Rome 2 Wishful thinking of SEGA & CA and the reality - last content update: 02.10.2014

[alQamar]

Annual Report is this. Not this.

The quote you provide doesn't indicate that the sales figures of Rome II was a disappointment.

no it does not it was directed to the whole packaged games section. But there haven't been a lot of releases aside Rome 2. We need to wait for the September 2014 report to get a new clue on things. March is very long ago.

[Huberto]

Annual Report is this. Not this.

The quote you provide doesn't indicate that the sales figures of Rome II was a disappointment.

1.) Your first link is mistakenly to the annual report for the year ended March 31,2013. The correct year to look at is for the year ended March 31, 2014.

This is what the company has to say in its financial report for the full year ended March 31, 2014:

Consumer Business

In the consumer business, although the Group launched multiple titles including “Total War: ROME II” and “Football Manager 2014” in the packaged game software field, sales were low due to the harsh market environment.

2. This quote demonstrates that SEGA was disappointed with "low sales" in its packaged software segment, which we learn elsewhere in the annual reporting was led by TWR2 with 1.1 million sales. Ergo, TWR2 did not buck the low sales trend. If Rome 2 had bucked the trend, one would expect to read:

In the consumer business, despite strong sales of the newly launched title "Total War: Rome II," overall Group sales were low due to the harsh market environment.

Indeed, SEGA names some specific games that are doing very well in the consumer business

In the field of digital game software for mobile phones, smartphones, and PC downloading, performance remained favorable for the online RPG “PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2” as well as titles for smartphones, “Puyopuyo!! Quest” and “CHAIN CHRONICLE.”

No self respecting corporation would pass up the opportunity to tout a sales success from a new release if it was material. And since TWR2 was mentioned -- it's material.

Got it now?

[PointOfViewGun]

1.) Your first link is mistakenly to the annual report for the year ended March 31,2013. The correct year to look at is for the year ended March 31, 2014.

This is what the company has to say in its financial report for the full year ended March 31, 2014:

2. This quote demonstrates that SEGA was disappointed with "low sales" in its packaged software segment, which we learn elsewhere in the annual reporting was led by TWR2 with 1.1 million sales. Ergo, TWR2 did not buck the low sales trend. If Rome 2 had bucked the trend, one would expect to read:

In the consumer business, despite strong sales of the newly launched title "Total War: Rome II," overall Group sales were low due to the harsh market environment.

Got it now?

It's not mistakenly linking to 2013 annual report. There is no 2014 annual report, yet. You told me that I wasn't reading the annual report right, remember that?

None of what you read does not indicate that SEGA was disappointed with Rome II. I'm ignoring the fact that you're still looking at a seemingly non-official document. Not a 2014 annual report. The 1.13 million copy sold number is for only North America and Europe as I said before as well. In fact, of all the game sales figures they seems to give Rome II has the highest. The closest title follows behind with a 340 thousand gap. The statement you seem to be relying on does not label Rome II as a disappointment but explicitly points at harsh market environment.

[Huberto]

None of what you read does not indicate that SEGA was disappointed with Rome II. I'm ignoring the fact that you're still looking at a seemingly non-official document.

That "seemingly non-official document" is SEGA's self-published financial report for the year ended March 31, 2014 with audited financial statements and a discussion of operations by the CEO.

[PointOfViewGun]

That "seemingly non-official document" is SEGA's self-published financial report for the year ended March 31, 2014 with audited financial statements and a discussion of operations by the CEO.

How about you give me the link to the document? While at it provide the link of the page the report was published from.

[the_eye]

You're not reading the annual report right.

Actually in looking at the annual report it's very clear that SEGA Sammy sees TWR2 as a sales disappointment. Looking in the business segment that counts TWR2,, Mr. Satomi said:

Rome II was this segment's biggest release of FY 2014.

