Dragon Age Budget and Sales

The game's development, which began in 2015, has been marked by lengthy delays, several fundamental changes in design, and high staff turnover.

BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta.

2019 Report said they had 320 employees

Minimum wage is 17.30 in said location

5 Days at 8 hours every day for 300 Days with 320 Employees

Development is 9 years, but lets just put it at 8 years, that's a little over 106 Million

This doesn't include any other cost of business

This is only minimum wage, meaning the cost for just doing business as normal is likely considerably higher

So with Veilguard being 60 dollars. At only 70k players, they've only made... what, 4 million. Not including Steams take or taxes. Obviously that number doesn't include consoles. Though even with 10 times that much, they're still operating at a loss....

How is Bioware going to survive this bros...?

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It's actually a return to form and that's why it's going to sell well.

b- but my sisters told me the chuddies got owned

extremely optimistic mathematics

cutting off 50 days of the year

only taking into account minimum wage when it's likely closer to double that

Steam takes 30% (20% after 10 million in sales)

Hahahahahahahaha

What the fuck. So they flopped?

NOOOO THIS WAS OUR TIME TO SHINE, CHUDS!!!

Brutal.

At only 70k players

70k concurrent players is not total player count.
Also lots of people buy the game, and then never play it. They made at least $40mil out of this, which is still not great, but you're exaggerating the flop.

Even if they sold 10 times more than they had. Which is stretching it, it would still be a flop.
They need to sell 3 to 5 million depending on how much the actual budget was. OP did an extremely low ball conservative estimate. He didn't account for the entire year. He only used minimum wage. He didn't account for the cost of business, taxes, building upkeep, etc. etc. He didn't account for marketing.

This is a huge, HUGE flop.

losing hundreds of millions of dollars is... A GOOD THING ACTUALLY

you act like tranny lefties can fucking do math or can think 1 week in advance.

I think the current launch as minimal as it was compared to other AAA titles was just high enough for EA to not bring the hammer down on BioWare.

This was a huge IP 10 years ago, so for a game like Dragons Dogma II to overshadow it in terms of numbers is pretty telling.

base on 70k on steam i guess it sold around 200k+ all platform, but like all DEI game there will be following up news from shill Media that it sold 1mil unit just like they did with silent hill 2 remake

He also didn't account for hiring other studios to do smaller work. It's likely they spent a few million on outsourcing at the very least.

Game is 100% a flop.

Unironically yes. I hope they lose billions.

Wasn't mass effect 4 already in production? They'll probably be spared from the axe for now but that shit will be sent out to die with a lower budget and no delayments

Minimum wage

No one is earning minimum wage in vidya industry.
EA Edmonton and EA Austin, Montreal etc. employees have 90K per year on average.
320 employees for 9 years can cost will over 250 million. Thats just salaries.

I think that's the point. A conservative, extremely low ball estimate to prove just how badly a flop it is. It's guaranteed they spent over 200 Million in the last 8 years. They'd need BG3 levels of sales to break even.

If 3 million copies were sold then it made 180 million. The average salary in Alberta around 77k CAD. That is equal to around 55k USD. 55k + 320 employees is 17.6 million in labor costs alone. The game was developed over 10 years making the cost of labor 176 million dollars. That is likely a lowball number too since obviously higher level employees are making six figures and lower level employees likely below the Alberta average salary. Overall, I am likely giving a conservative estimate. So, they likely need 3 million or more sales just to cover their labor costs and this doesn't include any of the other costs of the business including marketing. It is very likely that this game cost over 300 million across ten years, especially considering that they had to scrap it and rebuild it two times. It likely needs to sell 5 million units to break even and breaking even isn't enough ROI for EA with a project that took this long.

They could technically make a profit since the Canadian government partially funds these kinds of projects to incentize tech companies to do business and grow at the expense of the taxpayers.

Guys. I genuinely don't care enough to get into essay wars. We all agree it's a flop, so why are we arguing?

