Deus Ex: Mankind Divided flops in sales, but it uses Denuvo. Seems like Piracy was always a non-issue.

Both will still be better than FFXV

Back to the original post though...how does one game selling poorly prove that piracy has no impact on sales?

Seems like a really silly leap of logic to me. If people could pirate the game more easily, you could just as easily assume that the game would have even less sales.

@Planeforger: Thats the argument, even with the best protection, Deus Ex still preformed bad. The argument is that no matter what, piracy doesnt really effect sales. But thats untrue. I think Square Enix stated this game has to sell 3 million on each device to break even.

It does affect sales for single player games on the pc. Had they not had this protection, the pc version would have had even less sales.

@commander: I agree. It seems to be a growing concern. I dont mean to do the cliche, younger generation aint nothin but thieves...but they do like their free stuff.

Grabbed it on PC and enjoyed the hell out of it. Took me around 20 hours or so to beat, and doing most of the sidequests. Started a new game+ this weekend as well.

was always a concern and the younger generation of the eighties, nineties and 2000's also pirated games. It's also a bit understandable , adolescents mostly have less money than grownups and they also lack the empathy for the devs.

Now that empathy might be a bit misplaced, single player games are made by big companies and the console version mostly make up for enough sales. It wasn't like that in the past, a lot of devs simply gave up making games, or making games for the pc and that was simply bad for games in general, look at crytek for instance.

IF they manage to keep single player games uncrackable for months after release, this will be godsend for single player games on the pc.

@moistcarrot: because:

1- they were making a new engine.

2- eidos Montreal is a small studio and their development cycles are long.

And SCREW the sync okay? We get it, the lip sync and facial animations are lackluster but they weren't good in previous deus ex games anyway so it doesn't really matter.

@indzman: of course it will sell more and get better reviews, mass effect is much more popular and the budget for andromeda is HUGE therfore it will be more polished and get higher scores. But that doesn't mean shit because these games are completely different, comparing deus ex to mass effect is like comparing the witcher to the elder scrolls. Both are action rpg games but they're different.

I have been playing through DEUS Ex on ps4. Really slick presentation and good story. I am enjoying it

Or... Piracy could have really increased the sales. The amount of exposure you get by being easy to pirate is through the roof.

FF XV will easily destroy Mankind Divided , but Mass Effect Andromeda will be king :)

I just checked Steam and it's still sitting 4th in the top sellers list, plus it's the only full price game in the top 5, so it can't be doing that badly. I'm really enjoying it so far and it runs beautifully when you turn off contact-hardening shadows, which don't look great anyway. Never drops a frame for me at max settings, minus those shadows at 2k resolution, 60 fps, on a 1080 and it looks great.

come on. andromeda will definitely gears of war with few RPG elements. and this time it will be open world.

even invisible wars is better than any mass effect game.

Shame on you tsk tsk

I respect your opinion my friend.

See i like Deus EX 1 more than Invisible Wars or Human Revolution. Its a awesome cyberpunk rpg with totally badass soundtrack. But please stop saying its BEST RPG EVER. Its easily best amongst TOP 10, NOT in NO 1. Even ME series are not best RPG of all time, but ME 2 is certainly there amongst TOP 10 :)

Yes I agree.

Well, if Jim Sterling and his sources are to be believed, the microtransaction part was tacked on two weeks from when the game was submitted for final approval. Breach mode was also tacked on, because Square Enix higher-ups thought the game would be boring without it. The game was also supposed to be much, much larger, but was instead split into a trilogy, the second part of which has been in development alongside MD. Finally, yes, the game has to sell about 3 million to break even, because the executives keep wasting money on stupid crap, like a fake news website marketing scheme nobody even heard of.

Basically, if this is true, then this is a classic case of executive meddling motivated by fear, greed and knee-jerk reactions. Respect to the devs, then, for making a decent enough game in spite of the mountain of crap laid on their shoulders by Square Enix.

Denuvo is a safety belt. Whether you drive safely or like a maniac, a safety belt improves your chances. However, it's not going to magically make you drive better.

It's also entirely futile comparing the sales of Game A with Denuvo against sales of Game B without Denuvo, it's apples against peaches. The only way to prove one way or the other the full influence of piracy on a game's sales would be creating a time machine, going back in time and observe a game's sales over time with or without effective DRM.

However, logically speaking it's not far-stretched to say that there will always be people who:

1. Can afford a game;
2. Is interested enough in the game to spend money on it;
3. But for all intents and purposes would happily pirate the game for free instead of spending money since there are no notable negative consequences.

Anti-DRM folks will downplay the size of this group, while pro-DRM folks may overly emphasise this group. No real way to find out on way or the other unless Microsoft starts heavily spying on everyone or something (more than they already are).

And no, some flawed poll plagued with sample selection issues is not sufficient (i.e. PC Gamer magazine poll).

I really don't get the reasoning behind SE actions.

This game would've been way better received by BOTH press and players if it didn't have microtransactions, and yeah they look tacked on in the last second...

Better receptions > more players interested in buying your game > more profit... but nope let's sabotage all of that for some short term profit from Microtransactions.

