How well do game 'expansions' sell?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-04-01 08:20pm

I was wondering this the other day. What proportion of original sales do addons get? Do some addons help sell more of the 'base' game? Are there some people who just never buy addons? Do expansions ever lose money?

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-04-01 08:43pm

I believe it depends upon the popularity of the game really. Shimering Islands and Knights of the Nine are considered mandatory by even the most casual Oblivion fans. United Offensive has a roughly equal number of servers up on comparison to the original Call of Duty. Road to Rome and Secret Weapons had a very good share of servers back in the day of BF1942.

I've never met an Operation Flashpoint fan who didn't buy Resistance. Red Hammer maybe, but it wasn't out for long, nor was any advertising done.

Addons do seem to get a pretty good share of money out of original titles. Based on their popularty anyway. The decreased price on most of them may negate this.

As for selling more of a game, I don't think they do much of that. People who didn't purchase the original game the first time around seem unlikely to buy an addition to it for even more money.

(Of course the Battlefield 2 booster packs don't help these examples much, but then again, none of them were true expansion packs. They were just a great way for EA to piss off its community. Again.)

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-04-01 08:50pm

Yeah, with all this talk of Stalker and C&C addons (already planned) I was wondering if a publisher would see them as a 'risk' (throwing good money after bad) or a licence to print money. These days I've noticed addons don't stay 'addons' for long: the 'gold' edition with everything repackaged is always close behind. So maybe it's just an attempt to keep a new product on the shelves? I usually can't believe that addons cost very much (things like Oblivion are the exception).

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-04-01 09:04pm

I take it you've been browsing the GSC forums? So the rumors of an expansion are numerous? Excellent.

I don't actually go to the forums much.

I don't think developers consider their expansion a risk most of the time. They seem to come out very quickly, (development times usually lasting only a few months) indicating they are easy to produce. They may be more an example of things the devs wish they could have had in the original game, but didn't implement due to time or balance considerations. Or some people may not have liked the aspects of it. (A number of people who tried UO hated it because of the larger maps and tanks in multiplayer.)

As for STALKER, it's no risk to GSC really. STALKER is very popular currently and has been selling very well for the past few weeks. It's beaten only by C&C3 and that's mainly because of the franchise' history. Making an expansion is something any developer would do given the popularity of a franchise.

Post by **Vympel** » 2007-04-01 09:09pm

Well, Knights of the Nine was a cheap as dirt expansion- all it does is add all the purchaseable online content, and a new quest line which I finished in a few hours (I don't know if Mehrunes Razor was downloadable prior). Still, it was worth it for me because I had purchased none of the new online content. It's definitely not worth it if you've gotten all that stuff before, Knights of the Nine just isn't big enough (and the Crusader Relics, with the exception of the Sword and Mace, are weak).

Now, Shivering Isles, on the other hand- that was obviously a lot more effort. Crafting a whole new region that uses none of the landscape/trees/building etc templates of Cyrodiil, all new enemies, etc etc- definitely a great expansion.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-04-01 09:15pm

Yeah, Shivering Isles sounds like ... er... that other snowy addon for Morrowind (er, Bloodmoon? Bloodfang? Wolftown?) in that it's a large new area with a whole swag of new textures, landscapes, weapon and armour types, etc. A bit more than the usual 'add a few new units and some maps' addons you often see.

Hey, can XBOX pukes get the addons? Online downloads or something?

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2007-04-01 09:18pm

Yeah, it's on the Marketplace.

UCBooties · Post by **UCBooties** » 2007-04-01 09:47pm

Stark wrote:Yeah, Shivering Isles sounds like ... er... that other snowy addon for Morrowind (er, Bloodmoon? Bloodfang? Wolftown?) in that it's a large new area with a whole swag of new textures, landscapes, weapon and armour types, etc. A bit more than the usual 'add a few new units and some maps' addons you often see.

Hey, can XBOX pukes get the addons? Online downloads or something?

Yeah, Marketplace has it, but it looks like PC owners are getting a better deal since the Knights of the Nine DL for XBox doesn't include all the previous stuff. So if we want all the added content it's a lot more expensive. Plus, given how finicky my XBox has been lately, I'd hate to drop seventy bucks for content that will be gone forever if my system dies.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-04-01 09:58pm

Doesn't your 'gamertag' thing keep a record of paid-for stuff so you can redownload later?

Redleader34 · Post by **Redleader34** » 2007-04-01 10:06pm

It does, just to let you know

UCBooties · Post by **UCBooties** » 2007-04-01 10:06pm

It's supposed to, but I seem to recall that when Live launched there were some problems with that. I haven't heard anything about that for a while, not even rumors, so my hope is that it's all been ironed out. The flip side of it is that I am a privative plebe with an innate distrust of content I do not own in disc form.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2007-04-01 10:41pm

With STALKER and I assume larger, more ambitious games like OFP and Oblivion, a lot of content that they might include in an expansion was partially completed for the original game but cut because of time.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-04-01 10:58pm

Yeah, I'm just wondering if there are statistics available. I've always been curious what kind of uptake addons get - many get near 100% uptake, but surely that's not usual for the second-tier games? And in the case of Stalker, I wonder how THQ looks at it (since they rushed it out the door) to determine if paying for more development is worth selling an addon. Particularly considering they're not the fastest developers in the world.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2007-04-02 07:05am

Paradox developers stated several times that expansions are worth it for them and that they get almost universal acceptance among fans of the original games. Doomsday (HOI2 expansion) was a big hit, Revolutions is considered a necessity by Vicky fans, and so on.

The several month only development is not surprising considering that the engine is ready to go - the expansion is basically all content creation with the few new features thrown in on the programming side.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2007-04-03 11:40am

One that irritates me is expansions that are only available in certain regions.

Example, Mechwarrior 3:Pirates Moon, was not available seperately in the UK, the only way of getting it bar getting an import was to buy the pack that had MW3, Mechcommander Gold (another expansion that wasn't sold on its own here) and Pirates moon.

Other expansions seem to quickly disappear, the Clan and IS packs for MW4/MW:Merces, the Silent threat add on for Freespace and the Total Annihilation ones for instance.