I guess you missed FY Ending March 2014 Interim Results Presentation:

Sales of Packaged Game, “Total War: ROME II” are solid

[alQamar]

taken from the complaint thread (thanks to TWC user Didz) this one show imho how many people dropped to play the game very very early. Interestingly the amount of hours played among those who took the TW survey shows the exact opposite (to be released soon), so we may assume people that took the survey are part of the 23.6 and 2.3 % of players (from all players that bought the game).

[alQamar]

Hello everyone,

I am picking up this thread again to report about the latest developments in Rome 2 and the daily player peaks.

There is no way round to say that the Emperor Edition was a success not only in terms people say the game is now in a state which is more acceptable but also regarding the amount of players playing the game.
The September, and so Rome 2 1st anniversary since its release was a very good month. It set new records, not saying breaking old ones but no doubt we saw a massive gain on the popularity on Steam and also on metacritics.

On the other hand we have to take the given peaks with a grain of salt.

We have to admit, that the release of the Empire Edition was not solely the reason for gained peaks we can see now. We also had 75% discounts on TW including Rome 2 incl. the DLCs, as well as a free to play weekend in the last week of September. From the given figures (OP) we can see that during the free to play weekend we reached a level we have not seen for many many months (35k players the same time, which is twice the normal amount on a weekend).

During the release week of the EE and in the time after that free to play weekend, the amount of players was comparingly higher than in the previous weeks: +7k players or +46% due to and since the EE release.
In the meantime the EE also managed to set a new score on the metacritics user rating, granting the game set a new level of positive ratings compared the negative ones. Based on the reduced amount of neutral reviews we also know people changed their opinion from a neutral view to a positive or either negative one. In the past 2 weeks the user score on metacritics climbed from 4.0 to 4.1 this looks quite minor but based on figures (22 new positive reviews compared to 8 new negative and 2 new neutral reviews) this is also a turning point.

The overall figures after the free to play weekend does not look very promising and more as if the September peak (below) was an exception. It is very much visible that the effects we had are cooling down again as there is a same massive drop on a similar level of activity we had before the EE.

---

Personally I am not sure if it does make sense to maintain this thread in the future on a monthly basis as I think the issue of Rome 2 might now have run its course, now that we can expect TW: Attila in a few weeks. It could be more interesting to see whether this overhaul / mod campaign based on Rome 2 and the same engine will develop in this subject and if it will also loose so many players at the beginning. I am quite sure that our fellows the_eye and also wangrin might follow up this too and feed this point and comparison with their own views and charts.

Regardless, I would like to say thank you to everyone which was involved in this thread, especially wangrin for adding his stuff and the_eye for adding more (mathematically and statistically) relevant details in his own threads, but also all you readers and everyone who commented this work. I do very much agree on the point that the OP now does not fit and feed the subject of this thread very much, however till today I thought it would be good to show some persistance once I started to beat the horse back in the past.

I hope very much you enjoyed following up my thread, the figures and graphs. Thanks for your reps so far and again thank you for reading and following the thread till today

yours,
al Qamar

Here is the latest one for September 2014

remark for random readers:
*EE = Rome 2 Empire Edition

[Dynamo11]

I look forward to looking at the stats for Attila when it comes out. Attila is a game that won't be targeted at the casual market like Rome 2 and most of the hardcore fanbase has swore not to pre-order but to wait it out and make our minds up after release. Release day could be as little 10,000 peak

[alQamar]

I don't think so that the release day peak will be 10k only. That's quite unlikely. CA changed the marketing for Attila, but in the end we do not know if they release it in February or much later, do we? So it might be a bit too early for preorder and a big campaign.
The fact they invited the gaming magazines to Horsham and hand out copies to youtubers let them have impressions still proove they take this release serious enough.

[wangrin]

Daily peaks of players and weakly variations
versus events (sales, patch and DLC)



Important events :

• 2014-09-03 - patch 15 release : maybe a minor effects during 1 week ?
• 2014-09-16 - Emperor Edition release : massive effect (+50% players on a daily basis from week to week) during the first days after release
• 2014-09-25 to 29 - Steam sales on DLC (CiG, HatG, P&R) : massive effect (+30% on an already increased number of players) during sales

Effects quickly disappear after event.

