s no single reason why each of these games failed to match the high expectations pinned upon them, some bigger than others. How the publishers react and change their approach in future will be fascinating to see. Will more companies try to find space for their games in other parts of the year? Will they fundamentally change their future gaming line up? For those eagerly looking forward to sequels to these, you have to hope the they have a long tail of sales that wags harder than the happiest dog in the world.