General Gaming Analyst: Battlefield V pre-order sales are "weak", may suffer same fate as Titanfall 2

[SaysWho?]

Curious if this will be the case as there was that, er, "story" about God of War's pre-orders being weak and it's the fastest-selling PS exclusive of all time and will likely be in the Top 10 this year in sales.

 

Could get cannibalized by RDR2 and COD but I guess we'll see.

[Keyser_Soze]

11 hours ago, eggydoo said:

I never pre-order BF games cause the following:

1) I need to see if it sucks or not.  I disliked BF3 but liked BF4.

2) Why get it day one when you know their servers are gonna be hosed

 

3) They have infinite copies of this game. The best reason to pre-order anything is if there is limited stock you you won't get a copy.

[Brick]

On 8/15/2018 at 8:18 PM, SimpleG said:

Removing the lock on Doritos and Supression is the only thing BF5 has going for it. Everything else is terrible.

 

Even if they hadnt messed with some core BF principles I still dont preorder shit.

 

 

 

 

Also wouldnt preorder cause I dont need no Dames or Skirts cloggin up my war zone with the hormones !

 

Messed with core principles like what and how? 

[ALIEN-gunner]

I just realized that Patrick Soderlund was the guy that told the customers to not buy Battlefield 5 if they had a problem with women appearing as soldiers. No wonder pre-orders are low. EA most likely actually fired him. 

[Wild]

These games come out too frequently with way too much MMO style progression baked in. The more they investment add into the system the less incentive anyone has to buy a new game and start all over.

[JPDunks4]

I was a big BF1 fan, played the shit out of it cause I had a consistent squad to play with.  It's a game you really need to play with friends, and with Red Dead 2 and CoD coming out so close, I can see groups of friends simply saying, ya we are getting Red Dead or CoD and will wait for BF, causing the entire squad to hold on purchasing.  

 

BF1's core gameplay was good, but in an era of skins, emotes, customization, it was soooooo bad.  All you unlocked was Gun Skins which was impossible to notice unless you got killed by someone and it showed up in the little kill card.  You basically unlocked all there was to each class a few hours in and had nothing else to chase.  The Loot Crate system sucked because of it.  I still played it a ton and enjoyed it, but it was so lacking in so many ways, in part cause WW1, but they couldve done much more with it.  

 

Because of some of that, I'm kinda in a wait and see for BFV too, I preordered and will be there Day 1, but not quite as excited as I had been.  I also think some of the core BF community was put off that the Closed Alphas were pretty much just given away to streamers, and not the loyal fanbase.  I know a few streamers that played lke 10 minutes of BF1 got codes and real Battlefield fans that live and breathe the game didnt.  An Alpha should be for the core players to make the game better, not for streamers that dont know how to play the game to stream a few minutes of it before they go back to Fortnite or PUBG. 

[HGLatinBoy]

Quote

“Listen: this is a game. And today gaming is gender-diverse, like it hasn’t been before. There are a lot of female people who want to play, and male players who want to play as a badass [woman]. And we don’t take any flak. We stand up for the cause, because I think those people who don’t understand it, well, you have two choices: either accept it or don’t buy the game. I’m fine with either or. It’s just not OK.”

 

I mean if they really don't want people to buy it..

 

 

    

        10 hours ago, ALIEN-gunner said:     

    

        

            I just realized that Patrick Soderlund was the guy that told the customers to not buy Battlefield 5 if they had a problem with women appearing as soldiers. No wonder pre-orders are low. EA most likely actually fired him.          

    

     

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/ea-chief-design-officer-patrick-soderlund-leaves-company-1202904465/

[SimpleG]

19 hours ago, Brick said:

 

Messed with core principles like what and how? 

Character recogintion 

 

Defending/taking a point or defending a tank can be won/lost or brought to a stalemate if you know which class to take down first.

 

 

 

 

 

There is a few variants depending on the side and the map you are on but nothing out of the ordinary. BF 5 character customization throws that out the window. With everyone all glitzed up you could end losing a skirmish becouse you killed the yard gnome who just spawned in instead of the medic.

 

Any body doing revives is another issue. In the off chance you kill the medic instead of the hill humper the team is hardly slowed when the medic can be brought back 10 seconds later by the wookie or anyone else. Previously this would have slowed or stoped a team until the medic respawned.

 

Starting ammo is way to low but that should be an easy adjustment if Dice decides it needs changed.

 

I do like the limited ammo on tanks and planes but the Call Ins are to COD for my taste.

 

 

[Brick]

I don't think we fully know how character customization is going to work yet though, so we could still have distinct traits for each class.

[SimpleG]

3 minutes ago, Brick said:

I don't think we fully know how character customization is going to work yet though, so we could still have distinct traits for each class.

That is true, I am cup is 1/2 empty type of guy

[ALIEN-gunner]

The new spotting mechanic sucks ass.

[CitizenVectron]

7 hours ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

The new spotting mechanic sucks ass.

 

You liked the doritos? They were way too powerful and needed to be nerfed. Maybe it's because I started with the original Battlefield 1942, but you shouldn't need to spot enemies with giant glowing arrows. To be fair, Dice puts way too many distracting effects in their game which make it hard to see enemy soldiers (and all of them look the same colour). But you can just spam Q over a screen and see where everyone is, which is bad.

