Defcon confirmed for Steam

[Leonaken]

Im going to complain about your pricing!!! Thats FAR too cheap! Im amazed. Great game, great price. Im guessing your still gonna make a nice tidy little profit?

Hopefully they can top Darwinia's performance. I mean, Darwinia barely sold before they got it on Steam, but afterwards they saw more sales performance than Uplink (which did poorly but did earn a cult status).

Good luck, Chris & Gang. As a beta test, I can tell you that you guys did a good job with Defcon and with responding to bugs, complaints, and suggestions from the community more than Valve (and Valve have typically been the high standard in the games industry until now when it comes to responding to their community). If Defcon doesn't sell well, it's not because you didn't listen to your fans.

After Defcon lands, tell us how its sold. We want to know how you guys hold up just as much as you yourselves do.

[xander]

Im going to complain about your pricing!!! Thats FAR too cheap! Im amazed. Great game, great price. Im guessing your still gonna make a nice tidy little profit? :-)

Hopefully they can top Darwinia's performance. I mean, Darwinia barely sold before they got it on Steam, but afterwards they saw more sales performance than Uplink (which did poorly but did earn a cult status).

Good luck, Chris & Gang. As a beta test, I can tell you that you guys did a good job with Defcon and with responding to bugs, complaints, and suggestions from the community more than Valve (and Valve have typically been the high standard in the games industry until now when it comes to responding to their community). If Defcon doesn't sell well, it's not because you didn't listen to your fans.

After Defcon lands, tell us how its sold. We want to know how you guys hold up just as much as you yourselves do.

Actually, now that this has been brought up, I would be curious to know how well Darwinia and Uplink have sold since their creation. I would love to see the sales numbers, especially correlated with major events (i.e. Darwinia on Steam, Uplink before/after the American publisher, &c.). Is that something that might be available in the next couple of months (by all means, get the Mac version of Defcon out the door, first).

xander

[martin]

well if you look at google trends you can see that searches for darwinia peaked late 2005:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=darwinia ... l&date=all

when did darwinia come out on steam?

[xyzyxx]

Late 2005.

[Mas Tnega]

14th December 2005.

[xander]

well if you look at google trends you can see that searches for darwinia peaked late 2005:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=darwinia ... l&date=all

when did darwinia come out on steam?

Thanks, martin. That was really helpful. Searches for Darwinia peaked in late 2005. Wow. I am amazed. That really answers my question about how many copies were sold, using what method (Steam vs. retail vs. direct from IV). I can't believe how help you are.

xander

[Moleculor]

Well, assuming that that smaller second spike is the original release of the game, and an equal percentage of people bought the game during each spike, you can safely say that exactly twice as many people bought the game when it was released through Steam as did when it was originally released.

However, we all know that buying through Steam is much easier (and therefore more conducive to 'impulse buying') than ordering a box online is, so the chances are that a higher percentage of people Googling Darwinia bought it through Steam than through Introversion's original release.

Now, I realize that none of that gives you hard numbers, and no amount of eyerolling will get you hard numbers about Steam's success. Why?

Valve seems to be sitting on their sales figures very VERY tightly. Chances are that revealing sales statistics is against contract for any company publishing through Steam.

So you'll probably never see hard numbers.

[xander]

Well, assuming that that smaller second spike is the original release of the game, and an equal percentage of people bought the game during each spike, you can safely say that exactly twice as many people bought the game when it was released through Steam as did when it was originally released.

However, we all know that buying through Steam is much easier (and therefore more conducive to 'impulse buying') than ordering a box online is, so the chances are that a higher percentage of people Googling Darwinia bought it through Steam than through Introversion's original release.

Now, I realize that none of that gives you hard numbers, and no amount of eyerolling will get you hard numbers about Steam's success. Why?

Valve seems to be sitting on their sales figures very VERY tightly. Chances are that revealing sales statistics is against contract for any company publishing through Steam.

So you'll probably never see hard numbers.

I'm not asking for hard numbers -- I am asking IV what the numbers look like, in a general sense (but in a more specific sense than "We sold more copies through Steam in the first day than through other methods in the first 8 months"). IV does have those numbers -- they know how much money they are making per copy from Valve, they know how many copies they have sold, &c. Thus, IV can provide better information than Google. Furthermore, my question was not about Darwinia alone. It was also about Uplink. Do a Google trend with Uplink. It is a fairly common word, thus you get a lot of results. Useless in terms of determining how many copies IV have sold. Google trends does not answer the question that I asked.

xander

[Moleculor]

Chances are that revealing sales statistics is against contract for any company publishing through Steam.

