Is it possible Skyrim sold more on PC than any other platform?

this list is fairly interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games

looking at the list since most pc games stopped being retail game sales figures appear to have dropped massively we can only assume sales are at least as strong as ever and skyrim on the pc probably sold 6-10million copies

and theres no way gw2 sold half as many copies as gw1 , everyone I know that ever played gw1 bought gw2
 
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spoffle said:
What argument? It's undeniable that they do this, I still enjoyed it at release.
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That their games are released in a poor state, and are then 'fixed' by modders. It comes up with every Bethesda game(just check page 1 of this thread!), and it seems that people forget that the games are great to start with.
I'm quite tolerant myself, games being buggy and whatever don't induce butthurt rages from me, I just accept it for what it is.

That aside, it doesn't mean I can't objectively look at Skyrim and note the flaws it contained at release that they could have easily fixed.
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Oh Skyrim wasn't perfect, but then it was a massive game...I think I experienced a quest bug on my first playthrough. Bethesda games certainly have their fair share of bugs, but in my experience they can be avoided when you buy at release through things like keeping a clean system and defragging you HD for example....the amount of people you see that complain about bugs in TES/Fallout games and then it turns out they have messed with an ini file or something without knowing what they are doing probably fuels the image of Bethesda games full of bugs imo.

On a side note, I seem to be finding myself far less tolerant of bugs nowadays...must be an age thing;)
 
I love Bethesda games, Fallout 3 and NV have been some of my favourite gaming moments, but I still think they rely on the community to fix their games up.

That doesn't mean their games are crap, just that they are clearly lazy with some things.
 
I wouldnt call them lazy. Making worlds as large as they do. As open as they are. With everyone playing it their own way. No company on this earth could play test a game like this enough and fix all the bugs.

We find the bugs, be they game breakers or quirky lighting issues because you yelled at a cabbage. They try to fix them.
Id imagine more work went into skyrim than every cod for the last 5 years combined.

It would be nice to have more than 2gb of ram used on launch though.
 
Not stuff like that. I'm talking about using low res textures, then that mess with the 64 bit exe, and the user interface that was poorly optimised for mouse control.

Then the way the ui didn't work properly with multiple screens.
 
Bethesda actually mentioned they sold much better on PC than they expected, and it was a game with most concurrent users playing ever on Steam, so I would not be surprised if it sold around 5 million or more.
 
Omaeka said:
Valve's cut is what, 20-25%? The extra £10 on consoles is to flat-out cover the licence cost to the system developers, then you have storage fees, transport & shipping fees, the retailers cut and the hit from pre-owned sales. Consoles are only profitable if your game sells by the shed-load. If PC can catch it a platform up in sales figures, it'll blow it away on actual revenue.
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http://www.destructoid.com/tripwire-valve-absolutely-not-exploiting-steam-devs-151832.phtml

I'd be surprised if they were taking that much off each game, devs don't seem to mind using Steam for distribution.

Old article but possibly more accurate than rumour.
 
arknor said:
Whats the most downloaded skyrim mod and how many times was it downloaded?
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/607/?
2,837,560 Unique D/Ls
6,696,446 Total D/Ls


2.8million unique downloads on that and it might not even be the most popular mod, there doesn't seem to be a way to view the mods on that site by popularity.
We can assume not everyone with skyrim on the pc mods and we can assume not everyone with a pc would know how to install them anyway.
although not everyone who downloaded that mod will have a legit copy

steam makes it noob friendly but I bet steam doesn't show unique downloads and they never post sales figures
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Does if you go to top files

which btw is SkyUI with 4,401,914 downloads (most downloaded file on Nexus)
 
ColEx said:
Skyrim is a heavily pirated game, so looking at mod dl numbers on the nexus site is pointless.
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no doubt but probably not as pirated as people think I had around on a forum for cracked games and stuff even though I don't pirate any more and for games like skyrim nearly everyone buys them because they can't wait for the crack
 
ColEx said:
But it is heavily pirated.
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That in itself means little to nothing.

"pirated" can constitute someone who has started to download it but never finished it, to those who have downloaded it and hoarded it, to those who downloaded it and then blasted through the game and all the quests lathered in mods.
 
spoffle said:
Not really. Errbody knows that release window sales are the most important. They aren't sold at deep discounts on release, but even at a lower release price they are still more profitable, especially when sold via digital content systems as there are less cuts being taken from the total price.
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This isn't necessarily true any more. The long tail comes into effect with digital distribution. The philosophy of needing high opening sales is an artifact of selling at retail, with limited shelf space, so if they don't sell quickly, they'll be moved off the shelves anyway.

Valves experiments with sales have shown it's possible for games to deliver comparable revenue later in their life cycle, and in some games, to even exceed that opening sales window. Digital distribution upends a lot of conventional sales wisdom.

Steam's cut is 30% on average, probably more like 20% for big releases like Skyrim.
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Where do you get those figures?
I agree steam is far superior for developers than selling at retail, just hadn't seen any pricing from them so wondered if that cut was just rumour or a from credible source.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
This isn't necessarily true any more. The long tail comes into effect with digital distribution. The philosophy of needing high opening sales is an artifact of selling at retail, with limited shelf space, so if they don't sell quickly, they'll be moved off the shelves anyway.
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It's certainly true, it might not be as critical (I agree that it's not as critical) but it's certainly still true, as a lot of games on Steam are still published by companies other than the developers, who place importance on release window sales.

Valves experiments with sales have shown it's possible for games to deliver comparable revenue later in their life cycle, and in some games, to even exceed that opening sales window. Digital distribution upends a lot of conventional sales wisdom.
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Sure, but it's because Valve is the publisher and owner of their own games, they have a lot more flexibility with what they do.



Where do you get those figures?
I agree steam is far superior for developers than selling at retail, just hadn't seen any pricing from them so wondered if that cut was just rumour or a from credible source.
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I can't remember where, it's been some time but at the time I remember the source being credible. I think it was from a developer.
 
arknor said:
everyone I know that ever played gw1 bought gw2
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I own GW1 but not GW2 :)

Personally I doubt Skyrim has sold 4.5 million directly through Steam, but then there are other sellers around (I bought mine from Gamefly I think).
Ultimately nobody really knows the answer as to how many it sold on PC but it seems plausible that it was ahead of PS3 at least.
Finally given that the Elder Scrolls series has a strong history on PC and modding community it probably wouldn't be that surprising if it was the top platform (compared to say a franchise like Assassin's Creed that debuted on console).
 
either way we will never know as long as steam is the major distribution service for online games.

http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/201...ey-dont-release-sales-figures-of-steam-sales/

Apparently it's not productive for developers to know how successful they are compared to the competition but I bet valve secretly tells them anyway more than likely they just don't want to let on at the obscene amount of money steam rakes in every day or the publishers would band together and demand better percentages.
 
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