Hitman (2016) sells badly

[STiFU]

I am not a fan of episodic releases because it always goes like this: I get hooked and play a lot, but then the rest of the episodes is not released yet, so I have to wait a month or two... But THEN I am busy all of a sudden, so more months pass, and I never finish the game because at that point, it's just hard to get back into it. That's why I didn't start the new Hitman, yet, although it's my favorite game series. I want to fully deeply enjoy it without forced longterm-breaks! :-)

 

Anyway, I was wondering whether their system works at least, seeing that I want the series to succeed and never ever stop, so I started reseraching! Well, now I am quite afraid that it actually might stop because I found out that Hitman sells REALLY BAD. Here is a quick article from april about it. I mean, there is still hope that there are many people like me, who just wait until it's all released and then go for it, but still, I bet they regret their decision going for episodes. If you want more recent stats, you can check out the site steamdb.info, which is a very intersting tool in general by the way. There you can check out the steam stats of any game, e.g., how many people own it etc. Comparing Hitman with Hitman: Absolution looks really worrysome. Hitman only sold only 10% as many copies on steam as Absolution. Let's just hope for the best. Fingers crossed!

[Obsttorte]

Yeah, that episodic stuff is really a strange decision, and something I never understood. I want to play a whole game, not just one mission. That's the reason for me that I didn't bought it either. I mean, from what I've seen it looked pretty cool and once they sell all missions altogether, I guess I would buy it. But buying each mission seperately is a nogo for me.

[jaxa]

The game was so stealthy nobody bought it.

[Goldwell]

And because the game has denuvo and therefore hasn't been cracked yet, they can't pull the old "it was piracy" trope.

 

I really want to see another hitman game but this time a whole game and not fragments.

Edited October 7, 2016 by Goldwell

[V-Man339]

And because the game has denuvo and therefore hasn't been cracked yet, they can't pull the old "it was piracy" trope.

 

I really want to see another hitman game but this time a whole game and not fragments.

Between Denuvo, the constant updates that made me feel like comparing the thing to an MMO in terms of "look at this exciting event" status and the episodic nature I just decided to buy the game when it finished development.

After Ground Zeroes sheer beauty leading into the disappointing unfinished of Phantom Pain, I'm not about to buy another part of a game only to buy the rest later.

[Cambridge Spy]

So I guess it has joined Alekhine's Gun in terms of sales...

[AluminumHaste]

Yeah, that episodic stuff is really a strange decision, and something I never understood. I want to play a whole game, not just one mission. That's the reason for me that I didn't bought it either. I mean, from what I've seen it looked pretty cool and once they sell all missions altogether, I guess I would buy it. But buying each mission seperately is a nogo for me.

 

When the only option is to either kill the project or release it in parts, which would you rather them do?

I seriously doubt the game was designed from the ground up to be episodic.

[V-Man339]

 

When the only option is to either kill the project or release it in parts, which would you rather them do?

I seriously doubt the game was designed from the ground up to be episodic.

I agree, but they launched it in such a confusing manner and as we've seen from so many projects before this sort of format only really takes off in narrative, visual novel basis format more often than not.

[Deadlove]

Releasing games by means of different installment over periods of time is a growing market trend. Music industry doing it too, with two singles, few months later, few more, by year's end, release full album (or game in this case). And of course this dramatically increases the intake of money with fans purchasing the same stuff multiple times.

[brethren]

So I guess it has joined Alekhine's Gun in terms of sales...

 

Well Hitman has sold 270,000 copies, and Alekhine's Gun has sold...3,000. So no, not really.

 

In any case, yes, I've also been waiting for all of the episodes to be released before buying Hitman, and I think there will be a big surge in sales once that happens. That final one is due out in about 2 weeks, so we'll find out soon.

Edited October 14, 2016 by brethren

[Diego]

I always liked the idea of episodic stuff, including games. But I noticed videogame has a less forgiving acclimation period. I mean, if I start playing Doom now, get halfway through the campaign and stop, a month later it's going to be harder to pick it back up than if this were a tv series. It's not just plot, I need to relearn the controls and strategies at a point of the game where they should be second nature, which makes the game harder.

 

Bottom line is, I think episodic games could totally work if they kept in mind the player hasn't played for a while. The difficulty curve should be self contained in each episode.

[teh_saccade]

Because they've release it too quickly after the last one, using money-grubbing sales techniques that are usually reserved for bollix such as Ubisoft.

Totally killed the franchise (slowly, the gaming industry) - good job, generation-X.

The only people as far as I'm aware, who are making good games in episodes are Telltale - where you buy the series for a single price, and they release the episodes, neatly packed into a single launcher.
(eg, Jurassic park, walking dead, wolf among us, tales from the borderlands, batman, etc...)

When they used to do it so it was a new item each time (eg, bone, wallace and gromit, strongbad, monkey island, back to the future or sam n max, which was 18 episodes) it kinda sucked because it was 18 icons to play the game.

Now it's only one, it's fine - nice and neat and easy to carry on playing from one episode to the next. WITHOUT having to pay an additional £15 to "unlock" content that your machine has downloaded automatically, that you cannot access until you pay £15.

Elite and Arma3 now kinda suck because of this "we're gonna download all the stuff and you can't play it unless you pay for the game again, while waiting overnight for 30gb to download before you can play the game you already own and fill up your SSD...".

Oh - on the subject of SSDs...

The copy protection that is used by new Hitman - Denovo or whatever...

After about 160 hours' of gameplay, the data transfer due to the constant encrypt/decrypt of files is more than most SSD manufacturer's warranties will cover - so... It's not very good for your hard drives.

That's one reason I'm sticking to Contracts - the leaked alpha for hitman wasn't that much different to the last one anyway - it simply had more people and a bigger area. Was still limited and corridor like with "multiple options" that were more restricted than the first few games of teh series, where you could do wtf you wanted.

It's like the difference between Thief 2, where you can climb and rope arrow anything and Thi4f, where you can't climb anything and can only rope arrow those white bits.
Even on super-hard mode, that game is too easy. It's a corridor with "a few other pathways".

Call of Duty: Hitman/Thief/Assassin's Creed edition - next installment in less time than it takes us to make the game.

Makes me despair, it really does...

[STiFU]

Bottom line is, I think episodic games could totally work if they kept in mind the player hasn't played for a while. The difficulty curve should be self contained in each episode.

That, however, would make the game boring to someone who plays all episodes in direct succession, and seeks a little challenge. Some formats might work better, as teh_saccade already pointed out, but everything skill based is very tricky.

[Diego]

 

That, however, would make the game boring to someone who plays all episodes in direct succession

Good point.

[V-Man339]

Good point.

This is honestly why I think only visual novel style low-skill episodics work.

You can't simply set aside something for another month and hope people come back and enjoy it.

 

I'll personally be buying Hitman on sale as a game of the year package, once I'm assured of its quality.

I can only hope it doesn't have difficulty curve issues or late-game quality drop.

Edited October 17, 2016 by V-Man339

[STiFU]

The final episode is scheduled to be released this halloween. So fellas, time to show our support! :-) It's on sale right now on steam, 10%.

[brethren]

FYI, the game is on sale now on Steam for half price (30 bucks) - that gives you all six episodes. But only for another 24 hours or so.

 

I'm probably picking up the PS4 version - also on sale right now for $36 through 11/29.

[Bikerdude]

yeah, I saw that also.

[Diego]

I almost got it on this sale. But the internet DRM thing sounds really annoying. I'll wait some years, maybe they'll drop this nonsense.