So you'll probably never see hard numbers.

I'm not asking for hard numbers -- I am asking IV what the numbers look like, in a general sense (but in a more specific sense than "We sold more copies through Steam in the first day than through other methods in the first 8 months"). IV does have those numbers -- they know how much money they are making per copy from Valve, they know how many copies they have sold, &c. Thus, IV can provide better information than Google. Furthermore, my question was not about Darwinia alone. It was also about Uplink. Do a Google trend with Uplink. It is a fairly common word, thus you get a lot of results. Useless in terms of determining how many copies IV have sold. Google trends does not answer the question that I asked.

xander

Let me repeat myself: Chances are that revealing sales information for Steam related sales is against the contract that Introversion signed when they started publishing through Steam, and you will most likely not get -any- sort of numbers for sometime, if ever.

[xander]

Let me repeat myself: Chances are that revealing sales information for Steam related sales is against the contract that Introversion signed when they started publishing through Steam, and you will most likely not get -any- sort of numbers for sometime, if ever.

Ah, but that is a very different answer from "Look at the Google trends." It may be possible that IV cannot release that kind of information. That is an acceptable answer. Telling me to look at the Google trend is not an acceptable answer because it (a) does not answer my question and (b) is confounded by the commonality of the work "uplink."

Furthermore, let me clarify my curiosity a bit: I am curious to know (a) how well Uplink did before Darwinia came out (these are numbers that IV should have no problem releasing -- I can't believe that there would be a contract limiting the dispersal of that kind of information), (b) how well Darwinia did before it was released on Steam, and how well Uplink did during that time (generally speaking, was there an increase in Uplink sales with the release of Darwinia), and (c) what impact Steam had upon sales of both. I would also be curious to know how both Darwinia and Uplink do after the release of Defcon.

As I said above, I am not asking about specific numbers (though I would love to see them, I understand that they are generally a secret). I am curious about general numbers, and how they relate to events in history. Chris or Tom could probably quite easily answer my questions, and do so without violating any contracts.

xander

[trickfred]

Let me repeat myself: Chances are that revealing sales information for Steam related sales is against the contract that Introversion signed when they started publishing through Steam, and you will most likely not get -any- sort of numbers for sometime, if ever.

Ah, but that is a very different answer from "Look at the Google trends." It may be possible that IV cannot release that kind of information. That is an acceptable answer. Telling me to look at the Google trend is not an acceptable answer because it (a) does not answer my question and (b) is confounded by the commonality of the work "uplink."

Furthermore, let me clarify my curiosity a bit: I am curious to know (a) how well Uplink did before Darwinia came out (these are numbers that IV should have no problem releasing -- I can't believe that there would be a contract limiting the dispersal of that kind of information), (b) how well Darwinia did before it was released on Steam, and how well Uplink did during that time (generally speaking, was there an increase in Uplink sales with the release of Darwinia), and (c) what impact Steam had upon sales of both. I would also be curious to know how both Darwinia and Uplink do after the release of Defcon.

As I said above, I am not asking about specific numbers (though I would love to see them, I understand that they are generally a secret). I am curious about general numbers, and how they relate to events in history. Chris or Tom could probably quite easily answer my questions, and do so without violating any contracts.

xander

I too would be interested in seeing them, but in the same way I'd really like to know what happened to JFK, or whether that Anastasia chick was really Russian royalty, whether the moon landing was faked, etc... There are theories, but it'd be nice to, I don't know, step out of reality for a second, and read the DVD liner notes for life sometimes.

(Maybe when IV is more firmly established as a world power, and the records aren't relative to ongoing projects anymore, they'll release the data to the community for nostalgia's sake)

[JoachimV]

would they ship to belgium?

[xander]

would they ship to belgium?

Yes.

xander

[Montyphy]

would they ship to belgium?

That would be a bit hard because Belgium doesn't exist.

[poorsod]

I'm assuming you lot make the most profit from the boxed copy. I think I will buy it, and if It's as good as I think it's going to be, I will buy a copy for everyone I know. And do the same for Darwinia. And track down Chris Delay, and kiss him. Lots. And the same for the other two members of the dev team. And buy you a real office. And things.

That's how good it looks.