Fallout 3's commercial success

gregor_y said:
Still its wired i mean Fallout 3 fails in story line and in gameplay to old grumy members but its not bugged you got to admit it...

Idident have any crash and i can play on full details most games released now are unplayable until you see at least 3 patches or more...

So generaly speaking Bethesda just made product for majority most of us would do it except some fanatics...

For example i buyed Guild 2 Venice and well i know i will never buy another game from JoWoo it crashes,saves dont work,only 4 new small maps and old ones dont work,i think only 2 new things and thats about it...

So id Bethesda would make Fallout hm 5-10 years earlier it would have a lot better story and gameplay...

Lets just say Bethesda is adjusting to console market and i dont blame them its Profit...
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would you please stop comparing YOUR specifications with those of other people, would you? We have NOT reached the lala land yet were OWN hardware and experience is saying anything about the GENERAL stability of some software [sarcasm]

I will try to aply your own logic on you, just for the fun

...For example i buyed Guild 2 Venice and well i know i will never buy another game from JoWoo it crashes,saves dont work,only 4 new small maps and old ones dont work,i think only 2 new things and thats about it...
I never had ANY crashes with JoWood gothic game. Still its wired but I mean its not bugged you got to admit it... so it must be your computer working wrong.

This is just for fun. I hope you see that. Of course I do know that Gothic had some serious bugs and that it never (even today) managed to run stable. Nontheless it was a nice game.


I hope you see the error in my attempt to use your logic. Fallout 3 IS broken when it comes to stability. You can see that alone by the isues even PS3 and X-box players experience. And its strange enough that Fallout 3 seems to run a lot slower compared to games that demand more hardware from your PC to run even though when the Fallout 3 engine is pretty old. Bad optimisation? Who knows ... you definetly run in many glichtes when playing the game (I see a lot of them) and they can increase loadtimes while playing.[/i]
 
Crni Vuk said:
would you please stop comparing YOUR specifications with those of other people, would you? We have NOT reached the lala land yet were OWN hardware and experience is saying anything about the GENERAL stability of some software [sarcasm]

I will try to aply your own logic on you, just for the fun

...For example i buyed Guild 2 Venice and well i know i will never buy another game from JoWoo it crashes,saves dont work,only 4 new small maps and old ones dont work,i think only 2 new things and thats about it...
I never had ANY crashes with JoWood gothic game. Still its wired but I mean its not bugged you got to admit it... so it must be your computer working wrong.

This is just for fun. I hope you see that. Of course I do know that Gothic had some serious bugs and that it never (even today) managed to run stable. Nontheless it was a nice game.


I hope you see the error in my attempt to use your logic. Fallout 3 IS broken when it comes to stability. You can see that alone by the isues even PS3 and X-box players experience. And its strange enough that Fallout 3 seems to run a lot slower compared to games that demand more hardware from your PC to run even though when the Fallout 3 engine is pretty old. Bad optimisation? Who knows ... you definetly run in many glichtes when playing the game (I see a lot of them) and they can increase loadtimes while playing.[/i]
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Well i live in Poland so if i can buy avarage PC so can you unless moms buy your everything...and my PC was only 450$ so...so your argument is stupid...

Secound JooWood ok but for example Gothic 3 is buggy Gothic 2 is older they did fine in old days so you argument is out of date...use new games not old ones...

About consoles dont care how it works on those boxes all i know it profitable to release games on them and thats all...

As you see my logic is bloody briliant...and get a job and buy a fucking PC...
 
There has been a LOT of news and complaints about Fallout 3 being buggy and broken. Because almost every PC is different, it becomes hard to determine if the problem is from your PC, or the game. However, a lot of X-Box and PS3 owners have problems too. This means that is MUST be the games fault because every X-Box and PS3 are the same. Just because the game works perfectly on your machine doesn't mean it should work perfectly on all other machines, you just got lucky. A lot of people with high-end PCs that run Crysis have reported trouble with Fallout 3.
 
Commercial satisfaction you say?

