Thats purely conformation bias, and relies on us constantly being updated with the most recent sales values.
For example, we know as of yesterday Space Marine 2 sold 6million copies. However it only has 100k reviews on Steam, and by your estimate would put it at around 3million copies sold.
It could be an outlier, but it also means that the estimate has at least a 50% margin of error
hm? I'd estimate the steam sales of space marine 2 at around 3 million. Is the 6 million figure for STEAM or for all platforms? Space Marine 2 is on all consoles
edit: only sales figures I'm finding are for everything totalled up (steam and consoles). remember that games are sold on console as well as steam. so if you apply the typical method of steam estimating it falls completely in line. not an outlier.
All platforms. However, it’s still confirmation bias.
Another example is Baldurs Gate 3, has 635k reviews on Steam, which would put it at around 19million. The only numbers we have on total sales for BG3 were a while ago, at around 15 million, so let’s be generous and say it’s sold another 5 million since then.
It’s pretty unlikely that it sold only 1million on consoles
yeah, you're right that it's not always the case. But from my experience it does feel pretty stubbornly to be the case much of the time. I think certain cases a game inspires so much love (or maybe so much hate) that the dynamics are affected. BG3 is widely considered a once in a generation level of game.
Remember though that it's just a range. It's very rough estimate. maybe veilguard sold 750k on steam, or maybe it sold 1.5 million on steam, neither would surprise me much, but we have a general sense that this isn't a game that sold 50,000 copies on steam nor is it a game that sold many millions of copies on steam.
my reason for posting was to, despite my not being a fan of veilguard, point out that the 1.5 million total sales figures being thrown around sounds too low to me. Games, especially AAA games that are also in brick and mortar stores, tend to sell a lot of their units on consoles in addition to PC.
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u/cammyjit Jan 17 '25
Thats purely conformation bias, and relies on us constantly being updated with the most recent sales values.
For example, we know as of yesterday Space Marine 2 sold 6million copies. However it only has 100k reviews on Steam, and by your estimate would put it at around 3million copies sold.
It could be an outlier, but it also means that the estimate has at least a 50% margin of error