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~1.5 months in, how much do you think Horizon: Forbidden West's performance was impacted by its proximity to Elden Ring?

Was Horizon: Forbidden West impacted by proximity to Elden Ring?

  • Horizon did better than it would have because of Elden Ring

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    110

Phantom Thief

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MY FIRST AND FOREMOST REQUEST TO EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD IS TO PLEASE BE CIVIL.
We are a community that thrives on data-driven discussions; the ultimate goal of discussions on this forum should be to keep our personal biases and preferences out of our analyses. I understand that, for various reasons, the topic on hand may be a bit of a sensitive point for several posters, and while I empathize with the sentiment, I can only request and hope that everyone will put personal proclivities aside as you approach this discussion.

Now with that out of the way...

Horizon: Forbidden West debuted well enough, but as the weeks and months are passing and more data is coming in, it is starting to seem as though it has been unable to maintain legs much. The obvious answer, of course, is that sales of Forbidden West have a natural cap on them placed by the number of PS5 consoles on the market (as, in spite of the existence of a PS4 SKU, the game was marketed as a PS5 tech showcase, and much like other Sony first party games, emphasizes fidelity and graphics as a big part of its appeal). However, my question now is whether or not the proximity of its release to Elden Ring had any direct impact on the immediate sales performance of the game.

Forbidden West isn't the first time the series the series has seen a new release next to another bigger game that hogged the limelight; the original game, Zero Dawn, launched just days before Breath of the Wild did. Breath of the Wild proceeded to dominate discourse and suck out all the oxygen in the room. However, Horizon was able to hold its own regardless. There were many reasons for this - primarily, Horizon and Zelda were both on totally different systems, and even for PS4 owners who wanted to play Zelda, the proposition was to spend a few hundred dollars on a brand new console with at-the-time not much else, and suffering from several launch shortages, to play one game (or to hunt down a Wii U, but we know that this is minuscule enough to be dismissed as a factor for consideration). The difference in ecosystems let Horizon put up a decent upfront performance, that then proceeded to gain long term legs thanks to some extremely aggressive bundling and price cuts on Sony's part. Finally, the PC release ended up giving it the final push, for the game to end up at 20 million units sold all said and done. An enormously impressive performance for a brand new IP.

Forbidden West similarly launched right next to Elden Ring - however, in this case, the overlap appears to have been significantly greater, since both games are available on the same system this time (in addition to the PC and Xbox versions Elden Ring has to boot). This means that PS5 owners, new and existing ones alike, had the option of either spending $70 or equivalent on Horizon, or less money (depending on the region, the pricing for Elden Ring could be substantially lower than for Horizon) for a game that was significantly better reviewed, and completely dominating zeitgeist. Horizon had a great start - it was the top selling game on PlayStation in February's NPD charts (though overall it lost to Elden Ring), and had a reasonably good launch performance in the UK charts as well; its performance in other places, such as Japan and certain European markets, appears to have been lower than Zero Dawn's at launch, but all considered, given the context, the launch was certainly a good start for the game.

However, subsequent metrics are less favourable. Across the world, Horizon seems to have entirely fallen off the charts, even as Elden Ring continues to hold its own. Horizon is not really charting even in Sony stronghold territories such as the UK (even with digital taken into account). On Sony's own reported digital sales charts for March, Elden Ring held on to #1 (or #3 in Europe) on both PS4 and PS5, while Horizon was down to #10, implying that even within the PS user base, Elden Ring is a much more attractive and sought after game - even for current and exiting PS5 owners specifically, who are the ideal target market for a tech showcase Sony first party flagship game.

So, with that entire essay out of the way, my question is simple - was Horizon: Forbidden West hurt by its proximity to Elden Ring's release date? If so, how much?
 
I can't estimate how much it was impacted/hurt by ER but the proximity certainly influenced me.

If it released even one week earlier I probably would've bought it but ER was more important and it feels like Horizon only had one week of news/reviews/hype so now I'll wait for a sale.
 
Timing was certainly a bad factor for Horizon. At the end of the day Horizon is a good game that Sony will bundle and discount for a long time, so I wouldnt be worried about sales numbers too much.
 
