Here is a November 10th update on the games form the same site (firing squad):

# 1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision
# 2. The Sims 2 Teen Style Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts -
# 3. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Collectors Edition - Activision
# 4. Hellgate: London - Namco/EA
# 5. Gears Of War - Microsoft
# 6. Half Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box - Valve/EA
# 7. The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts
# 8. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
# 9. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
# 10. Nancy Drew: Legend Of The Crystal Skull - Her Interactive

Went down from 1st to fourth but I still find that good!

I think their strategy to "close" the official forums to only owners of the game is a good sales strategy.

Many prospective buyers lurk a gamess offical forum before buying to try and spot a bug fested game.

So basically, buyers have a harder task finding out about this games status before purchase. Hence the week one sales.
I tried to lurk the official forums before purchase but couldn't so made an ill informed purchase which is why I ended up returning my copy for a refund. had I been able to "lurk" the offical forums and read the thousands of bug/glitch posts, I never would have bought the game in the first place.

Guess it is another trick to watch out for in the sales game!

"Luck?" I'd give Blizzard more credit than that!

J

Small change when you consider what they must be making, 15$ a month from that many subscribers? whoo...

Blizzard really hit it big with WoW. It's a shame other good game companies couldn't have had the same luck. Seems all the good ones slowly get bought out by "power houses" like EA, and then subsequently die shortly thereafter.

I think Wow costs about 50 million a year at the moment so its a lot higher. Blizzard have about, I believe 2000 people working on this game one way or another which by itself is more expensive then most games. Thats the scale this game is about.

20 million for a top class game...Yea I think that is about right.

20 million for console A games, like Final Fantasy, may be. For World of Warcraft, may be even more. But for most of the other stuffs, most likely millions. I doubt even Starcraft 2 will cost that much.

Console games on the other hand do have much bigger budget. The CGI alone would have cost a fortune. But they generate a lot more sales compare with a PC game.

Of the top 10, Hellgate seems to be the only non-sequal "new" game. May be that's the reason. Gamers are desparate for anything, anything new. What suprises me is that WoW is still on the top 10 list. Amazing!!!

Just curious: Is this based on some definite info, or is it a guess? It's pretty hard to tell from the outside, but a lot of the recent stuff (extending the founder's offer, providing a longer grace period for beta testers, giving non-subscribers 24 slots) seems to suggest they're pretty worried about the sales numbers, but who knows...

Bill Roper put out the figure of $20 million dollars to develop a game these days, which means 1/2 million sales at $50 without even counting production/marketing costs, never mind the continuing development.

I'd rather have a game that worked and lived up to even half the hype. FFS don't deserve the sales.

Btw, everyone saying "now they will have cash to keep going" - not really. The first lot of money that comes in will be going back to re-pay Namco Bandai and EA who would have given FSS advances to make the game. Basically EA and Namco didn't want to give FSS any more advances, but they had enough money to last until 31st October, and after that they needed to start paying money back to them (so that they could then borrow more in the short term to keep paying their staff etc).

So really, if sales do plummet and they end up with fewer subscribers than they were hoping for, they could still end up in dire straights.

It would be very telling to check these charts again after the first of the year. Christmas sales should help the game a lot...I hope.

Perhaps a xmas present for all fans is in order. A fat patch that fixes any last bugs not fixed in the next few weeks and some new tilesets.

Well, yeah, why not release in early 2008, and do like TBC, hit the stores when no other game is currently out? Be the perfect game at the perfect time...

Oh well, hopefully the initial sales will both push HGL to the extent that it WILL gather more players/subscribers, so that expansions and new games from FSS can have an easier time with stressed out publishers. They know FSS can make games, they just need the time (Blizzard's motto as well, they never release an unfinished product).

The problems at the start of WoW was mainly server issues as well. Or lack of servers.

well tbh i think FSS made a HUGE error realising this before christmas, when the game seems to be only in its closing stages of beta.

There are many big-name games (Crysis et. al.) coming out soon, so I guess we should wait for them to see how HG:L sales really stand up to the competion.

Word of mouth will probably hurt. But as the game gets patched it may pick up again if word can get out. Trouble is that by the time it is patched and "up to speed" many people may have given up on it and passed it by. Let's keep an eye on those chart sites.

There's a Nancy Drew game out? O.o I'll have to check it out and see if it's any good. My little sister likes reading old Nancy Drew books.

I think we can expect a sales plummet. Word of mouth matters much much more than any reviews, and most of what I've been hearing from friends and acquaintances who like games is... how horrible the game is. Most of them don't even know what it's about, or what kind of game it is, but they "know" it's horrible, and won't even run on anyone's PC. I don't think it will kill the game though; the same thing happened in WoW's early release, with a vocal group of naysayers, and as bugs were fixed and general improvements made, the word of mouth improved, and so did the sales.

I think there is a lot of confusion on just what kind of game it is, and will evolve into being, as well; and that doesn't help things in the meantime.

Now that's what I'm thinking! even if the sales slow after first week, they should have the cash to make the game closer to perfect, and having a steady stream of new fans re-discovering it, post bugs.

Cool! This will ensure that they will be able to keep working on this game enableing them to make this into what it should have been and beyond!

This is from Week 1.

But by your theory, the sales should plummet for the following week then I just want more hgl friends

No... reviews and word-of-mouth generate secondary sales, it usually does not affect the primary sales that happen on week 1.