Sales figures - Where?
 

There have been a few posts of late talking about the 'success' or 'failure' of SH3 and SH4 based on the sales figures. Some have said that SH3 sold well because... and others have said that SH4 didn't sell well because... Others have compared sales figures from other titles.

I've never seen any sales figures released from Ubisoft. Could someone who has seen them tell me where the sales figures are listed please? I'd really be interested to see how well each title sells compared to others in its genre category.

Thanks!

As far as i know Ubisoft do not give out their salefigures to the public. Most statistics are usually based on sales from shops and are quite inacurate due to alot of shops not giving out salesfigures to.

I get my info from several distinct sources, some from some inside Ubisoft (not the devs), some independent of Ubi (marketing research groups), but I cannot say who. These are sources I have built over nearly ten years and I don't want to lose them. And I cannot say I know they are 100% accurate. But the different sources do have similar numbers.

SH2: ~95K
SH3: ~90K
SH4: ~50K

Those are US numbers, worldwide is something like 2X those figures.

Ubisoft did state publically a while back in a press release that the series as a whole had sold over 1.5 million units. Traditionally a simulation game was considered successful in the industry with sales of over 300,000 units. The figures Neal quotes may be full price retail ie. before releasing on budget figures? Reading between the lines on various articles it appears that the series is selling more copies in Europe than the US. Indeed SHIII reached number 3 in the UK PC charts on release and stayed in the charts for some time after, unheard of for a subsim.

Thanks Neal. I can't help wonder how much the reviews of SH4 saying 'This game clearly isn't finished' hurt the sales figures, compared to the content itself. Unlike subsim, reviews don't usually get updated with patches.

I don't think they take budget sales into account, as they sell the right to the title on to the budget company, so they get a lump sum instead. That said, the 1.5 million figures doesn't add up.

50,000 sales for SH4 . I am afraid games that are not quite up to standard and bad press makes for slow sales . I would say the torpedo has already been fired at SH5 and it looks to be a circle runner . The only thing that will save it now is for the tools to mod the damaged hull of SH5 and get it into shape .

Fascinating stuff. I wonder what that says about the UK? Maybe just that the U-boats had a lasting effect on us?

I've also seen that number (1.5 million) somewhere, but there's a big gap between that and Neal's figures. Too big, I think, to be explained by budget sales. :hmmm:

Now that SH5 is online there is no excuse for Ubi to not continue ongoing support , paid or otherwise . You can download the silent hunter 5 soundtrack on itunes .

Interesting how the buggy and unfinished SH2 sold more than SH3 ... doubtlessly because of the multiplayer sub vs. destroyer. Also may be the bad reputation of SH2 damaged SH3 later? Had more widespreaded piracy a direct impact in SH3/4 sales?

Even if unfinished, I bet that the reason that SH4 sold less was also because of it being about US subs. The myth of the grey wolves in popular culture is still much spreaded than the US boats campaign, and that shows here.

Also, Neal, do those figures for SH4 include Uboat missions??

One final consideration: If the amount of recent Sh games sold goes up to

nearly 240.000, then 1.260.000 sales in the franchise go to the good original SH 1 :rock:

Yeah... it still had some predicament in the community, it took SH3 some time to overcome the gameplay of SH2/DC, specially in MP (SP was actually much better equipped).

The press release said the series 'as a whole' which I would suspect would (should) include SH1. Neal's figures don't include SH1, possibly because it was SSI and not Ubisoft's title originally. But I think if you include those sales, the 1.5 mil # might be accurate. I think the original SH as a whole (including the expansion packs and Commanders Edition) may actually have been the biggest seller of the entire series...

Here is an interesting quote I found a whille back on the original SSI Silent Hunter by Joel Billings in the book "Interactivity in action"...

The product with the most potential for SSI is "Silent Hunter" , it's a world war ii submarine simulation, and submarine simulations sell really well. - Aces of the Deep sold a ton. Silent Hunter is an outstanding product in every way and we are thinking it may well become our all-time biggest seller.

That's quite a compliment and an eye-opener considering SSI's output at the time.

Back then , that was the case. PC games were made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. Back in the day, wargames were a good size chunk of the market. I bought almost every Gary Grigsby game SSI produced. It was a niche market.

Ironicly, technology played a big role in killing that. Better hardware allowed better graphics and sound, etc. Development costs shot up, so they had to cater to a wider audience to stay in business. It became a mass medium with all the pros and cons that goes with it.

Joel and Gary are still around. Still making great games. Still a niche market.

I wonder if those figures are US sales only, I remember EAST posting a while back that he had heard on the industry grapevine that the budget for SHIII was around 3 million dollars.

Based on the above 90K copies for SH3 x a full retail price of of $40 gives 3.6 million but only about a third of that or less would be Ubisoft's when you factor in distribution & retail. I doubt there would be a SH4 and SH5 based on those figures. And SH3 was considered a success by Ubi.

For SH1, I had read a long time ago, I believe in a Ubisoft press release announcing SH2, that SH1 had sold 300,000 units. Of course, that was a different time when the Sim market was stronger and there was no competition from consoles.


On SH3, mr. Stevens may have forgotten his little sit-down with the SH4 Dev Team:

http://www.subsim.com/ssr/sh4/sh4_interview1.php

Regarding SH4, I would also think the figures were influenced more by the theater, since in terms of game mechanics and features, SH3 and SH4 were the same. From what I have read previously, the two strongest markets for subsims are U.S.A. and Germany. I presume there is less interest in Germany for the Pacific theater.

The 1,500,000 total figure seems suspect, since after we remove the 600,000 for SH1 and SH3, that leaves 900,000 for SH2 and SH4. :o

However, even if the 1.5 milion sales figure for sh1 to 4 since 1996 is true, it is still only a blip on Ubisoft's balance sheet. Assassin's Creed 2 alone has sold 6,000,000 copies since november and Ubisoft is predicting total sales of Euros 860,000,000 (i.e. about U.S. $1.2 billion) this year.


http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/index.ph...TTBRJTI1M0Q%3D