It confirm that most effective event to increase number of players are :

1. sales
2. major DLC (those that add content and not only some units)

Sales stats from VG Chartz : as usual with these data, we must be extremely cautious, but it could be a good indicator for tendencies



The last peak could correspond to the TWR2 DLC and ETW sales from late September.
ETW peak is quite surprising for its intensity.

[the_eye]

I'd be interested to know how you think the launch of Civilization: Beyond Earth compares to Rome II (launch week graph linked) since it seems to be losing peak player count at least as fast as Rome II did, if not faster, despite having a nearly 50% better metacritic user score.

[alQamar]

Greetings, the_eye. Yeah. I noticed that the start of the new Civ went quite strange! there was a small peak a drop and then a big peak. Just as if this was related to the time zones and delayed availabillity. Do you know what I mean.

Comparing Civ 5 and the new Civ surprinsingly they increased the sales / peak on day 1. Even more interesting. While the new Civ peaked in a new record, the amount of Civ 5 players stayed the SAME as if it was usual day. Very strange and unexpected for me though. I expected to see a drop of Civ 5 and peak of Civ BE on the day 1, but it wasn't.

I am going to release another monthly update for this thread guys on the 3rd November but then I will retire myself from this thread as talked earlier.

[alQamar]

Greetings TWC readers,

this will be my last submission and update on this thread for a longer while. Maybe I will come back to compare the charts of Rome 2 with Attila. So far the good anticipation among the community will make a comparison worth, as it seems to be better anticipated so far, compared to Shogun 2.

Rome 2 had a story of up's and downs. As a final verdict I may say, that the participation or better said the long term participation of the players playing the game seems to be limited to a comparatively very small but firm fanbase (about 13.000-15.000 players peak a day)

A look on the October figures makes clear that Rome 2 is not able to attract and maintain a larger fanbase and to make them addicted to the game, to make them play it every day or at least on the weekends. The advantages we got since the relaunch namely the Emperor Edition are not fully gone yet but the trend is pointing downwards to the original amount of fans which are playing the game (or launching it for mods or machinimas).

Having clean circumstances, so without any events like discounts, free weekends or other sales, no patch and no DLC was ever able to attract more people to the game, which is sad enough, because CA did invest a lot of ressources downwards the street we walked together in the past 60 weeks! Only the Emperor Edition (patch 15.x) forms an exception to this rule.

The turnaround CA managed in matter of the user's /player's opinon can be seen more on metacritics rather than on the Steam active player stats and peaks.
On metacritics AND Steam the reviews for Rome 2 are now sustainable positive and it was also visible that some people changed their negative reviews into more positive ones. Especially in the last week it was measureable that this happened as we had a small loss on negative reviews.

[alQamar]

my final verdict:

- Rome 2 lost a lot of active players since release (about 86% of the original peak), no efforts done by CA were ever able to compensate this. On the other hand we have to admit that it is a very rare happening that a game can actually have more players at a later time than it had on the original release day. Civ 5, Dota 2 and some other games are the exception here.

- Despite all the lost players CA managed to improve the game and made it more playable and enjoyable. The only disappointing thing is, it took a whole year to reach that point.

- The many patches and DLCs never managed to let the people come back to the game in a bigger scale. In opposite we are talking a minority of people that came back to the game and played it for a longer time. The highest peak after the release was 33k on a day because a free to play weekend. Which is not even 33% of the original amount of people that launched the game on day 1.

- Seen from this point of view the game is still not a success, while it was commercially for SEGA and CA, the fans which abandoned it, were quite firm in their decision not to come back to the game.
The original question asked by Dr. Sane "why Rome 2 has failed" was answered in the beginning and probably in the first month after release.
No efforts done by CA were able to fix the wounds. We can only hope CA learned from that disastrous release and will never repeat this story again. In February we might see the answer when TW Attila will arrive.

