www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
RSS Feed
Monday, June 02, 2025
Failure is relative
As any fan of the Civilization series of games, and you will hear that Civilization VII was a huge failure: On Steam the recent reviews are "mostly negative", and Steam user numbers tell us that on any given day both Civ 5 and Civ 6 have more players than Civ 7. But there is another side to that story, which isn't as obvious as it seems.
The boss of Take-Two, publisher of Civilization VII, last month said that "sales are strong", and confirmed that "We're really happy with how it's going". That isn't just corporate speak, the stock of Take-Two is up over 20% since pre-release on February 6. So, what happened? Previous iterations of Civilization were primarily PC games, with console versions existing, but often with less support, less frequent updates, and later releases. Civilization VII was on consoles on day 1, with much of the UI adapted to consoles (which is part of what the PC players hate about it). Civ 7 sold more copies on the Switch than on PC, and on the Playstation sales were even higher. Industry analysts estimate that only 17% of the sold copies of Civ 7 were on PC. Overall Civ 7 is currently the 8th best selling game of 2025 in the US, which is far from being a failure.
This shows that Steam is a platform which is surprisingly transparent with commercially relevant data of every single product they sell. Consoles are not. Every YouTuber can make a "data driven" video about the failure of Civ 7 on Steam, while the success of Civ 7 on consoles is mostly invisible to the public.
Commercially, making Civilization better on the console makes sense. To have had a "good" release on Steam, PC Civ 7 would just have had to sell two to three times more, while on consoles it sold six times more than on PC. But I am sure that Take-Two isn't happy that if you search for Civ 7 on YouTube, you get mostly videos of what a failure the game is. Maybe Firaxis should have made the two versions of the game on PC and consoles more different, instead of making a "one size fits all" game. A mouse and keyboard control is fundamentally different from a gamepad control, and PC gamers weren't happy with a simplified UI for gamepads which then lacked the more detailed information they were used to from previous UIs designed for mouse and keyboard.
On the other hand, maybe it is impossible to make a Civ game that makes both console and PC players happy. Or a Civ game that is attracting new players and satisfying for veterans. Paradox is going the exact opposite way with Europa Universalis 5, making it more detailed than EU4, and nobody dreams of making a new player friendly version that is playable with a gamepad. EU5 is a game made by Europa Universalis veterans for Europa Universalis veterans, and that limits it to PC. The crazy consequence is that if EU5 is in decent shape at launch, it will be better reviewed than Civ 7 was, while making significantly less money.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:40 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
<< Home
Newer› ‹Older
If they can't make an interface suited to PC, so be it. It may be optimistic to hope that they will eventually be replaced on PC by some of the many contenders that have lived in their shadow, but at least it cannot hurt them.
Hopefully it's another datum that may eventually make publishers understand that you can't make (most kinds of) games for everyone.
Hopefully it's another datum that may eventually make publishers understand that you can't make (most kinds of) games for everyone.
It's not a "crazy consequence". It's a fundemental misunderstanding of the function and purpose of reviewing, which is an aesthetic process, not a commercial one. A reviewer may choose to mention the financial success or otherwise of a game (Or movie, book, theatrical performance or whatever.) but only in service of the critical assessment they make of the work or performance as a whole.
A bad product of piece of art that is nevertheless commercially successful doesn't get a pass because it made its production costs back and more. Not that I'm commenting on whether Civ VII is good or bad. I've never played a Civ game in my life. If I was going to start, though, pretty much the last thing I'd want a review to tell me would be whether it had been commercially successful or not. That's information I'd expect to find in the news section of a publication, not in the reviews.
A bad product of piece of art that is nevertheless commercially successful doesn't get a pass because it made its production costs back and more. Not that I'm commenting on whether Civ VII is good or bad. I've never played a Civ game in my life. If I was going to start, though, pretty much the last thing I'd want a review to tell me would be whether it had been commercially successful or not. That's information I'd expect to find in the news section of a publication, not in the reviews.
@Bhagpuss Aren't you confusing the average Steam reviewer with Roger Ebert? I don't think there is any aesthetic process involved in a typical Steam review. It is far more a binary "did I like this game or not" expression, and a game that is liked by a lot of people is also likely to be a financial success.
I've skipped Civ7 so far, largely in part based on the bad reviews. This is after having bought every one of I-VI. Instead, I just got hooked on Old World, probably its best competitor. And it's always on sale 75% off for $10.
It doesn't run on consoles, and it's easy to see one reason why: It has the most utterly complex in-game tooltip system I've ever seen. Basically the entire "pedia" of built in in-game reference materials is at your fingertips at all times! There are tooltips everywhere for everything, tooltips within tooltips, etc. Every millimeter of every info window is littered with various tooltip hotspots. And it's all hyperlinked like a mini-browser. I swear half the game is learning where all the info is & how to find it efficiently! I don't see how you could ever have that kind of pixel-by-pixel precision with a controller. But I game on PC exclusively, maybe it can be done.
It doesn't run on consoles, and it's easy to see one reason why: It has the most utterly complex in-game tooltip system I've ever seen. Basically the entire "pedia" of built in in-game reference materials is at your fingertips at all times! There are tooltips everywhere for everything, tooltips within tooltips, etc. Every millimeter of every info window is littered with various tooltip hotspots. And it's all hyperlinked like a mini-browser. I swear half the game is learning where all the info is & how to find it efficiently! I don't see how you could ever have that kind of pixel-by-pixel precision with a controller. But I game on PC exclusively, maybe it can be done.
In other words, Civ7 is a Civ game for Super Mario audience. Civ8 is likely to include unit platforming, and it will be super hot on consoles.
Post a Comment
<< Home
