Did Dragon Age: The Veilguard undersell or face unrealistic expectations?

This isn’t the primary time I’ve written a couple of online game that seems to have been despatched out to die, and I predict it won’t be the final. The newest sufferer of the enterprise is Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which, after all, was one of many topics of Digital Arts’ third-quarter earnings name on Tuesday with CEO Andrew Wilson.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard garnered 1.5 million gamers in its first two months after launch, in keeping with EA — half of what firm higher-ups anticipated in that window (or maybe the higher phrase is wanted, primarily based on the sport’s finances). Along with being accessible to buy outright, Veilguard was additionally accessible through a $16.99/month subscription to EA Play Professional, and that 1.5 million would come with these gamers, so the precise variety of models offered will not be identified.

“With a view to escape past the core viewers, video games must immediately connect with the evolving calls for of gamers, who more and more search shared-world options and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives on this beloved class,” Wilson mentioned on the decision. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was nicely reviewed by critics and those that performed. Nonetheless, it didn’t resonate with a broad sufficient viewers on this extremely aggressive market.”

Many have zeroed in on the “shared-world options” a part of this quote, with some suggesting that Wilson is blaming Veilguard’s failure to hit gross sales targets on its lack of live-service components. “Shared-world components” would have been misplaced in Veilguard, to make sure. However the half I’m fixated on is that final half, when Wilson mentioned that Veilguard “didn’t resonate with a broad sufficient viewers on this extremely aggressive market.”

It’s no secret that 2024 was an enormous yr for RPGs. And all of these RPGs had the debatable misfortune of following within the footsteps of the surprising juggernaut that was Baldur’s Gate 3, which offered 2.5 million copies after coming into early entry in 2020; since absolutely launching in 2023, it has offered 15 million copies and remains to be in Steam’s high 20 most-played video games. Andrew Wilson will hear no argument from me concerning the “extremely aggressive market” for RPGs. That might have been a steep uphill climb for the builders of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

However the Veilguard workforce had already been climbing uphill for years earlier than the sport hit the market. It confronted a number of redesigns, a number of high-profile departures, and employees layoffs over the course of its 10-year growth. The mere proven fact that this sport took a decade to make would possible have prompted its prices to be much more important than these of the opposite RPGs with which it was competing for gamers’ consideration in 2024. To cite Bloomberg reporter (and my good friend) Jason Schreier in his current article about skyrocketing online game prices: “To know why video-game budgets have grown so quickly, you need to perceive the place that cash is definitely going: paying individuals’s salaries. […] So if in case you have 300 staff and also you’re estimating $20,000 a month for every one (obtained to pay good wages to compete in 2025), you’re spending $72 million a yr.”

We don’t know the precise salaries for all the staff who got here and went over the course of Veilguard’s growth, however it appears honest to say that its finances possible ballooned throughout its lengthy, tumultuous manufacturing.

For additional comparability: Metaphor: ReFantazio had a equally lengthy growth cycle, having first been introduced in 2016. Final October, writer Sega introduced that it had offered 1 million copies of the sport. Not so completely different from Veilguard’s numbers, besides it wasn’t thought of a failure!

Let’s go to a different instance: the gross sales of Last Fantasy 7 Rebirth, about which Sq. Enix higher-ups have been tight-lipped. This was a sequel, so the comparability may not really feel solely honest, however it is from 2024, so it was undoubtedly competing for gamers’ consideration alongside these different RPGs. Rebirth had a four-year growth cycle and has been extensively described as underperforming after early estimates positioned it at 2 million copies offered. (FF7 Rebirth lately got here to Home windows PC through Steam and seems to be doing fairly nicely there, however we’re solely speaking about early gross sales numbers right here.)

One other 2024 RPG, Dragon’s Dogma 2, took 5 years to develop. This sport was thought of an enormous success for Capcom, promoting 2.5 million copies in its first 11 days post-release. The sport ultimately hit a milestone of three.3 million in October 2024, however primarily based on EA’s metrics and expectations as shared in its earnings name, these early numbers are key.

Yet another! Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth took three years to develop, and it offered 1 million models in its first week, in keeping with a proud information launch describing it because the “fastest-selling title within the sequence.”

So why would Veilguard be thought of a failure by comparability? When it comes to participant numbers, as our closest approximation of models offered, it’s within the ballpark of what one may anticipate of the opposite RPGs launched in the identical time interval on the $69.99 worth level. The Metaphor: ReFantazio comparability appears significantly telling to me, particularly given its eight-year growth timeline. Once more, we are able to’t see below the hood when it comes to how a lot these builders’ salaries really are costing. However we do know that Metaphor hasn’t even managed to garner as many gamers as Veilguard up thus far, and after I Google the phrases “Atlus layoffs,” all I can discover is this text from 2024 about how the studio raised its staff’ salaries.

The Dragon Age sequence was, traditionally, profitable sufficient to set excessive expectations for Veilguard — so let’s think about these numbers. Dragon Age: Inquisition arrived in 2014 to a really completely different online game panorama with completely different prices. It did additionally go on to be the best-selling BioWare sport of all time, ultimately hitting 12 million models — a mega-blockbuster. EA by no means launched the sport’s early gross sales figures, solely describing its launch as “profitable.” If we go additional again, Dragon Age 2 offered 2 million models in its first two months post-release.

All this to say, EA CEO Andrew Wilson and the remainder of EA management didn’t simply anticipate Dragon Age: The Veilguard to promote on par with the inevitable competitors, and even barely above common. They anticipated it to be an enormous, speedy hit — they usually didn’t simply anticipate it, they budgeted for it. Regardless that all the yr of different comparable RPGs main as much as Veilguard proved the unlikelihood of this, these expectations didn’t change. After which, unsurprisingly, Veilguard failed to satisfy them.

And so, despite the fact that the sport carried out simply in addition to it ordinarily would have for the kind of sport that it’s and the time interval by which it was launched, BioWare nonetheless obtained hit with post-release restructuring and layoffs (the workforce dimension is estimated to be simply 100 individuals now) as a result of Veilguard wanted to be not only a success, however an enormous success. And it wanted to change into that profitable in a yr that additionally had a number of different superb RPG releases previous it. And it wanted to try this after having one of the infamously tortured growth cycles I’ve heard about in my whole journalistic profession.

Possibly the sport didn’t resonate with a broad sufficient viewers on this “extremely aggressive market.” However extremely aggressive expectations look like an plain issue, too.

Correction: EA’s press launch about its Q3 FY25 outcomes states that Dragon Age: The Veilguard “engaged roughly 1.5 million gamers through the quarter,” however didn’t state what number of models have been offered. This text has been corrected to account for this distinction between models offered and participant numbers.