Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New interview with Sven by Gamespot

Yeah I think 200k in less than a month since release for a game with virtually zero publicity or name recognition is pretty damn good.

FYI, PoE2 has passed 1 million in sales. PoE1 and P:Km are about 2 million. And The Outer Worlds is at 3 million. These are actual numbers, publicly mentioned in some form or another by their respective devs/publishers, not Steamspy b.s.

Play nice. We don't need baiting.

Was just joking, I'm kinda part of them. But yeah, you're right.

PoE2 made it past 1 million? That's news to me. The way most people talked about it, you'd think it failed completely. Well, relative to its budget, it probably did, Obsidian seems to behave like it performed way under expectations. A good chunk of its sales were probably long after release through sales.

It led Obsidian to bankrupcy so I think it solves POE2 sales question ^^"' But yeah, I heard it was past a million. Wasn't enough for the budget invested.

Outer Worlds at 3 millions points to the fact that mediocrity never goes unrewarded in this industry.

Poe 2 sales at launch were somewhere in the 100k ballpark if I remember right.
If it was 1 million from the start Obsidian’s CEO would have danced naked on the company’s rooftop.

Bankruptcy? They did get bought by Microsoft, and had been struggling for years prior to that. But I wouldn't call that outright bankruptcy.

Kingmaker getting 2 million is good news though. Such an unexpectedly good game for me after I was mildly let down by PoE2's haphazard pacing in the end, even with all the bugs. Probably stood out to me more because it had such a fun and aytpical premise instead of trying to be epic with flowery writing. WotR so far is even better for me on so many levels, I've never had such confidence in a game before. I imagine it's going to be a DOS2-style breakout hit.


Yeah, I remember people were trying to extrapolate sales through Fig investment returns about 3 months after the fact. People figured that it probably sold about 200-300k in that time period. But probably the biggest sign of failure to me at the time was just how little chatter there was for each of the game's expansions. I think by the time the last expansion came out, I only saw like 5 threads on Reddit talking about it on release week, which was a clear sign that the project met disaster.

I would hope that taught all future cRPG developers not to plan for expansions, or at least don't announce a season pass before release, because that kind of model may backfire hard. I suspect what most people did was wait until all content was released first, and bought everything through sales, because cRPGs are infamously buggy out the door anyway.

Apparently it picked up after 2019, but a year after release it had sold only around 100K copies. That can answer those who are comparing BG3 and Solasta's sales, a marketing budget goes a long way.
We can say PoE was a known brand when PoE2 came out and it bombed hard due to no advertising.

A modded POE2 plays great. Fixes lots of issues. For myself I love the <layed back> story, do whatever go wherever you want <short stories> attitude of the game. The atmosphere and style in itself is an A+ in my book. Who gives a shit if it didnt sell well (really?? people talk out of their ass when saying their went bankrupt because of the game...) Like thats a measure of quality in modern games lol. What are we doing NOT playing more mobile games, they are the best sellers out there.

Obsidian was not facing bankruptcy because of PoE2. It's part of the really crazy and silly things people have been saying related to PoE2.

In the same interviews where Obsidian people said PoE2 had surpassed 1 million in sales, they also said they broke even on PoE2 financially. So the game may have been a financial disappointment, but by no means was it a financial failure, even though that word--failure--gets thrown around liberally by people in forums like this one. And Obsidian has also said they have not closed the door to a PoE3 in the future, saying they see a potential market for it but their devs are a bit burned out on PoE and need to go work on other projects for a bit before returning to that IP.

As for TOW, whether it is a good or poor game is in the eye of the beholder. It is not a game for me, but that is purely because it is first person and I don't do first person. But clearly many gamers love the game, as evidenced by very strong sales numbers for its two expansions, and it has received strong critical praise and the announcement of a big-budget sequel.

Well, the thing is. I found PoE1 to be extremely boring. It was going for dark and gritty but honestly Tyranny did a better job, had a better story, more actual choices, and the Tyranny combat system made more sense and was more fun.

So when PoE2 came along I was like- meh!

Although now that it has turn based combat I may look at it again.

