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Opinion

Why have AAA sales been down in 2016? The many explanations are simple.

Watch Dogs 2

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Watch Dogs 2 is an awesome game that does almost everything its predecessor promised but didn’t deliver, and injects some much-needed humour. Yet, it’s sold 80% less than the hyped original during its launch period. Like Dishonored 2, I suspect sales will pick up. After the original burned early adopters, players were right to wait for a general consensus before taking the plunge at a reduced price — and Watch Dogs 1 lost its value extremely quickly, becoming an instant pre-owned bargain.

There’s more to the tale, however, as multiplayer woes were poorly swept under the rug. Ubisoft seemed to convince publications to run “in progress” reviews based on the single-payer content, because the seamless multiplayer wouldn’t be available at launch. There’s a big difference between choosing to delay a final verdict to see how a game actually performs at launch, and waiting for a promised feature, which was removed entirely at the eleventh hour. Leaving it up to critics with a nudge in the favourable direction was the right move by Ubisoft, but a broken feature doesn’t sound good in Twitter headlines, so there’s no doubt that caused some cancelled pre-orders.

It’s not all bad news!

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While the traditionally busy October-November period has been down, sales have still been strong in 2016. Battlefield 1 is doing exceedingly well for EA, and is having a slow and steady run with sales, as GTA V has done for three years. Whereas most games tend to boom and drop, Battlefield 1 could be leading the way for modern game sales: gamers are more cautious at launch, but the good games with strong communities steadily sell for longer periods.

The shooter market has also had strong success elsewhere, with Overwatch performing well. Strong PC sales are a given, but Blizzard must be thrilled with the community it’s continuing to develop on consoles. On the exclusives front, Xbox has done fairly well with Gears of War 4, a third person shooter that offered co-op where the others didn’t. With Overwatch, GoW4, BF1, Titanfall 2 and two Call of Duty games vying for overlapping audiences, it’s no surprise a couple underperformed.

The Pokémon factor also flexed its muscle, as GameStop’s most pre-ordered game of the year. Its opening sales almost matched the 2 million of Pokémon X&Y in Japan, and considering a change in market conditions and the increased prevalence of digital sales (not yet counted), that’s excellent. Add poorly timed rumours of a Nintendo Switch version, the highly likely Pokémon Stars, and sales for the 3DS exclusive has proven the pull of Pokémon. With strong reviews praising unprecedented changes to the formula, by Pokémon standards, I’m relishing in swapping my controller and 1080p murdering of men for 240p delightful animal cruelty. But I won’t lie: the prospect of a HD version on Switch almost tempted me to wait; but only almost.

Most of all, 2016 has been a year of an abundance of very good games, without a comprehensive standout. There are too many fantastic games to find the time to play them all, but nothing that stands out as something everyone has been playing — maybe Overwatch, but that came and went quickly for some. There’s no The Witcher 3 or The Last of Us — the obvious Game of the Year frontrunner. But there are a lot more candidates than usual, and eventually our wallets have to say no.


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About the author

Ben Salter

Ben has been writing about games in a professional capacity since 2008. He even did it full-time for a while, but his mum never really understood what that meant. He's been part of the Stevivor team since 2016. You will find his work across all sections of the site (if you look hard enough). Gamertag / PSN ID: Gryllis.