Well lets presume that beth hasn't already cashed in the cash cow, lets presume that the 'fallout' IP etc falls into obscurity once more. would the people that bought/played FO3 be playing it in ten years? Or will another superficial 10/10 chart topper ad-campaign come along to fill the public's sweaty gaming palms... Lets face it people FO 1/2 could possibly be noted among the all time great games they alone provided countess hours of gaming to a good number of people over a period of a decade or more.

FO3, yeah I'm enjoying playing it... but quite frankly once I get the next Call Of Duty game... or Rainbow 6... or whatever, FO3 will become a box on my shelf, probably never to be re-installed. So, commercial success IMO... FO 1/2 did far better (I've personally bought 2 copies of FO2 over the years, as well as borrowing other copies from friends) FO3 was a nice filler until the next big thing.

To sum up in comparison, FO 1/2 would be owning a copy of 'Dickens' in a book collection, FO3 is like owning a copy of heat magazine (for the non-UK folk think Hello! or US weekly)
One has an intricate and wonderful story, and makes you want to read it again and again, if not wanting more of the same kind of thing, the other is knocked out in millions of copies and contains nothing but the latest trash.
 
Well I doubt that Bethesda has yet made anything on Fallout 3, especially on the PC. To illustrate why I think this I'll use The Witcher as an example. This game was made for $11 million or so. It took a sale of a million units to make a profit for the developers. Now The Witcher had a miniscule budget in comparison to Fallout 3 so it will take a lot more sales, more that the 5 million or so they sold already, to turn a profit. When you factor in that most of the sales of a game like this happen in the first few weeks, and note that most of the sales are on console, I'd say that Bethesda will not be very pleased with the PC market for Fallout.

They will hopefully abandon the PC and just dumb down Fallout even more for the console market, filling the game with achievements.

I'm hoping that Rockstar after it's disastrous release of GTA 4 on PC, to also forget about the PC in the future.

I'd actually like Bethesda to abandon the PC market altogether and give more room to groups like CD Projekt RED or other independent RPG makers who then can have a free reign and not be stifled by the mass marketing engine of Bethesda, Rockstar etc.

People who say PC gaming will die are full of shit. The PC will always be more complex and versatile and certain types of game will alway be better on the PC than console. If the 'big' companies take their watered down products and piss off to work exclusively on the console well it's hardly a fucking loss.

Will give smaller companies a bigger share of the market and allow for the success of innovative titles as opposed to the best marketed ones.
 
Yes, I agree with that.

It's about time PC developers ditched the idea that spending $20 million on your 3D engine and artists is going to make your game an instant success.

In the meantime, gameplay has gone to hell; AI has barely improved since the days of Quake's "it's coming straight for us" monsters.

Fallout 3's "Radiant AI" features monsters that, interestingly, run straight for you. But if you use the buzzwords enough, people believe that you're actually developing complex AI behaviours.

But come on, how many raiders did anything besides run straight at you, and run away on low health? I counted none.

Also, I hate to say it but...

I thought The Witcher was rubbish. Language and nudity don't make mature games. Games have to move away from visceral themes and gameplay before they can be called mature.
 
Actually k9wazere, I had raiders and monsters flee often on the playthrough of FO 1 I just finished a couple of days ago:) How hard could it have been to implement even this most basic of things into the 'Radiant' engine?

Hmm, well the swearing and nudity in Witcher I thought wasn't gratuitous, and hardly the big selling point for me. I liked it cause it reminded me of the story based RPG's I like, as opposed to 'gee wizz, giant free world to explore' type of RPG's that have been released over the last half decade or more.
 
k9wazere said:
Also, I hate to say it but...

I thought The Witcher was rubbish. Language and nudity don't make mature games. Games have to move away from visceral themes and gameplay before they can be called mature.
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Sorry for beign off-topic, but I have to disagree with that. Witcher's maturity wasn't all about nudity and cursing, this was there because of the nature of the book it was based upon. The maturity (I think) is in the main plot, which shows how bad people can get - rasism, kidnapping, murder, abuse, politics, fucking others to get what you need, lying, corruption - this kind of thing. Also, notice that there really is no good ending and the main character is basically a mercenary killer, who just happened to be dragged into this whole mess against his will.
 
