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Fallout 3 Ships 4.7 Million Units In One Week
by David Jenkins [PC, Console/PC]
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November 6, 2008
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Bethesda Softworks’ critically acclaimed Fallout 3 has seen 4.7 million units shipped worldwide in its first week, representing potential revenues of more than $300 million.
Launched in North America on October 28th -- with releases in the UK, mainland Europe, and Australia following shortly afterward -- Fallout 3 is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The title is also slated for release in Japan on December 4th.
This success came despite reports that the game had been pirated three weeks before its official launch.
Fallout 3 has already topped the combined UK sales chart and is expected to feature prominently in monthly NPD sales charts for the U.S.
The post-apocalyptic action role-playing game saw midnight store openings at over 2,000 retailers in North America alongside its launch. In the UK, the game outsold all previous entries in the franchise combined in its first two days on sales.
Previously a primarily PC-only franchise, the original titles in the series were developed by the now defunct Black Isle Studios, and published by Interplay.
Bethesda acquired the rights to the franchise in 2007, but confusion still remains over whether Interplay will continue with its proposed MMO title set in the same fictional universe.
As required under the terms of the contract (if not amended since then), Interplay is required to have started full development on Fallout Online with $30 million in funding by April 2009, or the firm will forfeit the rights to Bethesda.
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http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20567
New franchises don't always have the benefit of tremendous consumer faith behind them, so I can understand Ubisoft's paranoia to some degree.
That being said, on the PC front there's such a high barrier to entry to play the latest games that I think there's a feeling of being cheated since keeping a PC sufficiently upgraded to play the latest games generally results in more headaches and cost for the player.
They may think to themselves, 'I just paid $1500 on a new rig and spent 10 hours setting it up, why should I have to pay another $50 to play a game that isn't absolutely guaranteed to run well on my setup?' Until the PC gaming hardware industry quits it's obsession with the endless arms race of graphics cards, there will never be an progress toward a truely reliable standard.
Rather, Bethesda's done an excellent job of seeding the launch... blog entries about the game's environment and combat, regular videos to whet the appetite but without giving the game away. I'd call it a masterpiece of marketing as much as anything else.
How many copies did a successful game sell back then? I don't know the numbers, and I might be wrong, but I guess it was a bit less - and I'm not saying Fallout sold well by that time's standards. The fact is: Fallout has been kept alive by its fans and it is regarded as one of the best games in the RPG genre. Those fans are the kind of people who will tell the friends: "don't play anything else, play THIS". If the franchise was irrelevant, as you imply, Bethesda would not have bought it.
Anyway, I do think Bethesda did a great job marketing Fallout 3, and that is, in my opinion, the main reason it sold so well. The content released online did its job. Congratulations to all the people that worked on the game.