[RedSoxFan9]

 

people are are going to buy it once they see all this orange and blue

[atom631]

Im all pre-ordered up. I love the BF series and cannot wait for the new one. Ive never felt there was a bad BF game (maybe hardline... didnt really play it enough to judge). I would take any recent BF Game 3,4,1 over an COD game. COD just gets so stale to me after a few hours. 

 

I got in to the BFV closed-alpha and I had a blast for the 10 or so rounds I played. 

 

Here are things I liked/noticed vs BF1 (since its the latest release): 

 

No elite classes - thank fucking god

No behemoths - not sure how i feel about this. I enjoyed the madness the behemoths added to the game

Faster TTK - feels a little more like COD now

No suppression - dislike this. This was a great way to get out of jam against a sniper when you are pinned down

Going prone on your back - this was really cool. if back pedaling or turning around, you would go on your back. adds a lot more agility when prone

Attrition - this is really cool. you run out of ammo a lot faster and need to find ammo supplies. its a great deterrent for camping

Recoil - not sure if this is going to be across the whole game, but the guns i used had very little recoil. This also reminds me of COD. Not really a fan bc the guns didnt feel a lot different.

Crouch running/sprinting - cool new feature to get you out of a jam, esp if you are in a building

More destruction - seems like more of the environments get destroyed. always cool and why i love BF franchise. 

Bullet penetration - this has been needed for a long time in BF

 

Some things I didnt get to confirm

vehicles - pretty much if they are easier to destroy that BF1. i really hope they are. there did seem to be less of them. could just be that map

Aircraft - same thing. there was less. couldnt tell if they are easier to take down. i really hope so. the fact they can fly out of bounds, repair themselves is probably my biggest gripe in BF1 (outside of elites/calvary)

I didnt get to try fortification building - but I think this is a cool idea. I just hope its not overdone to the point where people are in mile-high shelters (fortnite style)

Towing artillery - great addition to move artillery around the map, saw someone do it but didnt get to try it myself. i dont play in vehices too often, if at all. 

[Pikachu]

The open beta is deploying on September 6: 

 

 

[nublood]

I'm in no hurry at all for this. Not because of some forced SJW narrative. But because lately BF has been hot garbage.

 

I miss the days of Bad Company and BF: 1943 : /

[atom631]

There it is. Bogus claim about pre-orders.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1031945656854691840

[SimpleG]

17 minutes ago, atom631 said:

There it is. Bogus claim about pre-orders.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1031945656854691840

What I am missing in the tweet? It says it uses the Gamestop preoerders and extrapolates preorder excitement.

Preorder excitment is a metric now.....

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

26 minutes ago, atom631 said:

There it is. Bogus claim about pre-orders.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1031945656854691840

Read a few more tweets downward

[atom631]

12 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

Read a few more tweets downward

Here 's a direct response from the guy who made the tweets.  And for my anecdotal take: seriously, who even shops at Gamestop anymore? I literally dont know a single person who buys anything from them. When I happen to go in there, its always young kids with their parents. COD has always historically been more appealing to teenagers  and younger kids than BF anyway.  That list also seems even more bogus when you consider Fallout 76 is trending higher than RDR2? cmon! 

 

The squat knower here. These are my tweets. I wrote about why Battlefield V isn't going to bomb today: https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/21/battlefield-v-preorders-are-below-expectations-but-it-isnt-about-to-bomb/

But yeah, I don't follow the details of Cowen & Co's day-to-day activity, so I didn't know they switched to GameStop from Amazon earlier this year. But I remember when Doug Creutz announced that he was starting the Ordometer -- the chart that the "85 percent behind Call of Duty" number came from.

The Ordometer doesn't use inside information. It once used the publicly available best-sellers list from Amazon, and now it uses the publicly available best-sellers list from GameStop.

Creutz uses a model where he looks at how games are charting on the list over time, and then he compares the behavior of certain games on the GameStop list to the behavior of past games on the list that he has the sales data for. With enough data, he can probably make some pretty good guesses. But I think this model has always had the chance for wild margins of error.

 

More importantly, though. Creutz never even says that the "Ordometer" is a measure for how a game is going to sell at launch or how many preorders are going to be made. It's just sort of a hype list. That's all. So 85 percent behind on the Ordometer does not equal 85 percent fewer preorders.

 

Finally, you have to keep in mind that the GameStop best sellers list is likely arranged by revenue and not by the quantity of units sold. And with Battlefield V dropping map packs, fewer people are going to spring for the $80 deluxe edition. But I bet plenty of people are still getting the $100 Digital Deluxe, the $130 Deluxe Enhanced, or the $150 Collector's Edition of Call of Duty. That's going to drive the average sales price up for each copy sold. Now, each of those SKUs are separate entries on the GameStop list, but they will be weighted heavier because of their price. But yeah -- you can kinda already see how difficult it is to treat the GameStop best sellers list as an apples-to-apples comparison platform.

 

Now, I'm not saying that Battlefield V is setting the world on fire. But it's not going to bomb. It is doing fine, and DICE is scrambling to get more people excited through the beta and beyond.

 

Edit: If you're looking for my credibility on this. I'm the guy who reported that Battlefield V was going to WWII and would have battle royale months before the announcements.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/01/new-battlefield-2-follows-call-of-duty-back-to-world-war-ii-this-year/

https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/18/dice-battlefield-v-battle-royale/