If it ain't broken, don't fix it, as they say. Expand it but don't "fix" it.

Anyway the TES series is certainly more popular than fallout. Personally even if I like "medieval fantasy" rpgs much more, I am a fallout fan. I love the freedom, its lore, its gore etc.

Skyrim surpassing its predecessors is a natural thing. It doesn't mean it's better necessarily. The next TES will be more popular than Skyrim. Since all TES games were good and unique they gain publicity over time, becoming one of the "must haves" for people that play games - any games. Now the number of people playing games has dramatically increased in the last few years. At the time of Daggerfall or Morrowind gaming was dramatically less popular in general.

No I don't believe Fallout 4 will sell more than 20+ million copies at all. More pre-orders than The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Sure, but ZeniMax Media Inc., Bethesda Softworks, and Bethesda Game Studios selling more than 20+ million copies? Not at all.

I have not pre-ordered Fallout 4 at all and on everything I have seen from YouTube videos and all of the information I have read up to now, I don't know if I will ever purchase Fallout 4.

I will be watching videos of people play Fallout 4 on youtube.com where we will definitely get even more information about Fallout 4. Then only then I will decide if I will ever purchase Fallout 4.

It has actually been confirmed that vgchartz.com is not very accurate.

The NPD though I hear is accurate.

I think the difference is in Steam, Fallout 3 was launched as a GFWL game, New Vegas as a Steam game, and Steam is (afaik) not available for websites like chartz.

Not sure we can count on the next TES surpassing Skyrim, because I do know of a lot of people that threw their hands up and walked away in a bitter funk after they got what they perceived as a crushing let down with the elder scrolls online thing.

A couple of them I know that used to play around in Skyrim and Oblivion all the time before that won't even play those titles anymore and at least one of them I tried to tease into FNV flatly refused to even look at it. I never actually touched it myself so I don't know 'exactly' what the deal was there, I know people that will rant about it for hours but can't really make sense of what their saying, but from a business perspective if your customer base starts to feel like that about a product for any reason then its best to step way back and give the customers time to forget about it before you try to release a new and improved version.

We have steamspy.com now. Which lets us see how many copies of every single video game sold on Steam.

Unless the video game development company or video game publishing company hid their video games from showing how many copies they sold on Steam.

Just from the Wikipedia site, NV sold more within the first month or so. After that I could not find any numbers for NV though. It surely deserved more sales as it was the better game in many respects. But yeah the Games for Windows live thing likely hurt the sales as well for Fallout 3.

I'm not sure The Witcher 3 has the lasting appeal in the long run comparable to Skyrim. Skyrim stayed for almost 4 years in top 10 played games on Steam, it's only lately that it fell on 11th. The Witcher 3 is the fresh game, the new thing, the next gen thing, had stellar reviews (both from critics and users), had a monster of a marketing campaign, and yet it has less than half of Skyrim's peak users on Steam. I doubt GOG makes a big difference in the big picture either since the console sales take the lion's share anyway.

It's also unknown to me if the PR numbers include the game keys bundled with the video cards, there were literally tons of them distributed through nvidia cards.

Skyrim wasn't perfect but it exceeded my expectations. All Fallout 4 needs is a story as good as New Vegas and a world as intricate as Skyrim, the latter shouldn't be a problem for Bethesda.

I think your answer lies in the name of the game.

Fallout 4. To many casual players (because the majority of video game players are casual) is the 4th game in a series. If they didn't play 1 or 2 or 3, then there may be some people with the mindset that 'I don't want to play number 4 if I haven't even played or heard of previous versions'.

The Witcher 3 most likely suffered a similar fate. Popular game, but could have been more popular if it was say called, 'The Witcher'.

Skyrim marketing was done really well, as to the average person this is a stand alone game. When in reality it is number 5 in a series, but it isn't market that way. Everyone refers to it as Skyrim too, not TES5.

I think this affects some games, but not others such as Gran Turismo, or Mario.

My 2 cents.

Well for starters The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold over 6+ million copies so far.

I really believe when CD Projekt RED released their next financial report that they will say The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold either 8+ million copies or 10+ million copies.

I really believe The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will sell that much by the end of 2015.

The PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold more of the gog.com version copies than the Steam version copies. Even a gog.com employee said I think it was a, YouTube video where more PC gamers are playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from gog.com than on Steam. Also said that something like 650,000+ PC gamers activated the PC version of the gog.com version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on GoG Galaxy.

I have no idea how many gog.com copies of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were activated from purchases of Nvidia graphic cards.