SMH :(

Agreed.

Piracy has nothing to do with sales and i suggest PC Gamer's recent articles on this for those who say otherwise.

Actually all I ever needed to win any fight was a combat rifle, some cover to move around and a couple of stim packs just in case.

Square Enix ruining Eidos properties. I wish Eidos somehoe manages to become independent again from this shitty Japanese company.

@indzman: two completely different games,you can't compare them.

the game didnt look appealing unless you were a fan of the previous games.

The devs didnt do a good job trying to sell this game either.

The game had no hype here, so i'm not surprised.

pirates aren't going to buy it, they're just going to play the next game they can pirate

I think Denuvo is a good thing and people who still think otherwise are people who are trying to pirate

This game will be 20-25 by black friday.

Yep pretty much all eidos intellectual properties went to shit, including my all time favorite games like thief , hitman and deus ex. Allthough I have to admit that deus ex was (relatively speaking) treated the best. Human revolution wasn't as bad as absolution and the dark project. But let us be honest here, deus ex invisible wars wasn't very good, blood money wasn't very good, and thief III wasn't ver good either.

If mankind divided is better than human revolution then it's going into the right direction.

@kend0_kap0ni: square enix screwed the marketing, their marketing campaigns are just awful. the game has the potential to sell well and become a big franchise because it's a damn good game but the marketing is lackluster.

As I am sure it is good on xbone and even better on PC smh.

@cyboricarus: That could be it, just very poor marketing.

I blame the marketing but also I think the game shoulda looked better.

It looks like a poormans MGS5 no excuse for japanese dev to have better looking graphics by that much than a Western studio.

MGSV probably had at least twice the budget of this game.

@NathanDrakeSwag: Deus Ex Mankind Divided is estimated at 70 million. I heard Square expects 3 million on each device to break even.

MGS5 was bout same, but they were developing a new engine is why it cost so much. Square Enix is known to spend insane amounts of money on games.

Well then Deus Ex is dead as a franchise if they are expecting 9 million sales. I think 3 million on all platforms combined is more likely than getting close to 9.

@NathanDrakeSwag: 3 million total would cause them to lose millions. They need to make more then double their budget back.

Remember Zelda Wii U is most expensive Nintendo game ever and Nintendo stated that it needed to sell 2 million copies to make money. Can only imagine how much is needed to sell on PS4, etc.

@iandizion713: poor marketing and awful business practices too. jim sterling covered everything in two videos. i recommend watching them.

@iandizion713: metal gear's budget is over 100 million, dude. and it's not finished too.

@cyboricarus: Thats my bad, my info says 80million.

@ProtossRushX: lol poor man's MGS? dude graphics aren't everything and deus ex has never been about graphics and the devs focused on making a game with good art style, they didn't focus on making ultra realistic graphics. it looks good anyway and the attention to details in the areas is AMAZING, the gameplay is open ended and rewarding, the side quests are well crafted and the story is good.

@iandizion713: maybe it's 80 million without counting the amount of money that was required to make the fox engine and ground zeros.

Strange, I read this sentiment all over the internet and was thus very surprised at just how fulfilled I actually felt at the end of my 52 hours of play time. The story may not have been as broad in scope as Human Revolution or even the original but even as local as it is, it was very well told with good characters to boot

Where the story ended felt just right, especially considering the intrigue promised for future installments during the post-credit cinematic.

I wonder if there's a correlation between satisfaction and hours played. My 52 hours of playtime was exactly what I needed to gleam all of the subtle story context from the game world and experience it to it's fullest, leaving me in a state of blissful catharsis post-game. I wonder just how much attention to detail and picking up of subtle ques folks who beat the game around 20 something hours actually caught. If time spent = subtlety gleamed, no wonder folks beating the game sub-30 hours felt dissatisfied and the ending abrupt.

I was left feeling the exact opposite.

I'm with you Texas. I'm genuinely baffled by sentiments stating otherwise. Perhaps they were so caught up in comparing Mankind Divided to everything that came before that they didn't take the story beats for what they were.

Or it could also be that they weren't as methodical as they could have been in going through the game and absorbing all of the narrative, character, and story info made available. Not only did I find a wealth of literary merit in pretty much every corner of the game, the structure felt perfect to me.

What's given in Mankind Divided pulled off the difficult task of not only providing context to the events of The first game, but was a worthy follow up to the threads in Human Revolution. I'm not sure what more I could have wanted from this game (well, aside from a few less bugs lol).

Gonna have to try and get this after while, hearing good things.

its more than simply good. its excellent and as far as DeuxEx games go, its close to perfect. people bitchin' about the story are nitpicking. DeusEx:HR story was nothing special but people praised the hell out of this game. MD "may" have a worse story but better everything else with no exception. MD side quests are more interesting than everything in HR...

@silversix_: Yeah, i wasnt a fan of HR story, ive heard it praised, but i didnt care for it much. The gameplay is what i love. Had it had more/better bosses and some better storytelling, id have enjoyed it more.

Just proves how much feedback matters. A lot of people were put off by those Micro transactions and the issue with the DLC.