First of all, not every game has to be AAA to be successful. Games with lower production costs targeted at more narrow niches can also be successful. And that's what Fallout was, it was never intended to be an AAA game.

Second of all, wouldn't you call any Blizzard game successful?

NO.
NO.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo
:banghead:
if your re make thing you destroy the building blokes of the future
always look fowards!
never back!
yes you can take the lesson from the past, but you should never re make the past
NEVER

Hasn't Bethesda said many times that they won't remake any of their old games? Sure, Fallout 1 and 2 weren't made by them, but they own the Fallout franchise now. Therefore, no remakes. Besides, the companies that made Fallout 1 and 2 differ greatly from Bethesda. No offense to Bethesda, but the game wouldn't be as good as the originals.

Prequels that tie into Fallout are going to be handcuffed by the knowledge of what the canon would indicate - so you have freedom but in the end you're certain your choices didn't matter. I'm not sure what people need prequels for anyway. Although I'd just love to see Beth take their hand to the west coast lore, heh.

maybe not a remake but even a re-release would be fun i think

The games are being re-released from time to time, and can be purchased digitally at GOG.com.

There is no chance of remakes. Interplay owns the right to F1 and 2. They whould be the only ones to do it, and they dont have the license. Buy the triology pack instead! Fo1-2 and tactics! easy.

Interplay has the rights to distribute FO1 and 2, but Bethesda could remake them if they wanted to. But they won't.

Talking bout RPGs here. and talking about risk management. There will be exceptions, as there are no sure things in the world of marketing. Yes, a low budget game would require less sales to make proper profit, but low budget games tend to sell poorly.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_Group

The group by which the entire industry swears by, and uses, sales figures. It includes every major retailer, including Amazon.com, with the sole exception of Wallmart. Do the math, Fallout 3 has not sold out of it's initial shipment, and now is off the charts. It is, in fact, the place where both Oblivion's and Morrowind's sales figures came from. Along with pretty much every other video game. In fact, it's one of Gamespot's widgets.

You also may want to refrain from citing Fallout 1/2's sales figures unless you're prepared to account for installed base, and platform's released upon. You'll need to provide accurate numbers of the total PC's capable of playing Fallout in 1997, the total number of those PC's owned by Gamers, and adjust Fallout 3's sales to account for it's 3 platform release.

As far as PC Gamer goes, it should be readily obvious that they're a pretty biased source. 2 months ago they tried to claim that Oblivion is the spirtual successor to Ultima because you can pick up a fork in both, never mind that Oblivion's not an RPG, along with many other issues with it. This month they're claiming that Bethseda's a top RPG studio, except they quit making RPG's with Morrowind. I'd expect next month that PCGamer will claim that Oblivion and Bethseda are the cure for cancer, 'cause anyone who tries to compare Oblivion to Ultima is working on making that statement.

Oh, for the record, Oblivion sold > 4 million units. Fallout 3 is barely halfway there right now.

Does anyone here truly believe that a Fallout 1 remake could be made ~at all? Imagine if Mel Brooks himself tried to remake Blazing Saddles with new actors. For that matter just look at George Lucas and the "Han Shot First" fiasco.

~Not gonna happen.


Gee, that's... That's uh... well... ya see...
~The gross market for purchasers of any and all PC titles has grown exponentially since 1997. The fact that Fallout 3 outsold its predecessors is erroneous moot unless you are talking percentages of sales. IE. Fallout N outsold Fallout Y by garnering X% of the total sales that year.

(And since Fallout 1 was only sold on the PC and Mac, its not a reasonable comparison given the 3 platform target market)

@Gatt9: Its ridiculous for anyone to point to any spiritual successor to Ultima other than Arx Fatalis (which actually is ~by design); PCGamer likely published a review that even said so too

As previously pointed out, the whole FO3 outsold FO1/2 combined argument falls flat on: Number of platforms released on, size of gaming industry then and now, number of people with PC's then and now, agressive marketing vs not so agressive marketing (the product speaks for itself), and a number of other variables people either forget, intentionally or not.

Even if you compare the sales of RPGs as a genre back in 1997, you will see that RPGs, compared to other genres of games have never sold well. Fallout 1/2 did not sell well compared to other types of games, and that trend remains today. Although the overall game market is much larger now, the PC platform continues to shrink and the combined console marktet continues to expand, in relation to each other.

So we have two trends here: RPGs perform poorly vis a vis other game types, and console games routinely outsell even the best selling PC only games. The article linked previously in this thread showed that 19% (If I remember correctly) of FO3 sales were for PC.