With all that said I think the PC version of Fallout 4 will have more PC gamers playing it on Steam since there will be no PC version of Fallout 4 sold on gog.com in 2015.

I have no doubt Fallout 4 will exceed Skyrim in total sales, just like Fallout 3 surpassed Oblivion. This will be Bethesda's biggest game yet.

I have no doubt it will murder the hell out of Skyrim......there is no chance Skyrim won't be beaten. Nobody wanted no Skyrim CEs and were available forever. Now they make tons more PipBoy editions and they sell out in under 12 hours.....Skyrim slaughtered.

I don't really care. Fallout isn't my favorite game series and at this point, I'm rather "meh" about it.

I will play the game. I doubt I'll get as much replay/continuous playing out of it as I'm getting from Skyrim.

I'm more interested in the next single player ES game.

Oh and I predict a Metacritic overall metascore of 100 hands down for Fallout 4.

I'm not sure this is the right thread for debating which game is more or less RPG and I surely didn't state that Skyrim is not an RPG, I only said that Bethesda has made concessions to the non-rpg gamers to maximize sales. Of course this is my personal perception, not fact, and is based on my experience with their last 3 installments: Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim. Various features were cut and added with each installment, but my perception is Skyrim cut mostly the mechanics that are staples for rpgs (stats like classes, attributes, birthsigns, faction disposition, relevant numbers available on the screen such as poison or buff duration, etc...) and added flashy gimmicks that are more prevalent in action and shooting games (killcams, standing stones on the go, fast gratification, hand holding and meaningless choices of race / cookie-cutter-join-today-master-tomorrow factions...).

I doubt the number of CE's sold is that relevant... except for collectors maybe? I think 99% of the buyers get the standard or digital edition, not the collector's.

Sure but more collector buyers indicates more overall interest, for every new collector there are legions of additional gamers.

It's like the snowball effect, somehow Bethesda managed to generate more and more hype for each new game of theirs, it looks like they also retain old buyers besides bringing new ones. This is probably a combination of smart marketing and delivering a certain level of quality and freedom that players are already expecvting when they see Bethesda on the box. I know many haters who can't understand how, unlike other legendary RPG makers, Bethesda not only survived so long, but is also growing. I think it's healthy business combined with a distinct vision about game design. They stay within that vision even when other games do better in specific areas.

I sure am curious whether F4 will beat Skyrim on all accounts or not, which as a (first and mostly) TES fan would mean good news, a [censored]ton of money that will go into making TES 6 and more experience with this hardware generation that will translate into more refined execution. I still hope they will license / or build a new engine, though.

I know the Voiced Protagonist may be what will prevent Fallout 4 from touching Skyrim in Total Sales and Replayability. Having a Voiced Protagonist can make playing certain builds just not workable to the Player, and I am planning on trying a SCIENCE! character.

Fallout 4 might exceed Skyrim with initial Sales, but I think the Individual Sales of DLC will be a better test of the which Game is the best overall.

I am also peeved about not getting a chance at having a Pipboy Edition

For reasons already mentioned, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

I would think that Fantasy used to have a larger following than Post-Apocalyptic, though I can't deny there have been many P-A games and movies and TV series lately. Maybe too much. But I think that FO4 will fit in with the ever growing P-A crowd. That being the case it wouldn't surprise me if it sales as much eventually. If it overall sells more I would be surprised.

As far as review scores. The professional one will be over 95% just because and can be basically ignored. Initially the player scores will also be high, but after people actually play the game the score will settle some. If they can deliver what they say and they make all these changes actually work then I wouldn't be surprised to see the players scores staying above 95%.

Alternatively, it could mean the fan base is no larger, but more dedicated. Or that the collectors edition swag was far more compelling.

Old gamers aren't dying off yet, just playing less, so the total potential market for games keeps growing. Additionally, the female gamer demographic was explosively arrived since Skyrim.

So the numbers are certainly there. We'll just need to find out if people are more into the Elder Scrolls universe or the Fallout universe

Player scores of 95%? On Metacritic? Jesus, that would mean the game is universally considered a miracle, a revolutionnary, industry changer. Otherwise the score settles somewhere between 8 and 8.5 if the game is truly good, with a lot of 0's and 10's. Bethesda has a lot of fans, but a good chunk of haters too who didn't take well the purchase and re-interpretation of the Fallout franchise, those have made a goal of their lives to bash Bethesda on every forum available and will most likely rush to give the game a 0/10 just because Bethesda ruined Fallout.