Commiered said:
Well I doubt that Bethesda has yet made anything on Fallout 3, especially on the PC. To illustrate why I think this I'll use The Witcher as an example. This game was made for $11 million or so. It took a sale of a million units to make a profit for the developers. Now The Witcher had a miniscule budget in comparison to Fallout 3 so it will take a lot more sales, more that the 5 million or so they sold already, to turn a profit. When you factor in that most of the sales of a game like this happen in the first few weeks, and note that most of the sales are on console, I'd say that Bethesda will not be very pleased with the PC market for Fallout..
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The last I heard though is that The Witcher sold aprox 700 000 units on the PC. And that seems not to be a that bad number considering that Fallout 3 so far from most sourcse has not sold more then I think 200 000 units on the PC? Well they shiped out around 4,7 Million units (not sold just shiped out to shops etc.) of Fallout 3 and this is not reflecting the times people downloaded it over Steam. From the Developers at CD project they stated a few times that The Witcher was a huge success for them and they are definetly planing on to establish this setting more in the gaming world.

I think one has to wait at least till next year before geting any real picture about if Fallout 3 was a success for Bethesda or not.If they ever start to work on Fallout 4 it might be the best sign that they managed to squeze out some money of the Fallout franchise.

k9wazere said:
I thought The Witcher was rubbish. Language and nudity don't make mature games. Games have to move away from visceral themes and gameplay before they can be called mature..
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The Witcher had not only nudity. Frankly one can not like the game and has not to explain it why. But it definetly had more mature themes then just "sex". Like the constant part of racism between the humans and non-humans like elves, dwarves and the like. Or the part behind the Kings dougther where the rumor was spread that she was born as result from incest and a couple of more things. Also no matter what group you decided to support in the end (next to your usual side quest) no one of them was either plain "evil" or "good" they had both good and bad characters and faces inside (some were even both trying to do bad things for a in their eyes higher good). Same to the merchants that support you at one point in the game which you could even start a conversation with why they dont support the "poor" people of the town with their reichness and influence.

If the Wichter is now a game for every one who likes deep RPGs is one question (that I can not answer, but I did liked the game a lot), but it definetly has a lot more deep content and better written dialogues compared to Fallout 3. Definetly.a lot better ...
 
Ravager69 said:
The maturity (I think) is in the main plot, which shows how bad people can get - rasism, kidnapping, murder, abuse, politics, fucking others to get what you need, lying, corruption - this kind of thing. Also, notice that there really is no good ending and the main character is basically a mercenary killer, who just happened to be dragged into this whole mess against his will.
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Well I think that Geralt had a moral code with a sense of justice, as you can get Tess to tell you that you 'were' like that before you lost your memory if you pick that response.

You are right about the maturity being in the plot, even the King who indulges in incest isn't a 'bad' guy, but is an opportunist. He helps Geralt, but has no problem in ignoring his promises afterward as I discovered by taking the side of the Squirrels at the end of the game. I found it cool how the 'noble' Squirrels engaged in the same brutal murderous behaviour as the Order. The maturity comes in trying to pick a side or leaving them be, in a way that there will be the least amount of suffering for the innocent. Not an easy task!

The fact that you are NOT some superhero that everyone listens to or follows at the end is also a step forward for storylines in games. There are limits to what you can do, you can at best alleviate the suffering of a few and temper the nastiness of others for a while. This is a mature idea, not killing all the bad guys so the kingdom can live happily ever after.
 
You're probably right. I didn't play it past chapter 3 (?) or so. It bored me, so I sold it.

I'm not a stranger to RPGs; deep RPGs, or RPGs with a lot of text. Hell, I loved Front Mission 3, and iirc that has an entire novel's worth of dialogue.

But as someone who's not used to a lot of swearing, it stood out and made me cringe. Yes, I know I can go to some housing estate and find kids telling each other to eff off. But I don't think putting that in a video game even contributes to the maturity.

If anything it detracts from other more integral mature themes. I'm sorry, but "your momma sucks dwarf c***" is just something a young child would say. Or a teenager who wants to impress his mates.

The Witcher struck me as a game trying desperately to be "mature" for the sake of it, and throwing every controversial theme it could think of into the fray, to meet that end.

But the main reason I disliked it was that the gameplay bored me. In the same way that BioShock bored me, and FO3 bored me.

