Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

How well is EU doing?

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
U

unmerged(339)

Corporal
Oct 15, 2000
25
0
Visit site
Well, it might be none of my business and maybe this is restricted information. Nonetheless, I would like to know whether it would be possible to have information about how well EU is doing in sales terms. I presume that exact numbers are a sort of corporate secret, but even an unprecise number, a rating (10 out of ten?) or a comparison with other games would also do.

Thanks

Sigg

------------------
E voglio i nomi di chi ha mentito, di chi ha parlato di una guerra giusta. Io non le lancio più le vostre sante bombe
 
My guess is that the sales will not be very high. German game magazines have evaluation criteria for the average 15 year old gamer. Which means that they will not look on content. EU already got a bad rating in Game Star. We gamers have to do some promotion for the game ourselves.
Show it to our friends. Today I went to my game dealer and told him about EU. He had never heard of it but will now put it into the shelf. If this game fails on the market this will be the wrong message to the producers. We will not get another good game for a long time.
 
Hello,

The game is probably not doing very well in Germany. For the time being, as the marketing is obviously not very effective, it is probably a cult game, with the people that stumbled upon this site and became followers :) ordering quickly after release.
That would explain reasonably high sales at the launch of the game. Sofar however, no broad attention is given to the game in Germany. There seems to be only one website with a sort of review (and a bad one at that). Advertizing by Blackstar has not been wide as far as I can see, I found one commercial websitebanner, one advertisement in a game magazine, (no test of the game in that magazine though). As for those game magazines, afaik there have not been any thorough tests published, nor will there be in the december issues.
Quite disappointing. EU can still only be ordered at a small number of online shops. I don't know about the availability of the game in normal shops, but without press support it's not going to be a major Xmas winner in my view anyhow.
The only site that has EU in their top ten selling games is the games24.de site, which I and other people on this board have recommended after finding they offer a good (and international) service.

We will probably have to wait for the fans of the game spreading the word. Eventually, in my view, that will ensure rising sales, but it'll be slow going.

greetings, Oranje
 
My marketing indicator is my local MediaMarkt, a super-store for electronic goods. I have not yet seen EU there in great numbers...they do have Moorhuhnjagd 2, Autobahnraser and other crap in the dozens :(.

Manstein
 
The Hertie in Frankfurt (and Bad Homburg) didn't have it last weekend, either.

Does anyone know of a good computer game store in Frankfurt? Like one that has orginal language versions as well? Just curious. There were a bunch in Berlin, but I haven't found any here.
 
But in Essen (a City in the 'Ruhrgebiet' Area in Germany,near Düsseldorf)
its available in the big superstores 'Saturn' and 'Karstadt/Hertie'.

Perhaps there are logistic problems in other areas of Germany ?

(in the 'Ruhrgebiet' live near nine million people, so I think it has priority over smaller city areas)

But the available number of game boxes were small in Essen too !
( only six boxes in each superstore )

Hope EU will be a comercial success, so you can produce EU2 for us :)

Regards
Gan.
 
I think sales will be pretty good, maybe after a time.
The community of wargamers and fan of good strategy games is large enough.

Look at some games who are absolutely ignored by magazines but that almost every wargamer has.

I also think that most of you are speaking of the game around you to potential customers.

Such quality in a game is rare and the community usually don't miss a chance to have it.

I learnt the existence of most of my favorite wargames by friends or online community and not magazines.

Some reviews are bad ? Bah....
As a wargamer, I never considered a wargame review written by someone who call Diablo 2 a roleplaying game as worthy enough.

------------------
Pierre
Retired EU Beta Tester

[This message has been edited by pierre (edited 10-11-2000).]
 
It somenthing strange with the reviews all revies in english (about four) and swedish (two) are very positive, all reviews in german (two or three depending on if you count the preview) is bad. :confuesed: A complot agains the german speaking players?
 
Originally posted by Janbalk:
It somenthing strange with the reviews all revies in english (about four) and swedish (two) are very positive, all reviews in german (two or three depending on if you count the preview) is bad. :confuesed: A complot agains the german speaking players?
Click to expand...

Depending on the reviewers, this could be a result of the 'anti-war' indoctrination of many Germans... But a lot of other 'warlike' games get good reviews, so maybe not.

I am applying for jobs in Germany, but I was afraid to tell people that I have my own website simply because the website deals with reviews of books about war. Am I crazy? :(
 
First part slightly OT: It is not you Curow who is crazy...it is our political class and its followers putting everything concerning our national heritage or war remembrance into a bag with the Skin Nazis.