I think it's not fair to compare Elden Ring performance versus Horizon Forbidden West , Elden Ring shipped 12M in two weeks the original Horizon Zero Dawn game shipped 2.6M in the same time-frame. From the sources we have it seems like it has performed slightly better worldwide (the information we have is limited though this could change) than the original release,with the exception of Japan at least in retail,and the version SKU has been the PS5 one in most places where we have this information ,bar again in Japan case, so more revenue has been generated compared to the original. I think that we can say it has been good at least in launch even if more growth could be expected I think from Sony new shiny IP at least at launch.

Now when it comes to legs I think at this point the legs have been affected by Elden Ring just due to the fact that most discussion and recommendations for new owners when it comes to Open World games has been and will be at least for a couple of months Elden Ring over Horizon, but I think than once the Elden Ring hype calms down and Horizon gets bundles/price cuts and other different promotions by Sony it will get some nice legs , but I don't think this time it's reaching 20 million due to the fact that this generation it seems Sony has been more conservative with price cuts than in the PS4 one.
 
I think it's not fair to compare Elden Ring performance versus Horizon Forbidden West , Elden Ring shipped 12M in two weeks the original Horizon Zero Dawn game shipped 2.6M in the same time-frame. From the sources we have it seems like it has performed slightly better worldwide (the information we have is limited though this could change) than the original release,with the exception of Japan at least in retail,and the version SKU has been the PS5 one in most places where we have this information ,bar again in Japan case, so more revenue has been generated compared to the original. I think that we can say it has been good at least in launch even if more growth could be expected I think from Sony new shiny IP at least at launch.

Now when it comes to legs I think at this point the legs have been affected by Elden Ring just due to the fact that most discussion and recommendations for new owners when it comes to Open World games has been and will be at least for a couple of months Elden Ring over Horizon, but I think than once the Elden Ring hype calms down and Horizon gets bundles/price cuts and other different promotions by Sony it will get some nice legs , but I don't think this time it's reaching 20 million due to the fact that this generation it seems Sony has been more conservative with price cuts than in the PS4 one.
You think it has done better than the first one?

I think Mat Piscatella would've hinted it on his tweets. He loves making these types of comparisons.
 
I think it'd be silly to say ER had zero effect on HFW, but at the same time I remember a lot of feedback from the original Hzd settled around the range of mid. Ish.

Some loved it, some disliked it. Others seemed to go meh.

Not an analyst but I recall seeing more meh reactions than anything. But those who loved it, really loved it.

I think HFW is more a victim of Sony than ER tbh.

Sony has conditioned its userbase to expect aggressive pricing and that might be what they're waiting for.

You can't sell me a $10 burger and then next time you show up try to sell me the new n improved burger for $65.

It's just a burger man. I'll wait.
 
I'm sure it had *some* effect because a lot of people can't afford two full-price games in a month, but I also don't think it would have done that much better at launch anyway. Relatively speaking, other than Elden Ring, Jan-Apr has been a pretty low-competition period (outside of Arceus, but that's on Switch and probably has a pretty different target audience), and both games have been out a couple of months by now. I think anyone who has a budget of like one game a month and was just choosing between those two games would probably have gotten them both already.

Keep in mind that Zero Dawn apparently had a pretty steep decline in its second month, too (on both PSN and NPD). There's just not a lot of evidence that there's a large group of people ready to pay full price to grab a Horizon game on day one. However, I've seen Forbidden West bump back up the charts in Europe a few times whenever more PS5s get stock, and it seems to be doing very well in Germany, so I don't think FW is doing worse than ZD (at least not in most countries), or has completely fallen off the radar or anything. I think it's just the sort of game that will sell well over time and respond strongly to price drops, so as other people have noted a lot of its performance from here depends on how aggressively Sony is willing to bundle/price drop it this generation (and also when it gets a PC port).
 
HFW and Elden Ring are in direct competition. For all intents and purposes, they are extremely similar games when it comes to desired audience. Elden Ring is better, fresher and cheaper. That is just a really powerful combination.

I've no doubt that if Elden Ring hadn't come out, PS5 owners in particular would be viewing Horizon more as a hot item and it would be holding a lot better. Its going to go up and down with PS5 stock, and PS5 stock has been bad this quarter, so that certainly harms it. But we can see how much better Elden Ring is holding on PS5 vs Horizon from various charts.