I guess the gameplay just wasn't interesting enough for my tastes.
 
k9wazere said:
You're probably right. I didn't play it past chapter 3 (?) or so. It bored me, so I sold it.

I'm not a stranger to RPGs; deep RPGs, or RPGs with a lot of text. Hell, I loved Front Mission 3, and iirc that has an entire novel's worth of dialogue.

But as someone who's not used to a lot of swearing, it stood out and made me cringe. Yes, I know I can go to some housing estate and find kids telling each other to eff off. But I don't think putting that in a video game even contributes to the maturity.

If anything it detracts from other more integral mature themes. I'm sorry, but "your momma sucks dwarf c***" is just something a young child would say. Or a teenager who wants to impress his mates.

The Witcher struck me as a game trying desperately to be "mature" for the sake of it, and throwing every controversial theme it could think of into the fray, to meet that end.

But the main reason I disliked it was that the gameplay bored me. In the same way that BioShock bored me, and FO3 bored me.

I guess the gameplay just wasn't interesting enough for my tastes.
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That is cause the game is based roughtly on the theme of the books. And the books include in some forms this kind of things (swearing and gerald doing lot of things with females ... you know)
 
Crni Vuk said:
The last I heard though is that The Witcher sold aprox 700 000 units on the PC. And that seems not to be a that bad number considering that Fallout 3 so far from most sourcse has not sold more then I think 200 000 units on the PC? Well they shiped out around 4,7 Million units (not sold just shiped out to shops etc.) of Fallout 3 and this is not reflecting the times people downloaded it over Steam.
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I saw them say they SOLD a million copies of Witcher a few weeks ago on some Polish game portal, and also on that same one it said that only a few weeks earlier did they start turning a profit. This is a success for a 1st time game studio from Poland with such a large budget. They also are planning another upgrade to the Witcher, and are finally porting it to consoles, so this is now almost pure profit for them as the finances are taken care of and only minor changes are needed to an already produced game. They are making a new Witcher game as well. From what they were saying in interviews they will be doing PC first like the first game and then maybe porting it later, a good move as it means they won't dumb down the game for the PC.
 
Ravager69 said:
k9wazere said:
Also, I hate to say it but...

I thought The Witcher was rubbish. Language and nudity don't make mature games. Games have to move away from visceral themes and gameplay before they can be called mature.
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Sorry for beign off-topic, but I have to disagree with that. Witcher's maturity wasn't all about nudity and cursing, this was there because of the nature of the book it was based upon. The maturity (I think) is in the main plot, which shows how bad people can get - rasism, kidnapping, murder, abuse, politics, fucking others to get what you need, lying, corruption - this kind of thing. Also, notice that there really is no good ending and the main character is basically a mercenary killer, who just happened to be dragged into this whole mess against his will.
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Agreed on every single line.

This, and also the non - "lived happily ever after" ending. Mine said the war between humans and elves broke out again in half a year. So it's most certainly not the nudity and language that makes it mature, but rather the harsh realities of the world.
 
Huh, maybe I should give The Witcher a try.

Anyway, it has also just occurred to me that the success of Fallout 3 makes it much more likely that a Fallout Online game will receive the large start up capital necessary for development. Beth basically refreshed the series and now a real Fallout experience can be crafted.
 
fallout MMO the real fallout experience ? :shock:
Ooookayy.

I think fallout 3's success will mean another bad fallout game made by bethesda. That is very likely to happen.
 
k9wazere said:
You're probably right. I didn't play it past chapter 3 (?) or so. It bored me, so I sold it.

I'm not a stranger to RPGs; deep RPGs, or RPGs with a lot of text. Hell, I loved Front Mission 3, and iirc that has an entire novel's worth of dialogue.

But as someone who's not used to a lot of swearing, it stood out and made me cringe. Yes, I know I can go to some housing estate and find kids telling each other to eff off. But I don't think putting that in a video game even contributes to the maturity.

If anything it detracts from other more integral mature themes. I'm sorry, but "your momma sucks dwarf c***" is just something a young child would say. Or a teenager who wants to impress his mates.

