Oh its absolutely weird. Particularly when you see so many releases not having a problem with it. Or whole companies succeeding and growing by doing the opposite. I’ll point at CD Project again. They built a really well regarded. Undeniably successful development studio and publishing operation. Off the back of imperfect but very interesting games. That sold poorly in the short term, but piled up sales over the long term. At reduced price. With lots of free add ons. Slowly accruing genuine enthusiasm and critical regard. And a DRM free web store that mostly sold out of print games. They are fucking huge now. And the last game they put out is probably the most critically acclaimed, and best regarded thing to come out of the games industry in a decade or more.
So I think the x-factor is. And why it seems to only be an issue for certain companies. Is you’re talking about products that can’t sustain sales for long. The companies and games that seem most concerned about this are often games with an annual release. Or games that end up not being so fondly remembered. Or those games that end up so borked on PC side that refunds happen.
I’m willing to bet it doesn’t help that a lot of these AAA releases are insanely expensive to make and maintain. If it costs you millions a month to run dem servers. Well you best be getting several millions in sales in that same time frame. Or at least taking in many millions more than you need in the first few months.
Movies are in that situation because the bulk of the money still comes from theatrical release. Which is a time limited thing. With sales dropping off as people have already seen it. Barring big hits. Opening weekend might be the vast bulk of what you make. Cause you can only guarantee you’ll be there for a few weeks. And whether you stay longer. Is going to be directly determined by how you do that opening weekend.