I think there's just no excitement around HFW, no reason to see it now. In times where people are struggling financially more and more, I don't think many people just getting one game so far this year would have chosen HFW to be that game. Its a game we've all seen before. Now, don't get me wrong, I think HFW is an excellent game but its just so by the book, designed by committee as some people call it. Everything unique about it is the same as the first game (the setting and the robo dinos), the only improvements (for my tastes) are making it a better open world RPG, akin to Witcher 3, which again we've seen dozens of time before and that doesn't play into the first game's strengths. It really seems like with HFW they just spent 5 years trying to make it more mainstream, more generic, more like a Skyrim or TW3 to try and tap in to that kind of success. So a game coming out a week later which is basically the opposite of this - its so fresh and got so much creativity - is awful timing for Horizon.

Basically, there's no real rush to get Horizon Zero Dawn RPG-ified with some improved graphics, you can wait for a sale on that, or just not even bother. Elden Ring though, well ... Elden Ring. It deserves the attention, its incredible and its quite different.
 
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It definitely has been impacted in some way. Pretty much all discourse I've seen around the game has been a comparision with Elden Ring or talks about sales or just something negative.
Elden Ring just completely stole all attention away from it, to the point that the game isn't mentioned anywhere. any article I see now about it is about a software update.
And personally, FW doesn't seem like a particularly appealing product on it's own. I've yet to see anything about the game that makes me go "wow I must play this". It's just more Horizon. And it's just more of the same open world formula that we had for a decade but in a post BOTW world. None of those are enough. The robot dinosaurs in a post apocalyptic world concept, probably the biggest draw to ZD, has lost it's novelty and the ubisoft formula OW isn't appealing anymore.
There's nothing that would make me as a consumer go with it over Elden ring, a game praised as one of the best ever and uses the BOTW formula, besides prettier graphics or if I absolutely loved ZD.

Also Horizon doesn't seem to be that strong of an IP. It reached 7.8M in a year yes, but with bundles (7 just in 2017, according to Bodokoh in the PSN downloads thead). And it reached 20M after 5 years with 16 bundles, a ton of discounts and a PC release. without those, I doubt it could reach 10M on it's own. It's a series that you get as an extra game because it comes with the game you actually want or it's with the console.
Forbidden West will do well, but I don't expect it do do as good as ZD
 
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We need to wait until March NPD numbers come around before we can definitively say if there was any real impact. For a reminder on Zero Dawn's NPD performance,

March 2017 (Launch month but no digital) - 4th, PS4 2nd
April 2017 (Now including Digital) - 12th, PS4 4th
May 2017 - 12th, PS4 5th
June 2017 - 10th, PS4 5th
July 2017 - PS4 7th, PS4 7th
...
Dec 2017 (first reappearance) - PS4 10th
2017 overall - out of Top 10 (but was 10 on the Nov 2017 YTD)
...
June 2018 - PS4 10
July 2018 - PS4 9
August 2018 - PS4 6

There was no reappearance beyond this
 
Excellent OP @Phantom Thief that set up some really good answers so far.

Being one week apart was always a dangerous situation. They are both Open-world games, just like in 2017, but this time Elden Ring releases on the same platforms than Horizon. The fact that Elden Ring managed to reach that stellar 95+ MC/OC score and break though the mainstream was the final blow.

It was not the only reason behind HFW performance. The low PS5 supply coupled with Sony shying away from promoting the PS4 version is another one. We can also mention that most of HZD sales were done at a discount and that audience is either not on PS5 yet or willing to wait for a similar discount in the future.

As a sequel to a successful new IP, HFW initial performance should have been stronger than 5 years ago. Elden Ring competion, low PS5 availability and the "wait for discount" mentality is responsible for the game's weaker legs than expected.
 
Excellent OP @Phantom Thief that set up some really good answers so far.

Being one week apart was always a dangerous situation. They are both Open-world games, just like in 2017, but this time Elden Ring releases on the same platforms than Horizon. The fact that Elden Ring managed to reach that stellar 95+ MC/OC score and break though the mainstream was the final blow.