The Witcher struck me as a game trying desperately to be "mature" for the sake of it, and throwing every controversial theme it could think of into the fray, to meet that end.

But the main reason I disliked it was that the gameplay bored me. In the same way that BioShock bored me, and FO3 bored me.

I guess the gameplay just wasn't interesting enough for my tastes.
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I personally found the "dwarf bodypart" insult hilarious. It also definitely stood out to show the racism in the game.

I also think the amount of swearing is due to the time period the game is set in. In Eastern Europe the medieval "common folk" has commonly been seen as people with improper language and poor manners, hence the swearing. Also contributes to show which of the characters is being direct and honest when speaking. Notice that nobles or shady characters never swear and have good manners. I guess we're talking cultural differences here.

I do agree with you that some of the themes seemed pretty forced, but for all it's worth, it's better than any of the recent "serious" games has managed to put forth.

As for the gameplay... Well, for one thing, the game was pretty story-focused. Also, while the battle wasn't fabulous, the alchemy was a lot of fun, and some of the boss battles or even simple monsters were genuinely hard. There was also little to no "pot gulping" so common to action RPGs. The game at least made you think, from time to time, how to fight better.

But I guess I may be a little biased because the game is culturally close to me, so it has that special charm, you know, kind of like the charm FO has to American people.
 
I also think the amount of swearing is due to the time period the game is set in.
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The game is set in a fantasy world, not in any "time period". Sapkowski himself detests how some people criticize the fact that his characters use "too modern" words, as people didn't speak that way "back then", even though the books are not set in our middle ages and even if they were, and if he used actual language from that era, no one would understand it.
When "The Road of No Return" was published in "Fantastyka", Maciej Parowski did some edits to it that weren't consulted with the author - after all, why treat a debutant with kid gloves? The victims of the editor's eraser were mostly phrases that shouldn't be used in fantasy, because "they didn't speak like that back then". Therefore, in the story printed in "Fantastyka", to my astonishment, I saw "arrogance" replaced by "hubris" and "intelligent" became "wise". Because I'm a strong defender of the theory that fantasy is not set in any "back then" and any archaisation of the language is pointless, I eliminated Parowski's corrections from the following version and returned to the virgin typescript. I leave it up to you to determine, whether the text became better or worse because of it.
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^ Hmm, you may be right. But there is a difference between using an ancient language and maintaining old-style cliches. The fantasy world definitely reeks of medieval Europe, in Sapkowski's case it's Eastern Europe.

Also, I believe swearing is not as much of a "taboo" in games in CEE as it is in the US. I do wonder why the movies are different, or why Pulp Fiction is not being detested for "too much swearing" :roll:
 
Commiered said:
Well I doubt that Bethesda has yet made anything on Fallout 3, especially on the PC. To illustrate why I think this I'll use The Witcher as an example. This game was made for $11 million or so. It took a sale of a million units to make a profit for the developers. Now The Witcher had a miniscule budget in comparison to Fallout 3 so it will take a lot more sales, more that the 5 million or so they sold already, to turn a profit. When you factor in that most of the sales of a game like this happen in the first few weeks, and note that most of the sales are on console, I'd say that Bethesda will not be very pleased with the PC market for Fallout.

They will hopefully abandon the PC and just dumb down Fallout even more for the console market, filling the game with achievements.

I'm hoping that Rockstar after it's disastrous release of GTA 4 on PC, to also forget about the PC in the future.

I'd actually like Bethesda to abandon the PC market altogether and give more room to groups like CD Projekt RED or other independent RPG makers who then can have a free reign and not be stifled by the mass marketing engine of Bethesda, Rockstar etc.

People who say PC gaming will die are full of shit. The PC will always be more complex and versatile and certain types of game will alway be better on the PC than console. If the 'big' companies take their watered down products and piss off to work exclusively on the console well it's hardly a fucking loss.

Will give smaller companies a bigger share of the market and allow for the success of innovative titles as opposed to the best marketed ones.
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Fucking hell, a tear just droped from my eye :)

You're totally right, but I still think big companies will be trying to sell stuff on PC, because there are lots of stupid PC users.

Few days ago, I found out that they made another Manhunt game, but it was only made for consoles :? Damn I was pissed!
 
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