I suspect Attila will not fail again, most of all because it is not a new but an evolved game from Rome 2. It should be grown up on release.


That's it so far. Farewell Rome 2. Thanks to everyone which supported me to post here for over a year! Especially wangrin and the_eye, who both added great charts and excellent quality analysis to the topic in general. Thanks to everyone who followed this thread for this long long time.

[VanGoth]

my final verdict:

- Rome 2 lost a lot of active players since release (about 86% of the original peak), no efforts done by CA were ever able to compensate this. On the other hand we have to admit that it is a very rare happening that a game can actually have more players at a later time than it had on the original release day. Civ 5, Dota 2 and some other games are the exception here.

- Despite all the lost players CA managed to improve the game and made it more playable and enjoyable. The only disappointing thing is, it took a whole year to reach that point.

- The many patches and DLCs never managed to let the people come back to the game in a bigger scale. In opposite we are talking a minority of people that came back to the game and played it for a longer time. The highest peak after the release was 33k on a day because a free to play weekend. Which is not even 33% of the original amount of people that launched the game on day 1.

- Seen from this point of view the game is still not a success, while it was commercially for SEGA and CA, the fans which abandoned it, were quite firm in their decision not to come back to the game.
The original question asked by Dr. Sane "why Rome 2 has failed" was answered in the beginning and probably in the first month after release.
No efforts done by CA were able to fix the wounds. We can only hope CA learned from that disastrous release and will never repeat this story again. In February we might see the answer when TW Attila will arrive.

I suspect Attila will not fail again, most of all because it is not a new but an evolved game from Rome 2. It should be grown up on release.


That's it so far. Farewell Rome 2. Thanks to everyone which supported me to post here for over a year! Especially wangrin and the_eye, who both added great charts and excellent quality analysis to the topic in general. Thanks to everyone who followed this thread for this long long time.

I still don't know what you are talking about. Right now there are over 13k players online, and during the weekend it's over 19k. Given the state of the release build, which was a pure desaster, and the fact that it took CA at least 14 to 15 patches to bring some significant changes to the table, those numbers speak a clear language: The numbers of players still playing Rome 2 are insanely high and it will be hard to find examples of other games that managed something similar. How you can ignore that is still beyond me, so i can only assume that you follow some kind of agenda.

Whatever it is, keep going alQamar, the sky is the limit^^

[alQamar]

so you assume a daily peak of 13-19k is great? I think not. the_eye worked hard to find out efficient methods how many people that peak would represent. Compared to the first day its really low. I don't agree that this level of players Rome 2 reaches is really a good effort. Additionally we had times when the peaks were about 12-17k so as said the Emperor Edition still worked out. Also wangrin's charts show that the patches and DLCs alone were not the reason for people to come back to the game. Based on the amount of sold Rome 2 copies a good effort would be at least to have a daily peak of 40-60k.

The numbers of players still playing Rome 2 are insanely high and it will be hard to find examples of other games that managed something similar

Limited to some games you are quite right here. Compared to the all time stars within the Steam daily stats using the term "insanely high" seems a bit disproportionated.
And no, I do not follow an agenda. Just express my opinion here.

Have a look at Civ 5 for example which is really successful. Day 1 peak 80k - current peak during the week 35-42, on weekends 54k. The game exists for a far longer time. An the DLCs were able to attract more players and even surpassing (91k) the day 1 peak. In opposite to Rome 2 EE.

[Lord Baal]

Oh snap!

Casually I just come from the CFC forums.

[alQamar]

why it seems you feel offended mighty Baal

[Lord Baal]

Nah, just wanted to lighten the mood a little. I really don't like when people argue about this kind of stuff on the Internet. After all it's just a game. Now all that remains to see is if Attila has enough quality to redeem Rome 2.