Current and accurate Civ V sales figures?

FramedArchitect said:

As of a few weeks ago:

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/43507/sid-meiers-civilization-v/Global/

For comparison:

• CiV: 1.26 Million
• Civ IV: ~ 3.0 Million
• Civ III: ~ 2.0 Million

There was a huge fall off very early, with a bounce when they did some advertising in Oct. 2010, and another bounce from Christmas sales. 2011 sales dropped precipitously.

Expansion 1 (GnK) provided a good lift to sales last year, but this year's Expansion 2(BNW) has not had a similar effect.

Prediction: A poor second expansion will relegate this title to increasing obscurity. As a CiV modder, this has forced me to reconsider undertaking planned larger projects.

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Note: This is only retail hard copy versions of the game........it excludes digital sales. And I feel like Im in the majority as a person who has not bought a physical copy of CiV or any of its DLC/Xpacks, so purchases made by people like me aren't included in those figures.

I wasn't even aware that there is such thing as physical copy of G&K or BNW. After all, they are marketed as DLC.

player1 fanatic said:

I wasn't even aware that there is such thing as physical copy of G&K or BNW. After all, they are marketed as DLC.

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There aren't, as far as I know? That's just physical sales of CiV, retail, vanilla version. It's a massive underestimate, most estimate that the digital market is upwards of 90% in the PC realm these days.

player1 fanatic said:

I wasn't even aware that there is such thing as physical copy of G&K or BNW.

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Never say never...

http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Ci...qid=1384339495&sr=8-5&keywords=gods+and+kings

http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Ci...d=1384339369&sr=8-13&keywords=brave+new+world

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilizatio...qid=1384339315&sr=8-1&keywords=gods+and+kings

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sid-Meiers-...id=1384339335&sr=8-8&keywords=brave+new+world

http://www.amazon.co.jp/Civilizatio...qid=1384339196&sr=8-4&keywords=gods+and+kings

http://www.amazon.co.jp/Sid-Meiers-...id=1384339224&sr=8-5&keywords=brave+new+world

http://www.amazon.it/2K-Games-SWPC7...qid=1384339251&sr=8-6&keywords=gods+and+kings

http://www.amazon.it/Civilization-B...id=1384339279&sr=8-6&keywords=brave+new+world

http://www.amazon.de/Sid-Meiers-Civ...qid=1384338911&sr=1-1&keywords=gods+and+kings

http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=433224547&pf_rd_i=301128

http://www.amazon.fr/2K-Games-Civil...&qid=1384339094&sr=8-2&keywords=gods+and+king

http://www.amazon.fr/Sid-Meiers-Civ...id=1384339075&sr=8-2&keywords=brave+new+world

http://www.walmart.com/search/searc...vilization 5 brave new world&_tt=Civilization

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sid-Meier...bucket_id=irsbucketdefault&findingMethod=p13n

I knew I had seen these at Walmart too

Worth noting is that the physical copy of Civ requires Steam validation to run, so there's virtually no reason for anyone ever to buy the CD. I sincerely doubt that the majority of sales went to physical copies; even if physical/download sales are equal the sales figures still exceed Civ III by a rather large margin.

Looking at the figures for who is currently playing what on Steam, Civ V is sitting pretty at #3, beating out FPS juggernaut Counter Strike and "we just put out a new expansion" XCOM. These figures only show who's playing right now (if someone knows how to find figures for plays over, say, the last month I'd appreciate it) but they would seem to suggest that Civ V is plenty popular.

Arachnofiend said:

Worth noting is that the physical copy of Civ requires Steam validation to run, so there's virtually no reason for anyone ever to buy the CD. I sincerely doubt that the majority of sales went to physical copies; even if physical/download sales are equal the sales figures still exceed Civ III by a rather large margin.

Looking at the figures for who is currently playing what on Steam, Civ V is sitting pretty at #3, beating out FPS juggernaut Counter Strike and "we just put out a new expansion" XCOM. These figures only show who's playing right now (if someone knows how to find figures for plays over, say, the last month I'd appreciate it) but they would seem to suggest that Civ V is plenty popular.

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This is the primary reason I went with digital, in fact I don't remember buying a physical copy of any game for PC in a long long time.

Side Note: Good gravy why are so many people playing DOTA 2, I've never played it and don't plan on playing it, but how could that be better than Civ? LOL

Arachnofiend said:

I sincerely doubt that the majority of sales went to physical copies; even if physical/download sales are equal the sales figures still exceed Civ III by a rather large margin.

