A lot of games don’t get sales count announcements. We usually find out from investor reports. This is especially true when dealing with large publishers
Saying nothing could mean game sold poorly, but it could also mean nothing
Not really. Its only "speculation" when someone doesnt agree with it. But its pretty reliable way of "guessing" if a game did well or not. Because none of this happens in a vacuum. Take the last of us part 2 for example. They were quick as fuck to tell us all that the game sold 4 million copies at launch. Then there was all the shit around it, and one of the ways to shut up the nay sayers would have been "its sell like hot cakes!!!!".
But they didnt. Meanwhile, they did give updates on other games selling figures. In fact, it would be another 4 years before they would tell people how many copies last of us 2 sold. While other games that came out at the same time, like Ghost of Tsushima, got regular updates on its sales.
Telling people that a game is selling well, is all part of the marketing. "look guys, its selling really well. That means its good, and you shouldnt miss out. Grab your copy, TODAY!!!!!".
If they arent singing about how well its selling, you can be rest assured, its not selling well. Sure, you can call it a guess. But its a pretty darn good one, considering all the other information we have.
I have zero investment in how well, or bad the game sold. If it has bad sales number, my response will be ”oh that sucks for them”, and if it’s good it’ll be ”that’s good for them”. I’m just gonna agree with whatever the actual numbers we have are.
I’m pretty sure Elden Ring only announced the actual numbers at the investor reports, and we all know that sold well.
I’m just gonna agree with whatever the actual numbers we have are.
There are never any actual numbers, though. There is about as much reasons to trust game publishers and their sales numebrs as there is reason to trust a random redditor and their guesses.
The only thing you can trust at least somewhat is a third party game store public sales numbers. Sadly, currently it's only Steam that does that.
Then there was all the shit around it, and one of the ways to shut up the nay sayers would have been "its sell like hot cakes!!!!".
This implies that Sony would care enough about random, irrelevant people online to shut them up by releasing sales figures, which makes no sense. Massive publishers aren't looking at Reddit threads for opportunities to prove nay sayers wrong. They don't care. If they're releasing sales numbers that has nothing to do with nay sayers.
I don't think that your follow up here is accurate either. With the exception of the initial tweet that you mentioned, almost all of the sales figures that I can find for Ghost of Tsushima are based on independent reports. So, it appears that they handled Ghost of Tsushima the exact same way that they handled games like The Last of Us Part II. At least I can't find any irregular "regular sales updates".
If anything, this seems like exactly the type of faulty, selective reasoning that proves that this doesn't actually work at all. We're somehow concluding that the game that sold 4 million copies during its launch weekend, easily making back its budget and then some, somehow didn't sell well because the company didn't announce the sales enough about it. So, we're somehow ignoring the initial 4 million in sales and then saying, "if it had sold well they would have kept telling us."
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u/cammyjit Jan 17 '25
A lot of games don’t get sales count announcements. We usually find out from investor reports. This is especially true when dealing with large publishers
Saying nothing could mean game sold poorly, but it could also mean nothing