I guess people expects CRPGS to by like WARZONE and the Wicther nowdays. Combat and action every minute of gameplay. Stuff everywhere to pickup. Loot loot and more loot. I find that MEEEH, boring and repetitive. Point being, that stuff just SELLS. Boardgames is a great example. Shit like monopoly, risk and UNO outsells all the incredible thousands of boardgame that came out the last 20 years...Fast passed brainless luck based games outselling quality stuff.
Also the masses prefer gambling and sex to games. But add those to games...oh man, your selling millions.
So yea, nothing we can do about it but scram to Indie devs...the last bastion of creativity for games and hope they dont become gobbled up by their ego, AAA beast and mobile daemons.

Nah not really. The success of Valheim kinda proves it. I know it's a totally different category of games ( it's more for the survival / rpg crowd) but it's literally about cutting wood in a forest. Like that's what you do. You add to this the popularity of grind games and mobile games....I think it's about simplicity.

You make a system hard to learn and it rejects a lot of people straight away. They either don't have the will or the time for that. It's quite difficult to satisfy both crowds.

-Those who want a complex game, where knowing how each spells counters another, where and when to use it, how to position , what to expect from the enemy, how to manage your ressources .
and
- Those who want spells, a good story , managing their ressources but they want the solution to be fairly straightforward. Not necessarily easy but they won't buy the game if it earns the reputation of " The ghitlyanki patrol slaugthered me, and that's just the start. It gets harder".

Making both of those happy is what's what Larian is asked to do right now. All those who lack "something" in the combat of BG3 and provide previous BG titles as an example are probably in the first group.
Inbetween posts for " combat rebalance", less surfaces caused too op etc etc you have posts of people asking for help, claiming mages are underpowered etc.

I'm generalizing here but you catch my drift. Larian games became so popular partially because they can appease both publics ( to some extent). I just hope they will lean a TINY bit towards those critisizing the game to find just the right spot.

"... monopoly, risk and UNO outsells all the incredible thousands of boardgame that came out the last 20 years...Also the masses prefer gambling and sex to games. But add those to games...oh man, your selling millions"


Hmm, I suppose instead of houses, I could put some strumpets on my St. Charles Place property, since it is right next to the jail anyway.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you already know that they won't go back to the PoE series until they're sure they figured out why PoE2 wildly performed below everyone's expectations. For now they've pivoted over to Avowed, the first person game taking place in the Pillars universe.

Still though, this many cRPGs selling more than 1-2+ million would have been unheard of before PoE and DOS1 entered the picture a little over 5 years ago, after the void that the BG series left in its wake. Unless you count the Dragon Age series.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE! <3 I already knew this, but every time it gets mentioned I feel my heart jumping out of sheer joy!



Correct, that is the official statement as far as I know (and I've done my fair amount of digging on the subject since I absolutely adored PoE1 and felt like PoE2 was pretty well done as well!).

Imma try my absolute best to enjoy Avowed when it comes, but I dread the FPS choice they made (I absolutely *HATE* first person view...). But I'll try it! And I will try my best to like it as well!

I really hope there's a PoE3 - I was a bit disappointed in the second game, but I still love the Watcher and their companions and want to see the rest of their journey. Unfortunately I just can't stand playing in first person so I'll have to skip Avowed.

If anything, I'd like to see a new game in that universe, with a new set of companions maybe, there is a lot of potential in just the world alone, could go forward or even back to some past event.

I loved both PoE games, with Deadfire firmly cemented as my favorite game ever, so it's nice to know that the door to a true sequel isn't entirely shut. I get the sense from all I've read that Deadfire's reception realy hurt the devs and left them pretty disappointed, so I can understand them wanting to step away for a while. Hopefully in a couple of years they'll have their passion reignited and will be ready to dive right back into it. As for Avowed, I'm not a big fan of first person games, but The Outer World was brilliant in my opinion and I love the world of Eora so I am waiting eagerly for Avowed to come out.

I wouldn't expect it anytime soon, though. They have their hands full with Avowed and TOW2, so I'd guess like... maybe 8-10 years if they decide to do PoE3 next?