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Pointless and also unfair comparison. Both Civ III and Civ IV are still available and still beeing sold physically as well as digitally - and if one follows the above mentioned estimation that today 90% of all purchases are digital (which I seriously doubt, but anyway) you can asume there are also a lot of copies of Civ III and IV sold digitally - which then also have to be added to the physical sales figures given above.

I have physical copy of C5 vanilla because I bought it in preorder and at that time it was the best option available. I was considering buying GnK and BNW in box releases, however it would make me wait 2 more days to play the game and it was unacceptable!

The truth is, non-digital distribution is pretty much obsolete these days. If I were to install my game using only DVDs, I'd need to waste ~30 minutes on swapping discs and slowly copying files from them. Then it would take 15-20 minutes to update everything, even though some updates come with expansions. After that, I would still need to download some DLCs I own and install them as well. With Steam, I just press "install", wait several minutes and voila, the game is ready after ~1 more minute of installation.

If the game sold 1.26M box copies, then the overall sales must have been amazing. Firaxis deserves their fat paycheck for sure.

Arachnofiend said:

Worth noting is that the physical copy of Civ requires Steam validation to run, so there's virtually no reason for anyone ever to buy the CD.

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I bought Civ5 hard copy, because it would've taken up half my on-peak monthly limit at the time to download it (and probably half a day or so of waiting, too).

gps said:

Pointless and also unfair comparison. Both Civ III and Civ IV are still available and still beeing sold physically as well as digitally - and if one follows the above mentioned estimation that today 90% of all purchases are digital (which I seriously doubt, but anyway) you can asume there are also a lot of copies of Civ III and IV sold digitally - which then also have to be added to the physical sales figures given above.

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I would speculate that a higher proportion of Civ5 sales are digital than Civ4, which in turn would have a higher proportion than Civ3. Though the crucial word there is 'speculate'. Given we don't know, the numbers presented for hard copies sold are entirely meaningless.

Makavcio said:

The truth is, non-digital distribution is pretty much obsolete these days.

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Then I wonder why there constantly are huge stacks of shrink-wrapped boxed PC games in stores around the world whenever a new game "hits the shelves". I wonder what those id...s actully do with all that stuff nobody wants. Should have noticed by now they are beating a dead horse...
The protests Microsoft provoced when they announced their plans to turn XBOX ONE distribution into fully digital should be a clear indicator for how "obsolete" non-digital distribution actually is...

Civ V obviously sold more copies digitally than Civ IV, based on the simple fact that, in the period when Civ IV came out, the primary means of buying games was offline. Also, Civ IV copies sold online recently don't add much to the game's revenue, since they are incredibly cheap - in fact I think it was even offered for free in some events. Civ V and expansions were sold at full price online.

Another notable effect of digital sales is that a higher proportion goes to the developer than in the case of copies sold through stores. Stores take more money than Valve does and, on top of that, you have the production and transportation costs. Anyway, this is another thing to keep in mind: not all copies sold are equal; some bring more money than others.

It's indeed stupid that in this era of digital sales we know less about how much each game sold than in the previous period. But we do know less, because digital sales figures are rarely published.

While not knowing a figure, we can estimate that Civ V has been successful enough. This is proven by the support it received and the existence of BNW, which wouldn't have been made if the original game and Gods & Kings would have sold poorly. In fact the developers said that BNW was only made because G&K made more money than they expected. How much exactly... they didn't say.

The QC said:

Also, Civ IV copies sold online recently don't add much to the game's revenue, since they are incredibly cheap ...
Civ V and expansions were sold at full price online.

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Well, for Civ V GOTY I paid 5,99 Euros, for Gold Update I paid 2,50 Euros and for BNW I paid 7,99 or so pounds. Regular Steam prices for Civ IV are 19,99 Euros for Vanilla, 4,99 Euros for Warlords, 9,99 Euros for BTS and 19,99 Euros for Colonization - which from my point of view is absolutely not "incredibly cheap". Yes there are sales, but compared to the 6,99 Euros for Civ IV Ulimate Green Pepper Editon my local store generally wants, I find the regular Steam prices for Civ IV actually insultingly espensive. So it's not exactly like Civ IV is generally given away for free and does not produce any revenue, while they earn themselves stupid with Civ V...

sorry for necroposting (some people dont like it i dont know why)
almost 6 million copies of civ5 were sold on steam according to this

Well civilization 5has made it easy for later players that couldn't buy the game earlier at full price. Players buying the game late get a huge discount but miss out on earlier game play.

That's probably quite true; the Humble Bundle made Civ5 with G&K and BNW available for $15, and Civ4 Complete available for $1, and IIRC it sold over half a million copies. That would've been quite a significant boost to those numbers.