It was not the only reason behind HFW performance. The low PS5 supply coupled with Sony shying away from promoting the PS4 version is another one. We can also mention that most of HZD sales were done at a discount and that audience is either not on PS5 yet or willing to wait for a similar discount in the future.

As a sequel to a successful new IP, HFW initial performance should have been stronger than 5 years ago. Elden Ring competion, low PS5 availability and the "wait for discount" mentality is responsible for the game's weaker legs than expected.
It's going to be interesting to see how Sony battles that mentality this gen. And if fans,actually buy the game, or would they be content with buying something else.
 
For me I think its opening was not affected and showed that Horizon had not really built an audience as expected. Its sales are mostly from pack ins as a franchise. Developer should move onto something else imo.
 
While I understand the sentiment in the OP, its hard to keep out personal biases when Sony tried to renege on a free upgrade then kept the higher PS5 price point. Consumer rights groups should be all over Sony like a bad rash. It's also very telling how little research the public does when so many people are still buying the PS5 version.

Most of the issues have already been covered but its worth pointing out The Frozen Wilds expansion was released in November 2017 with a Complete Edition in December. Throw in the fact that it was ported to PC (with the sequel hinted at in the Nvidia leak) meaning people have every reason to wait.
 
I waiting for a discount in the game, the first one with dlc only cost 10 usd in the currency of my country, i think is going to get heavy discounts here
 
I certainly didn't expect Elden Ring to outsell Horizon on the PS5. I do believe though that Horizon will have good legs and that people will keep buying it in the coming months, once they're done with playing Elden Ring.
 
For me I think its opening was not affected and showed that Horizon had not really built an audience as expected. Its sales are mostly from pack ins as a franchise. Developer should move onto something else imo.

I agree with the gist of this post but we are going to thankfully get a third. I like the franchise and have beaten both games. However, this game, just like so many others from the PS4 era from Sony are going to find themselves kneecapped in the sales number department. Why? There isn't a need to bundle if Sony can't even get enough consoles to sell right now. Also, as stated by the post I'm quoting, the original had a Olympic level sprint to cheap prices.

The PS5 strategy that Sony is employing is already bearing out. The lowest Demon Soul's on the PS5 has been to date is $40, Returnal and Ratchet & Clank's lowest is $50. The evergreens that I believe Sony has is Spider-Man and God of War. Gran Turismo perhaps. The lowest Breath of the Wild has been is $40 and it's been 5 years now. That's what Sony is trying to to and no one but Nintendo truly has that kind of staying power with the majority of their franchises.
 
For me I think its opening was not affected and showed that Horizon had not really built an audience as expected. Its sales are mostly from pack ins as a franchise. Developer should move onto something else imo.

These are my thoughts exactly. You can't create an audience by forcing into the hand of everyone your game, it seems.
 
These are my thoughts exactly. You can't create an audience by forcing into the hand of everyone your game, it seems.
It's similar to what happened with Crash and seemingly also Ratchet. If you condition your audience to see your product as a budget release/stocking filler, then you can't be surprised when they don't respond as enthusiastically to the new premium $60/70 one.
 
Elden Ring has all the mindshare. Even though I played the original Horizon, and enjoyed it enough (after waiting 2 years), I don't even think about Forbidden West. And I've never played a Soul's game before Elden Ring (which I doubt I will ever finish).

Doesn't help that I don't have a PS5, but I have less than zero desire to get one just for a game like Horizon.

It's literally the Breath of the Wild situation again down to a T.
 
Elden Ring has all the mindshare. Even though I played the original Horizon, and enjoyed it enough (after waiting 2 years), I don't even think about Forbidden West. And I've never played a Soul's game before Elden Ring (which I doubt I will ever finish).

Doesn't help that I don't have a PS5, but I have less than zero desire to get one just for a game like Horizon.

It's literally the Breath of the Wild situation again down to a T.
Difference is that BOTW and Horizon were on 2 different systems, so horizon still had some breathing room and was THE playstation game of 2017.
But Elden Ring now is on the same system, so no chance to breathe.
 
@Phantom Thief , Great OP as always!

