CiV $ success?

[Sherlock]

Civ IV went on forever with add ons, gold packages, platinum packages. It was a real cash cow.

CiV, on the other hand, is 75% off at Steam all the time.

So I wonder how financially successful this latest version is? I know it's next to impossible to get accurate sales figures, but I always wonder.

 

[FeiLing]

I believe the majority of copies were sold at the release/during the first few months when it still was at full price. I'm positive that it was a huge success.

 

[Maniacal]

Civ5 has been in the top ten most played games on Steam since its release, so I would say it has been quite successful.

 

[Ozzy88]

To me Civ always seems like a game that has a really long tail. Unlike most games these days Civ sells well initially but then continues to sell consistently year after year, whereas most games sell well in the first month only to have sales dry up after that.

 

[PinkRose]

Plus CiV has DLC sales.
CIV didn't have those.

 

[Ranos]

They are probably trying to sell more copies of vanilla so they can get more people into the game so that those people will turn around and buy G&K when it comes out. More money in their pockets.

 

[cain3456]

Forever? Civ4 had only two expansions, like Civ3 before it. It had the obligatory bundling packages (I got Gold + BTS, for example) which I'm sure Civ5 will do. Perhaps you're thinking of the mods, but they are free (and a to all who work on them). Civ3 had even more mods, since the more technical the game, the harder it is to mod.

 

[docbud]

Civ V is one of the top ten downloads at the App Store (Macintosh)

(Or at least it was a few weeks ago).

 

[CivCube]

CiV, on the other hand, is 75% off at Steam all the time.

Somewhat misleading. Valve has found that game companies actually make hundreds % more in overall sales when their games are heavily reduced in price. They're constantly experimenting with that.

 

[Pisskop]

What is the profit margin on these sort of games?

 

[civ4lyfe]

What is the profit margin on these sort of games?

More than the developers would like us to know about.

 

[JakeIL7]

What is the profit margin on these sort of games?

Wrong question to ask really. Like a movie, there is a fixed cost to produce the movie. The better question to ask is how much revenue they have received versus the amount of money they spent to develop it. Yes, it is a subtle difference but since it costs them almost no money to sell one more copy (unlike, say, a car) it is important.

The best question to ask is: "is Firaxis making money as a whole?" because if they are not we will stop seeing Civ goodness

 

[TyBoy]

I would kind of guess that at this point hardly anyone would be dropping full game price on civ. Making it available on the cheap probably fights off piracy pretty well too.

Profit margin isn't really the right way to analyze intellectual property, since it's highly dependant on the marginal cost of selling one more game, which is very small (A blank DVD, a little cardboard, a little bandwidth, a little wear and tear on the steam servers, all adds up to almost nothing). For IP most of the cost ends up in the initial investment, which is mostly fixed by the time the thing has been released. In that situation the optimal price becomes almost entirely a function of what brings in the most gross income. It's somewhere between no sales at an absurd price and giving one to everybody for free. The sweet spot on that curve is one of those things business types worry about. Not that they know anything about it until they test it out other than that the curve exists. Bunch of quacks.

 

[Scars n Stripes]

But there is still a given profit margin for anything sold, so it seems a fair enough question based on copies sold vs. Firaxis' expenses.

Regardless, I hope they did well with it. I struggle to think of ANY product I use that gives so much bang for the buck. I have favorite bluray movies laying around that cost almost the same that I will NEVER see 400 hours of use out of!

 

[joncnunn]

I'm thinking that Firaxis gets the same amount of money from Steam for a given sell weather or not Steam has it "on sale" at the time.
Merchants normally buy the supplier around they time they take delivery of the product the agreed upon price and sell it at whatever price they'd like.

 

[Soronery]

I'm thinking that Firaxis gets the same amount of money from Steam for a given sell weather or not Steam has it "on sale" at the time.
Merchants normally buy the supplier around they time they take delivery of the product the agreed upon price and sell it at whatever price they'd like.

No. No one is supplying anything in this case.

 

[Maniacal]

Well they do supply serial/CD keys, digital distributors buy/receive a fixed number of them at a time (which is why they occasionally run out of them during sales (it doesn't take more than a day to get more though, unless its a weekend since they don't work weekends ).

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

Civ5 has been in the top ten most played games on Steam since its release, so I would say it has been quite successful.

This^

 

[headcase]

It's not like Civ 4 was $50 for years after its release. I got it with both add-ons for $15 well before Civ 5's release.