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Paul Vebber -> (7/10/2002 8:30:25 PM)
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There are a number of reasons for keeping mum on sales figures.
One is of course competitive. Releasing numbers tends to invite inflated figures from competitiors and things like "retail equivalent" sales some folks have quoted and basically nobody knows "ground truth" anyway. It tends to get out of hand.
Another is the "self fulfilling prophesy" where a game off to a slow start dies becasue "if sales are that low it must be a lousy game". Again inviting sales inflation.
I think there is also an elemnet of pride in companies in general not wanting to admit that sales tend to be rather low.
There are retail data collectors that collect sales figures from retail. and I've seen those over teh last several years, and something like 2/3 of what we would consider "warames" sold under 1000 copies - though many were well past their prime.
Only a handful surpass the "10,000" barrier that has equated generally with "success" and only a handful in the history of computer wargaming have broken 50k. Generally you need in the range of 1000-2500 to "break even" though that depnds greatly on what your definition of "break even" is... TO fully recoup the time invested at a "market rate" takes 10's of thousands sold, to simply recoup the physical cost of a CD and packaging probably less than 1000, but if you factor in maintaining the website and all the business expenses, you probably need to be at the upper part of that breakeven range "on average". But that basically doesn't "make you any money" just allows you keep the business end in the black, at those sales figures the folks actually making the game are "working fro free". "Making a living" rates mean sales well into 5 figures. COmbat Mission is probably the only game that is bordering on that realm in the past few years.
As to how UV is doing, we obviously hope to breach the 10k barrier and go higher, but have a long way yo go to get there. Sales have been in line with our expectations, if perhaps a bit on the low side, but there are good days and bad days. The trend so far seems to be "a good thing".
From watching patch downloads one can get a general feel within +/- a factor of 2-3. Though for UV "auto patching" doesn't count so the patch figures there are only those that manually download it.
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