It's been a good week now and even tonight BG3 only slightly missed Hogwarts Legacies all-time peak. A fairly "casual" open world action RPG sporting one of the biggest media licenses around... really makes you wonder what numbers BG3 had if it was a Potter game... or LOTR.
Sitting at no. 1 spot in the Steam top sellers too. Plus still rocking P5 preorder charts.
That BG3 would be a sales success was something I fully expected from years ago, if for no other reason than because of the draw of D&D, which has something like 15 million people playing it TT.
Hmm....
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=785882#Post785882(I was fishing for an older thread I remember participating in, to check for estimations back then out of curiosity. As I don't think anybody saw these kind of numbers coming... and yeah, barely anyone did. Just like on a German forum I frequent. Always interesting in retrospect. )
I don't think that it's bad thing to see a "proper" RPG doing pretty darn fine on all accounts (even on console preorders) for the time being. Not after the AAA RPG market has largely been dominated by games blurring the lines between action adventure games, and oft sporting pretty shallow character (and gameplay systems) for many years to boot. All in the ever ongoing quest of reaching an ever bigger target audience, of course.
Don't think it will change much though, no less as the bigger studios don't have the experience (and personell) anymore to do this kind of thing (and it's taken Larian years to get there). See what happened with Redfall after many Imm Sim specialists had left Arkane Austin and/or weren't onboard with the concept to do a "looter shooter" to get an idea of how it's people making games -- not brand / company logos. This naturally goes doubly so for pretty specialized kind of games. Such as RPGs -- and Imm Sims. Additionally, the biggest publishers aim for the biggest fishes in the pond.
And that's still gonna be Skyrim, WItcher et all. There's stuff that may influence, such as the systemic gameplay, quest design/outcomes, branching, etc. But neither Bethesda nor Bioware nor anybody is now suddenly going to do a turnaround because of one BG3 (with AAA projects taking years nowadays to get off the ground anyways, sometimes half a decade+). Much like nobody's going to try a couple of Elden Ring copycats. Additionally, smaller studios won't have the funds.
