Imagine listening to retailers over customers.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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It’s anecdotal, but a lot of my friends got bg3 simply because everyone said it was such an amazing, well made game. Most of them never finished a run and said it’s good, but not for them. I actually think it’s not impossible that the genre really isn’t that popular and the game performed so well simply because most AAA games aren’t made with that level of passion and creativity anymore.
They bought it though, didn't they?
Yeah. Not because they were dying for a new crpg, but because they heard it was the highest quality game to come out in years. I don’t think most of them would buy a hypothetical BG4 and a few have already said they wouldn’t.
Honestly that's fine. Not every game is for everyone.
I bought Hollow Knight because everyone said it was amazing and it seemed exactly like the kind of game I would like. I bought it, played for several hours, but ultimately stopped because I wasn't having fun.
As a result I didn't buy Silksong. But... Silksong seems to be doing just fine.
For me Baldur's Gate I & II were the best games I played growing up. Divinity Original Sin I & II were the best games I'd played in recent years. I had high expectations for Baldur's Gate III and the game exceeded them.
Of course even I would be wary of a Baldur's Gate IV. I don't trust Hasbro to be able to make a quality game.
Even if I don’t have time to play them, I still find myself buying them.
stop listening to retailers and listen to consumers... fuksakes...
The problem is, there's no real good way to "listen to consumers" other than to ask retailers what is actually selling.
Online chatter is notoriously unreliable, not just in games, but in a lot of sectors. Car enthusiasts go on and on about what nostalgic car they want, but when auto manufacturers try to sell some version of that, there's a million excuses why they bought Generic SUV #472B instead. Music artists have millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram, but can't sell albums and have to cancel tours due to lack of ticket sales.
Also, at one time, it might actually be true that very few people wanted that style of game. Trends and preferences are constantly changing.
In the beginning of PC games it was the nerds buying the computers and games so 90% of the customers were nerds and they dictated what sold. For example, many different takes on D&D. Now it's such a mixed bag of what is considered a "gamer" so they have to make a variety.
Wasn’t Baldur’s Gate 3 a massive success? 15 million copies, well over half a billion in gross revenue. Kingdom Come:Deliverance II, Clair Obsure, and Elden Ring also come to mind. Heck, even the VR TTRPG Demeo was a success, all in the last 5 years. I don’t understand.
This article is about the big gap in similar games that occurred after the release of Icewind Dale 2 in 2002. And as the article says, it has nothing to do with their popularity among gamers, it was due to retailers throwing their weight around. There weren't as many good options for direct-to-consumer sales at that time, so you had to sell the game to retailers before you could sell it to customers.
Not sure how Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire sold, but i would love a new game in this series. I guess sadly not good enough to warrant a sequel :(
At least for now Obsidian announced an update which will introduce turn based mode to the first game, coming later this year: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/134573-patch-138087535-is-live/
Deadfire felt... just kinda bland and mediocre to me. In fairness I never played PoE 1 so maybe I wasn't fully invested in the world, but I kinda just got bored sometime around the halfway point of Deadfire and never finished it.
I mean... Avowed exists. Not quite the same genre but it does lean on and expand lore of the world a bit more.
I remember hearing about Neverwinter Nights a mere two days before release. Didn't have time to pre-order it and went to EB at my local mall to get it the day it came out and I was worried it would be sold out. Get there and there's just a huge pyramid of copies of the game right at the entrance.
People only didn't buy them back in the day because most people didn't have a PC. If they were available on a console at the time, I'm sure they would have sold a lot more.