Second part: My local MediaMarkt now received 12 or so copies of EU. 4 were already sold today. Slowly going, but compared with the hundreds of Baldur´s Gate II, which also sold 4 copies quite ok. :)). Guess, the numbers will change in the next days.

Manstein
 
I do not think that bad reviews in Germany come from a antiwar attitude. Panzergeneral sold very well and got good reviews. I think there are several reasons:

There is no good tradition of playing board games. I remember how in the eighties I was overwhelmed when I saw in USA and UK these gameshops full of Avalon Hill games. I never saw such a shop in Germany.

Because of this the gametesters are not really gamers. They grew up with Monkey Island and things like that. They are unable to recognize the content of a game. For example Industrie Gigant which is not an economic simulation got excellent reviews and is considered a good economy game. Whereas Capitalism Plus which is much better was either ignored or was critisized because nothing moves on the screen. The German game testers do not appreciate content and despise realism.
 
Here in Australia, games are relatively expensive compared to the US.
So people no longer tend to buy 'unknown' games. Too many 'dud' (low quality) games have been produced. When it's a choice between Baldur's Gate 2 or EU, the money will go on BG2 - the buyer knows it will be good value for money.
Wargamers will buy EU as soon as it hits the stores but EU won't sell well to the general public unless the box contains factual game review ratings e.g. 'xyz scored this game at 95/100'. (Personally, I have been playing EU for almost a year and it gets better every time I play it - winning with Portugal can be a tough challenge.)
Same with the US I think, Paradox needs US game mags and websites to give good reviews.
To achieve this, the Puritans, Roanoke, the
Iroquois, the French and Indian Wars, Daniel Boone, the Coureurs de Bois, American Revolution etc need to be promoted as features in the game i.e. the 'Winning of America'. Columbus is an American hero.

For the American Market the game should be called '1492 - the New World' or something similar. Scrap the 'EU' title and the EU box and intro graphic and substitute American ones. After all the only way to win is to build a big New World empire.

As there is an Iroquois empire in the game, it would also be a good marketing point if you could actually play them in the game - or the Incas or the Aztecs. Imagine a scenario where you are the Indians fighting off the Europeans! Great fun!
----
On the topic of German games, IMHO it seems to me that 'simple' games are popular in Germany - Anno 1502, Transport Giant and the boardgames like Settlers of Catan. Anno 1502 and Transport Giant got bad reviews in the US as lacking gameplay with objectives. On the other hand EU has probably more strategical possibilities than any game I know. I hope EU does not get 'tarred with an Anno 1502 brush'.
EU is really a new kind of game - historical real-time strategy - HRTS.
 
Got any links to sites with reviews? I can't get enough information from this site to get a full jist of what this game is about.

------------------
--'Information. We need information.'

--'Who are you?'

--'The new #2.'

--'Who is #1?'

--'You are #6.'

--'I am not a number, I am a free man!'
 
Very simple to get to these reviews:
the links are on the home page of this site.
To the right of your screen, the brownish items are clickable.
Lots of info there. Good luck :)

greetings, Oranje
 
They grew up with Monkey Island and things like that.

I grew up on Monkey Island and then i started playing Civilization. If EU is reviewed by someone who likes Monkey Island games better then strategy, then the magazine/website is just a piece of shit and you have no business checking game reviews there anyway.

------------------
Make peace with your enemies once in a while, it confuses the hell out of them.
 
Originally posted by Manstein:
My marketing indicator is my local MediaMarkt, a super-store for electronic goods. I have not yet seen EU there in great numbers...they do have Moorhuhnjagd 2, Autobahnraser and other crap in the dozens :(.
Click to expand...

Okay, I can figure out 'Autobahnraser' but what (and I'm almost afraid to ask) does 'Moorhuhnjagd' mean? . . .
 
Originally posted by Jas:
Okay, I can figure out 'Autobahnraser' but what (and I'm almost afraid to ask) does 'Moorhuhnjagd' mean? . . .
Click to expand...

Hello Jas, (which by the way is Dutch for 'coat')

The Autobahnraser I'm ashamed to say is a game developed in Holland, afaik the game puts you in a car and then you're supposed to go as fast as you can from A to B, ignoring everything and anybody (traffic signs, speed limitations, other traffic).
The other one I don't know, if I translate literally it's something like 'chicken hunt'.
Don't think you should want to try any of these.

greetings, Oranje
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back