The only reason EA might not scrap them is because Mass Effect is now in production. But even then, with this game being as big of a flop as it is, it's more than likely they'll cut ties and move the game to a new studio.

You do know "70k concurrent players" =/ "70k buyers only"?

Mental exercise

So true xirster

But I am not arguing with you. I am agreeing with you and expanding on what you are saying. If you think a single paragraph of napkin math is arguing you're in for a difficult life.

If it hits 500k by saturday night its a banger.

If it hits 150k by saturday night it might break even or even be slightly profitable.

If it stagnates at 85k or even 100k its potentially a loss.

You have to factor in console retards.

2.8 mil after steam cut but consoles prob have alot like 2 mil
still a flop

steam also take the huge cut and also tax from 60$ game on top of what ever software tool subscription their use to make game

see
You lost.

It’s hitting 750k sunday

Unironically most console players don't buy new games at all. This came out in the Sony vs Microsoft stuff over ABK that the majority of Sony's revenue comes from Fortnite, CoD, FIFA, 2K, and Madden. Console players don't buy vidya like they used to. PC gamers are actually the biggest buyers of vidya.

Oh yes, I didn't include that because I was trying to give them as much credit as possible. Obviously they're not actually making $60 from each sale so they need to sell a shitload of copies.

The game hasn't even been out for 24 hours.
Lets wait until after Christmas (or until EA/Bioware say something, whatever is first) before we start claiming what bombed or not, because all we have are simply guesses and estimates.

By using your brain to critically think you can actually deduce what is going to happen before it actually happens!

Not only that but it's a holiday night and many people are out and about.

It's going to peak 150k at minimum. It's going to sell 1.5 million minimum. It's not a total crapshoot like a lot of other shitty games.

this is fortnite/battle loyal generation gamer
PC and phone
if pc didnt do well they can forget about the console, if they think console has more gamer then you wouldnt be see the last of us on steam

Yeah. It was recently reported that companies like Capcom are making more profit from the PC this year and last year than they did with the consoles, combined. Expect companies to start focusing more on PC releases within the next few years.

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If they don't get up to 150k by Saturday and Sunday.

Then it's a flop. Hell, 150k is still fucking awful given development time and money invested. And more than likely still a flop.

(if anyone has a source that tracks any given game's 30 day sales figure, I'll happily rejigger this)
Here's my amateurish extrapolation, if we look at the ratio of these game's highest concurrent player count to reported copies sold worldwide.

Space Marine 2: 225k-4.5mil
RE4 Remake: 168k-8mil
Dragon Dogma 2: 228k-3mil
DBZ Sparking Zero: 122k-3mil
Metaphor: 85k-1mil
Manor Lords: 173k-2mil
Baldur's Gate 3: 875k-15mil

With Veilguard's present highest concurrent count, the game will sell between 811k-3.45 mil copies across all platforms with discounts accounted for. Make of that what you will.

It's actually a return to form

more like return to grave

Huge distribution discrepancies. Without considerably more data, I can't make an educated guess at their sales given their current numbers.
I'd also like to wait until Saturday night and Sunday to give a proper guess.
That being said, even your extremely generous estimate is a flop. They'd need 5 Million sales.

1.5m

good luck spinning that as a good thing in front of EA execs

I didn't read a single word. I just saw a wall of text and assumed.

damn u guys are stupid
player count is not sales
steam is not the only platform
a video game dev doesn't make minimum wage
a game doesn't have 300 devs at all times, especially not in pre-production
some people pay for ea's version of game pass which doesn't count towards sales but still gives them money regardless of how many games they release

It's only a regular trainwreck instead of an all time concord level flop. Bully for you bioware

anon is retarded

many such cases

player count is not sales

We know, we've been over that already.

steam is not the only platform

We know, we've been over that already.

a video game dev doesn't make minimum wage

We know, and that's why it's even worse than it appears.