So, I agree that comparing FO1/2 sales with FO3 sales is generally worthless, the point was to counter the argument that FO3 has not been financially successful, which is untrue.

This argument also shows why, for financial reasons, FO3 is not a pure RPG.

Edit: No, I will not be pulled into this offtopicness :P >_<

Of course, WoW completely invalidates all of the points you make. Almost as many copies of that single RPG game sold as there are 360's. The PC market is quite healthy, what isn't healthy is the piracy rate. IIRC there was one game recently that sold only 600 copies, but was pirated several thousand times. The PC market isn't shrinking at all, give the console market a piracy rate the same as the PC market, you'll watch that die too. Give the PC market a solution to piracy, you'll see it go back to well beyond the console market.

Piracy is the issue, nothing more. As previously stated, WoW pretty clearly demonstrates that. Not every PC Gamer is playing WoW, but there's almost as many subscribers to that one single game than there are 360's.

As far as financially successfull goes, once again, depends on how you want to consider it. Did it sell 2.7 million units? Yes. Is that good? No. Why not? Because they expected sales well in excess of 4.7 million. They budgeted for sales well in excess of 4.7 million. How can you tell? Because their initial shipment was 4.7 million units, which means they expected to sell at least that many, because you always ship less units than you expect to sell by the time the product goes off the shelves. For the simple reason that any units that go unsold get credited back to the manufacturer who now has to pay disposal costs on unsold units.

So they sold less than they expected, and they're bankrolling 3 studios on Bethseda's income, with no further revenue in sight for at least 18 months or more. Since there's no announcement of any further imminent products. They'll burn through whatever revenue they did get, minus the returns from stores, at a pretty decent pace, and they'll have to adjust schedules to generate further revenue, likely forcing Bethseda to rush TES V.

So yes, it is failing. It is falling well short of expectations, and the ramifications will be felt for years. They expected to sell > 4.7 million units and they actually sold ~2.7 million before dropping off the charts.

This is just math. Figure they have 3 teams they have to bankroll, executives, hardware, software, electricity, water, sewage, rent for 3 buildings at least, maybe 4, office supplies, testing teams, off-site data storage, 'net access, cleaning crews, etc. It's a pretty hefty burn rate, and all of it is being carried by one single studio which releases only one single title year by year.

So I'm not real sure where anyone gets a win here when they didn't sell what they thought they would and now have to find a way to bankroll a whole lot of stuff for the next 18 months.

WoW is an MMORPG, not an RPG. There is a massive difference there.




Where are these numbers coming from? All we know about Beth's anolysis of their success is public comments that they are pleased about it. If you have any other information, please link. The rest of your post is pure conjecture.

Listen. Fallout 1 and 2 were and still are amazing games. Let's keep them that way. I will NOT allow them to be soiled by some half-assed remake on Bethesda or a fan's part, nor will I allow a prequel that will retcon the original games into oblivion (pun totally intended).

This sounds less like an interest in the older games and more an excuse to make Fallout 1 and 2 more tolerable for someone who clearly isn't part of the target audience that the games were originally made for. If you can't handle them, your loss, but don't have Bethesda botch the series just so it's easier for everyone else.

Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh, and this may not apply to you, but there really are people out there who could care less about the lore and whatnot and cringe at the site of a turn-based system. It's like when Bethesda took out Oblivion content so that moderate FPS gamers and console kids could play their games.


Quite true. Among forum members here (ones who have played MORE than one TES game), which is the unanimous "best" of the series? Usually Daggerfall or Morrowind. Last time I checked, Morrowind got a fair amount of praise, but not as much as Oblivion, and Daggerfall barely sold any copies - even Arena sold more.

heres my two cents your one of them kiddos in little lamplight when the bombs drop would be cool

If a prequel is done, it has to be for the series as a whole or Fallout 3. Confine it to the East Coast, please. You aren't touching my beloved New California Republic.

I'd much rather see a prequel, where you start out before the war, and the first hour or so of gameplay is in the Eternal Fifties world of pre-war Fallout. And then, the bombs fall, and it all goes to hell. You have to figure out what to do with yourself, how to survive, all that. I'd like to see a good bit of the early game involve just scrabbling for food and water and shelter from the mutants and stuff, trying to figure out which way is up again.

Things I'd like to see in a new one are, since they went so far as to have crippling happen, why not have you actually get sick sick with radiation. You should get a lot weaker, get tired, have trouble aiming, puke, all sorts of horrible stuff.