4 ms·

"Quake wasn't a commercial success, Quake2, Quake3, Doom3 and Rage neither (that's why ID software has been bought)" Do you have actual sales numbers to back t

"Quake wasn't a commercial success, Quake2, Quake3, Doom3 and Rage neither (that's why ID software has been bought)" Do you have actual sales numbers to back that up or is this based on anecdotal evidence, or is it just because you didn't like the games as much :)? Publicly available internet numbers show that Doom 3 sold 3.5 million, and even Rage sold 2.31 million, making Doom 3 extremely profitable and probably putting Rage a little higher than break even given the long development time and much larger team size. Two of the Quake games are listed on wikipedia's top selling PC games and sold 1.7 and 1 million. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_g...) Although none of these numbers are 100% accurate unless they are wildly off I wouldn't call any of id's games except Rage unsuccessful.

klodolph 14y ago
Don't forget licensing. On the top-selling games are other games which are based on the Quake/id Tech source code: 3 Half-Life games, 2 Counter-Strike games, and American McGee's Alice. I'm sure only a small percentage of Half-Life 2 code can still be traced to its Quake roots, but it's still some impressive technology. (Alice is a little more obviously derived from Q3A.)
- FredBrach 14y ago
  You forget the Call of Duty engine which is, if I'm not wrong, still made of Quake engine code... Sure, others made trully successful games with their technology. Others, like Valve, actually did the video games history since the 2000's. ID not. I'm sorry for that, but it seems to be true.
  - klodolph 14y ago
    You seem to be arguing that id Software's games since around 2000 haven't been very good... but I'm not sure why, since nobody here is really disagreeing with you on that point. The argument here is that lots of successful games are buggy, and id Software's games aren't buggy. Trying to run BioShock on my computer is a nightmare (you have to mess with compatibility settings, and even then you get no sound at all). When I played Fallout 3 it crashed about once every few hours of play time, and that was late 2012 with no add-ons -- 4 years after the game's release you'd expect patches to address things. Bethesda has a kind of reputation for releasing buggy games, it seems.
FredBrach 14y ago
Do you have actual sales numbers to back that up or is this based on anecdotal evidence, or is it just because you didn't like the games as much :)? Oh I've always liked ID Software and I still do. But anecdotal evidence show that it's been a very long time that they haven't made a trully hugely successful and highly regarded title. Doom 3 sold 3.5 million, Rage sold 2.31 million, Two of the Quake games are listed on wikipedia's top selling PC games and sold 1.7 and 1 million Even if these numbers were real, they wouldn't correspond to trully hugely successful and highly regarded title. For example: Minecraft[1] sold 7 millions of java copies. The Call of Duty series sold more than 50 millions copies. The startcraft series sold more than 10-15 millions copies. A hit today is 5-10 millions copies per platform. Compared to the 2 millions of Rage, there is a huge gap. [1] http://www.minecraft.net/ http://www.minecraft.net/
- Impossible 14y ago
  You're comparing them to a handful of the most successful games of all time. Yes id hasn't produced the best selling games of all time, but overall their games have been successful. Even comparing Minecraft's 7 million copies to Quake's 1.7, you need to consider that Quake sold most of those copies at a much higher price point. Mojang (at this point) is also larger than id was up until Doom 3. I'd not arguing that id is still a dominant force in the industry (they aren't), but calling all of their games after Doom commercially unsuccessful is a little extreme. Your definition of a hit being 5-10 million copies per platform means the only hit game is Call of Duty. If an average AAA title sells 5-10 million total it is wildly successful, and 2-3 million is usually still profitable or at least breaking even.

klodolph 14y ago

Don't forget licensing. On the top-selling games are other games which are based on the Quake/id Tech source code: 3 Half-Life games, 2 Counter-Strike games, and American McGee's Alice. I'm sure only a small percentage of Half-Life 2 code can still be traced to its Quake roots, but it's still some impressive technology. (Alice is a little more obviously derived from Q3A.)

FredBrach 14y ago
You forget the Call of Duty engine which is, if I'm not wrong, still made of Quake engine code... Sure, others made trully successful games with their technology. Others, like Valve, actually did the video games history since the 2000's. ID not. I'm sorry for that, but it seems to be true.
- klodolph 14y ago
  You seem to be arguing that id Software's games since around 2000 haven't been very good... but I'm not sure why, since nobody here is really disagreeing with you on that point. The argument here is that lots of successful games are buggy, and id Software's games aren't buggy. Trying to run BioShock on my computer is a nightmare (you have to mess with compatibility settings, and even then you get no sound at all). When I played Fallout 3 it crashed about once every few hours of play time, and that was late 2012 with no add-ons -- 4 years after the game's release you'd expect patches to address things. Bethesda has a kind of reputation for releasing buggy games, it seems.

FredBrach 14y ago

Do you have actual sales numbers to back that up or is this based on anecdotal evidence, or is it just because you didn't like the games as much :)? Oh I've always liked ID Software and I still do. But anecdotal evidence show that it's been a very long time that they haven't made a trully hugely successful and highly regarded title. Doom 3 sold 3.5 million, Rage sold 2.31 million, Two of the Quake games are listed on wikipedia's top selling PC games and sold 1.7 and 1 million Even if these numbers were real, they wouldn't correspond to trully hugely successful and highly regarded title. For example: Minecraft[1] sold 7 millions of java copies. The Call of Duty series sold more than 50 millions copies. The startcraft series sold more than 10-15 millions copies. A hit today is 5-10 millions copies per platform. Compared to the 2 millions of Rage, there is a huge gap. [1] http://www.minecraft.net/ http://www.minecraft.net/

Impossible 14y ago
You're comparing them to a handful of the most successful games of all time. Yes id hasn't produced the best selling games of all time, but overall their games have been successful. Even comparing Minecraft's 7 million copies to Quake's 1.7, you need to consider that Quake sold most of those copies at a much higher price point. Mojang (at this point) is also larger than id was up until Doom 3. I'd not arguing that id is still a dominant force in the industry (they aren't), but calling all of their games after Doom commercially unsuccessful is a little extreme. Your definition of a hit being 5-10 million copies per platform means the only hit game is Call of Duty. If an average AAA title sells 5-10 million total it is wildly successful, and 2-3 million is usually still profitable or at least breaking even.