No doubt that Horizon saw some of it's early legs cut off by Elden Ring. It came out a week before a highly anticipated game with a 95 meta critic. ER sucked a ton of buzz away from H:FW. There has been plenty of comparisons across the internet, similar to when Zero Dawn and Zelda: BOTW launched back in 2017. I'm sure Horizon will be fine. It will still be selling copies for years and years. It did lose some early sales though.

I love Horizon. It is easily a top 3 favorite Sony franchise for me at the moment, but that franchise is cursed when it comes to game release timing.

I think it'd be silly to say ER had zero effect on HFW, but at the same time I remember a lot of feedback from the original Hzd settled around the range of mid. Ish.

Some loved it, some disliked it. Others seemed to go meh.

Not an analyst but I recall seeing more meh reactions than anything. But those who loved it, really loved it.

I think HFW is more a victim of Sony than ER tbh.

Sony has conditioned its userbase to expect aggressive pricing and that might be what they're waiting for.

You can't sell me a $10 burger and then next time you show up try to sell me the new n improved burger for $65.

It's just a burger man. I'll wait.

I'd like to address the bolded part. You are absolutely right that Sony in the past has shown their willingness to drop their prices and get to "Greatest Hits" sooner than later. For example, God of War PS4 was added to the Greatest Hits lineup barely 18 months after release. And since then, GOW and others have been routinely on sale for $10. For a lot of the first party PS4 games, unless you were dying to play it at launch, you could get it for $10~20 within two years of release. In many cases, it would make sense to wait. I myself have been patient with Sony games not made by Naughty Dog in the past.

From what I have seen so far, Sony has been trying to flip that script with PS5. There was the much debated $70 threshold that Sony made for their games. However, I've noticed that Sony seems to be changing the scale of price drops on their games to be more gradual. Launch games from 18 months ago like Sackboy, Miles Morales, and Demon's Souls have not dropped below $30, and usually stay close to MSRP. Returnal and Rachet are coming up on their one year anniversaries, but they seem to be holding around $40. Same with the ports of Ghost and Death Stranding.

Now this may very well be an over-reaction on my end. A lot of times, early gen games tend to hold their pricing better than games that come later on. Also, Sony tends to wait a few years to bring back the "Greatest Hits" banner. From my POV, Sony is trying to emulate Nintendo's approach of their first party games staying up in pricing for longer with smaller sales in between. They want to create that "value difference" when you are investing in a PlayStation Studios game. I wouldn't be completely shocked if Sony either skipped the Greatest Hits marketing push, or did it with a price higher than $20 per game.

I expect Horizon: Forbidden West to reach that $10 mark eventually, but it might be a few years out at least.
 
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Yeah I think so. But I also feel we (well I didn't but I'm talking generally) had inflated expectations for it, considering the announcement of the first game selling 20 million copies came around the same time as the sequel released IIRC. But that was 20 million copies over nearly 5 years, a pretty significant port to PC (wasn't it one of the first SIE to be released on Steam?) and lots of discounts and bundles. From what I could tell people were expecting the series to go from strength to strength and for the sequel to also sell 20 million copies, maybe even faster and without the need for a Steam version necessarily. If it ever does sell that amount it looks like it'll need another 5 years at the rate it's currently selling.
 
The thing is the first horizon struck thunder in a bottle.
Fat active userbase, no real competition, drew many people in, but outside the outstanding story it could have been a far cry primal reskin.
HFW due to more competition ( both game and console wise ) will take its time but will end up doing similar when its all said and done. Its Nintendo's blue ocean competitor really
 
The thing is the first horizon struck thunder in a bottle.
Fat active userbase, no real competition, drew many people in, but outside the outstanding story it could have been a far cry primal reskin.
HFW due to more competition ( both game and console wise ) will take its time but will end up doing similar when its all said and done. Its Nintendo's blue ocean competitor really
HZD had competition.

 
The thing is the first horizon struck thunder in a bottle.
Fat active userbase, no real competition, drew many people in, but outside the outstanding story it could have been a far cry primal reskin.
HFW due to more competition ( both game and console wise ) will take its time but will end up doing similar when its all said and done. Its Nintendo's blue ocean competitor really
Wasn't the consensus on the story of ZD that it was kinda Meh to okay?
And ZD reached those numbers thanks to heavy bundling and discounts since year one. Without those I find it hard that it would have reached those numbers. And with Sony now seemingly abandoning the idea of heavy discounts after a few months and the game being forgotten because of Elden ring, it will probably be impossible for FW to reach the same numbers.
 