lots of people buy the game and never play it

holy fucking cope. it's not a steam sale where people buy cheap games and never touch them, it's a brand new $60 AAA game on launch day, nobody is fucking buying it to not play it, faggot

at least half the people in this thread think 70k people bought the game
if you're that stupid i'd rather have troons making games than you

this is what will happen every single time without exception when you cater to tumblr. I'd say take your lesson, but I know you won't. 8ch won.

i don't wanna say im stupid or anything because i will play this game eventually
i only launched to see the graphics

No they don't. We've already been over this. Read the thread properly this time. The point of the OP was to give a conservative lowball estimate to prove how bad things are for Bioware.

See;
You've already been proven wrong before you even posted.

A return to form… return to form… return to form… return to form

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we know that you deplorable tattooed faggot. Its still a flop.

thats an outlier though, im the same. I bought DD2 at 70$ and only launched it.

How many other times have you done that? Sales and cheap indie games, or indies on sale, yeah makes 100% sense. High priced "AAA" shit? Fuck no.

Not everybody play it at launch, we will wait for the weekend to see the actual number

Not everybody is in the same timezone, hence playing at the same time

There's also consoles & other stores

I would assume there's more sales than that.
And by the end of the month, we can see the "1 million copies sold" announcement.
It's still a failure, don't get me wrong. But it's not concord level disaster.

anyone with an IQ above a hot summer day knew that. Concord was legendary and a massive fucking outlier, amazing, but an outlier.

You're right, it's not a concord level failure. But it's still a huge failure.

They'd need 5 Million sales to break even

Yeah but don't forget concurrent =/= sales numbers.
Doesn't mean this game is doing gangbusters, it's just that we've seen discrepancies in the past where two games can have 60k concurrents at launch but one goes on to sell 10 million copies over its lifetime, the other struggles to sell 2 million.

I do think this game is a flop, I just don't see it being FOTM. I see positive streams on YouTube, so I assume that'll get it some more plays over the weekend... But I think sales will stop in two weeks.

Yeah but don't forget concurrent =/= sales numbers.

Already mentioned at the top of the thread. The current players number is only used for context.

Again, even if it sold 10 times as much, it's still a flop. It would need millions of sales. And this is EA we're talking about.

The money will run out eventually. Corporations got extremely fucking rich so they can make negative profit for decades until they finally have to admit defeat. Too bad they tricked liberals by being woke and LGBT so they would worship businesses, otherwise every citizen would be anti-government and anti-corpo like back in the day and we would prevent them from being so rich in the first place.

based fellow blast haver!

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The 1% movement is in my opinion, when the government or corporate agents tested an experiment to destroy a movement from the inside with social politics.

Amazon have been doing this for years.

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The 70k wS astroturfed by bots. It was exactly like a view bot. It hit 70k exactly then hovered there a bit then started to drop like a stone. 100000% game was botted on steam

yeah, retards follow numbers, spend money to make it.

YOU'LL DIE CHUD
YOU
DIE
FROM DEI
YOU'RE BEING REPLACED
WE ARE THE DUST BORN
WE ARE THE NEW PORN

I don't think anyone actually cares about the number of players at once

trannies do.

NOW YOU DO WHAT THEY TOLD YA

canada again

Ok, real talk time.
How many of these extremely DEI-infested games are coming out of canada somewhere? Because it seems like a lot of them.

didn't they give the game away for free with GPUs?

also for all the "steam isn't the only platform" copers, check the ps5 sales, they're not doing so hot there either

ye but lets be real how many people bought a new gpu in the diy sector and got this specific game out of it. it may contribute to player count but not by much.

It’s basically a game from 2015 with some updated visuals, which begs the question. What the fuck were they even doing for 9 years to end up with 1000 names in the credits?
Even if you look at the credits. All of the titles are extremely vague. Lots of specialists and managers and “technical developers”. They even obfuscated what exactly the indian outsourcing was responsible for.