Wasn't the consensus on the story of ZD that it was kinda Meh to okay?

I don't know about consensus, but from what I noticed people really liked uncovering what happened in the past but didn't care too much about what was happening in the present. That was my experience as well.
 
Wasn't the consensus on the story of ZD that it was kinda Meh to okay?
And ZD reached those numbers thanks to heavy bundling and discounts since year one. Without those I find it hard that it would have reached those numbers. And with Sony now seemingly abandoning the idea of heavy discounts after a few months and the game being forgotten because of Elden ring, it will probably be impossible for FW to reach the same numbers.
ZD's lore and backstory is incredible

Present day stuff is fairly meh (but still cool)

Actually a bit like BOTW (although significantly more pronounced and better than that game when it comes to storytelling lol)
 
As an analogy, I just want to say that I am very fond of the movie Speed Racer. However, in the US it released 1 week after a movie called Iron Man, you know the movie that launched the entire MCU. I have encountered several people who do not like Speed Racer, so I don't think it was ever going to be a mega success even with the best launch timing. However, I think they could have grossed $20-$30 million more if they had picked a better release date. I also kind of realize that this was an honest mistake on the part of the people behind Speed Racer, because neither Iron Man nor the MCU was known to be such a huge factor at the time.

So, I think HFW probably would have sold an extra 1-2m copies, lifetime, if they had picked a better release date. Their main problem is they released 1 week before a game that is clearly a better game, and it was an honest mistake because this is From Software's first open world game. HFW was not going to outsell Elden Ring no matter when the game launched, but I think they could have had better sales for their game if they had picked another date.
 
I doubt ER will have a significant impact on the lifetime sales, whoever is interested in the franchise will get the game sooner or later. It definitely had a impact at launch though, and potential full-price sales will instead turn into discounted sales at a later date. This would already be the case for a lot of people due to PS5 shortages but Elden Ring made the scenario even worse.
 
??
Any game sold at any price point means an interaction with an IP
Not when the price is $0.00 because the game came in a bundle. For many of the bundles that it was included in, it was not the premier game either. I say that this is a pyrrhic victory because if Sony sells 20 million of a game but the ASP is $20.00, it's not opportune. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has never been sold for less than $35.00. That is what Sony is aspiring to this generation. They are trying to shape a narrative around their games, that they are worth the $70. How does giving it away in a bundle or selling it under a PS Hit line reinforce that notion? They are trying to hold on that pricing as long as possible.
 
Not when the price is $0.00 because the game came in a bundle. For many of the bundles that it was included in, it was not the premier game either. I say that this is a pyrrhic victory because if Sony sells 20 million of a game but the ASP is $20.00, it's not opportune. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has never been sold for less than $35.00. That is what Sony is aspiring to this generation. They are trying to shape a narrative around their games, that they are worth the $70. How does giving it away in a bundle or selling it under a PS Hit line reinforce that notion? They are trying to hold on that pricing as long as possible.
because Sony looks at the growth of the potential IP and not the single game like fans usually do
 
because Sony looks at the growth of the potential IP and not the single game like fans usually do
The thing is, when speaking of a premium pricing strategy for your portfolio, growth is contingent on how much people value your IP to begin with. If Horizon’s valuation by the general 20 million folks who bought it was closer to that of a Ubisoft game - which also sell tens of millions at heavily discounted prices - then there’s no way to grow the IP by instantly charging premium prices for the next game.

Note two things- 1) I’m not saying that you can’t eventually graduate a lower valued (in this context specifically) IP to a more premium one, you can, but it has to be a gradiented process, you can’t jump from the bulk of the people buying your games at $20 to asking them to pay $70 for the next one. We have great evidence of this in the handheld market, where prices were SLOWLY built up over a two decade period from being half (or lower) than console game prices to now being equivalent
2) I’m not saying the whole “Horizon is valued less” thing is even true here. I’m saying IF that argument holds true (which it very well may not!) then the price strategy is absolutely an important consideration when planning growth of a series, you can’t just handwave it away.
 
I believed HFW launch clearly showed that while the 20m milestone of HZD was great in terms of reach, it doesn't mean that a big chunk of that audience will be there for the sequel's launch.

It is only a partial sign of IP strength.
 
The price will certainly be an important part of Sony’s first party sales this generation. A lot of their PS4 games such as Horizon reached their current sales numbers through bundling and discounts, so as Sony tries to raise prices this generation I wouldn’t be surprised if other games struggled to match their predecessors in pure software sold. If Sony intends to charge so much for games and maintain higher prices then I wouldn’t expect them to match the sales of their predecessors, even if it could result in higher revenue.
 
The price will certainly be an important part of Sony’s first party sales this generation. A lot of their PS4 games such as Horizon reached their current sales numbers through bundling and discounts, so as Sony tries to raise prices this generation I wouldn’t be surprised if other games struggled to match their predecessors in pure software sold. If Sony intends to charge so much for games and maintain higher prices then I wouldn’t expect them to match the sales of their predecessors, even if it could result in higher revenue.
This is where I'm at with it, basically.
If they're not budging on discounts I expect to see significantly lower sales marks.
Which can be offset by the greater revenue achieved at higher price points.
 
Gross revenue from sales is only one piece of the puzzle. We know this, looking at recent discussions surrounding Gamepass.

If the game draws people into the Playstation ecosystem and gets people spending money on the game's DLC and things within the broader ecosystem - 20 million at a low price of entry can definitely be gauged as a success.

The real question is how long will it take Sony to get enough Playstations on shelves to allow the sales to get that potentially high.
 
For what it’s worth, sales in the UK saw a pretty dramatic spike last week to coincide with new PS5 stock, so it seems like sales for it will be driven by new stock much like Miles, as many people may have initially supposed.
 
For what it’s worth, sales in the UK saw a pretty dramatic spike last week to coincide with new PS5 stock, so it seems like sales for it will be driven by new stock much like Miles, as many people may have initially supposed.

Isn't that caused by store bundles?
At least here in Canada, every time PS5 stock show's up it's a bundle. The game was always Spiderman, then Ratchet, and now bundles with Horizon and GT are the most common package.
 
Isn't that caused by store bundles?
At least here in Canada, every time PS5 stock show's up it's a bundle. The game was always Spiderman, then Ratchet, and now bundles with Horizon and GT are the most common package.
Yes but due to not being official bundles they count as units sold (really they are just stores forcing to buy an unit of a product) , It’s the same in France and Spain( and probably in most countries)
 
Isn't that caused by store bundles?

Some of it for sure.

Don't know how it is in UK, but here in Portugal there are quite a few different bundles depending on the retailer. This store for example had 19 bundles with Horizon/GT being in 7/8 of them.

But unlike the official bundles Sony did in the past with PS4 and a bunch of games, there's barely a discount in these ones for obvious reasons. Really sucks for the people who only care about getting a PS5, having to pay 200€+ on top of it is rough.
 
Selling 20 million with an ASP of under $20 is not really a success story with a game that originally retailed at 60/70. It's a pyrrhic victory at best.
I don't disagree -- I am sure they were hopeful for much better performance. Elden Ring has unquestionably affected it heavily, but it doesn't mean this game can't replicate the first's longterm sales since the first one did not rely on HUGE numbers out the gate.
 
I think it had an impact, how big or if it will be long lasting I don’t know but Elden Ring is just too good and the “difficulty”definitely didn’t have an impact on sales imo because I know a lot of people who are a bit more casual and only buy sports games and COD every year but are hooked on Elden Ring , I feel like it’s one of those generation defining open world games like Skyrim and Witcher 3.

That Mat Piscatella tweet describes me perfectly haha, I have barely played anything else since Elden Ring launched and I’ll be right there day one if there’s ever DLC for it, as for Horizon so far I just don’t think they’re that great and both launched around much better games, only that this time that much better game is also available on PlayStation, I bought HZD at launch and honestly didn’t get into it, I played it for around 10 hours the first few days and kept going back to see if I’d end up getting into it but never could, lost all interest and the trailer for FW didn’t excite me at all, they’re pretty games though.
 
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