Fallout 3 ships 4.7 million in first week

[razor512]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6200678.html

Last week's launch of Bethesda Softworks' after-the-bomb role-playing game Fallout 3 was, appropriately enough, explosive. The publisher took a victory lap today by announcing some early statistics for the game. Bethesda said that it shipped roughly 4.7 million copies of Fallout 3 around the world last week. Sales of that massive stockpile surpassed the $300 million mark.

Both of those figures stack up reasonably well with last year's release of Halo 3. Microsoft's heavily hyped first-person shooter posted sales of $300 million in its first week on analyst-estimated shipments of 4.2 million. It's worth noting that Halo 3 was an Xbox 360 exclusive, whereas Fallout 3 is available on the 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, and the installed user bases of those platforms have increased significantly in the intervening year.

Fallout 3 was released on October 28 in North America and October 31 in Europe. It may receive another sales boost in the near future, given that Bethesda has planned a Japanese launch for the game on December 4.

 

[Dekasav]

Awesome. Great to hear a quality game without new, brilliant graphics and no DRM can do so well.

Eat that, Crysis!!!!

 

[malveaux]

Heya,

It's a game that has old tech rocking it's visuals and sound (but in a good way). It's a game that took a step away from a series but holds the name, none the less, being a different group than the original creators. If Fallout3 was named something else, I don't think it actually would have received so much attention nor gathered so many sales. We're talking about arguably the best RPG series ever created on the PC--Fallout. That alone will sell copies of this game.

I'm just very pleased that all things considered, the game delivered.

Now, I'm going to go back to listening to Galaxy News Radio.

"Revolution? Vacation? Somebody fart?"

Cheers,

 

[razor512]

it is better that they used slightly older tech, because now unlike many of the gpu hungry games, more than 10 people are actually able to run fallout 3

a game will sell well if a lot of people can run it

and the game can run maxed out on a geforce 6800 (with grass distance turned down to a low setting)

the game is also very stable compared to many of the other games that came out this year

the developers optimized this game for performance as it look better than oblivion and runs smoother

and only uses around 30% cpu usage

which is great because I can play fallout 3 on 1 monitor while I have second life shown on the other monitor

 

[Dekasav]

I think I might become a Bethesda fanboy. They've just done so much good for us gamers (Non-obtrusive DRM, quality game, long play time, scalable graphics, and efficient graphics.)

 

[pr2thej]

Efficient graphics?

/points at Oblivion 90% of PC's operating at the time couldnt run it (i made that up, but its probably not far off). Even worse, the 360 used to skip frames often if you moved too fast.

Dont get me wrong, i am a total Bethesda whore, but they by no means have a perfect record.

 

[razor512]

oblivion lagged for me also but fallout 3 runs smoother than oblivion. I have both installed

 

[malveaux]

Heya,

Choosing Oblivion's engine "now" is a good move, it was a very advanced game for it's time (not that it was very long ago, but the tech race is moving so fast, a year goes by, and stuff changes big time). Modern videocards can easily handle Oblivion now. At the time Oblivion came out, it crippled machines the way Crysis does now (though even more so, becuase back then, you didn't have the hardware we have now, and hardware doesn't go up in a linear scale, our new videocards are ridiculously better than the `good' cards of Oblivion's release time).

So while Bethseda doesn't have a perfect record, since they released Oblivion and it hurt people's machines and that did affect sales/use/PR/reviews, using that same engine now is a good move. It's still a great looking engine and game. But we have the benefit of a few years of major GPU advances which makes the game butter to run.

I picked up my 8800GT, old as it is, for cheap this year. It gobbles Oblivion and Fallout3 alive. Back when Oblivion came out, my Geforce4 at the time couldn't even play it because it lacked shader support and only a hacked up version of the game could even be ran (with major glitches on top of that). Look at the difference there. 8800gt or a Geforce4. 64megs of onboard ram to 1gig of onboard ram. Speed? Can't even compare the two. Features have gone so far up and games require them to run properly. That's why games have `mininimum' GPU requirements now.

Very best,

 

[Heyyou27]

Heya,

Choosing Oblivion's engine "now" is a good move, it was a very advanced game for it's time (not that it was very long ago, but the tech race is moving so fast, a year goes by, and stuff changes big time). Modern videocards can easily handle Oblivion now. At the time Oblivion came out, it crippled machines the way Crysis does now (though even more so, becuase back then, you didn't have the hardware we have now, and hardware doesn't go up in a linear scale, our new videocards are ridiculously better than the `good' cards of Oblivion's release time).

So while Bethseda doesn't have a perfect record, since they released Oblivion and it hurt people's machines and that did affect sales/use/PR/reviews, using that same engine now is a good move. It's still a great looking engine and game. But we have the benefit of a few years of major GPU advances which makes the game butter to run.

I picked up my 8800GT, old as it is, for cheap this year. It gobbles Oblivion and Fallout3 alive. Back when Oblivion came out, my Geforce4 at the time couldn't even play it because it lacked shader support and only a hacked up version of the game could even be ran (with major glitches on top of that). Look at the difference there. 8800gt or a Geforce4. 64megs of onboard ram to 1gig of onboard ram. Speed? Can't even compare the two. Features have gone so far up and games require them to run properly. That's why games have `mininimum' GPU requirements now.

Very best,

That's not really a fair comparison; the Geforce 4 was already very old when Oblivion came out.

 

[ImajorI]

Fallout 3 has completely satisfied my very high hopes. As a big fan of Fallout & Fallout 2, I was excited that Bethesda was doing the remake as I also loved Oblivion.

I think it's beautifull, very large and fun to play. For me, it captures most of the Fallout feel with the soundtrack of old songs and the good versus evil gameplay. I've played around 20-30 hours and have barely scratched the surface. I'm taking my time and having fun.

My opinion ...Five stars - The game of the Year - congradulations to Bethesda.

 

[jaguarskx]

I really like Fallout 3; it is the first game I ever bought on the release date.

Definitely a different feel to Fallout 1 & 2 since it is an FPS/RPG, but the atmosphere what I expect a Fallout game should be. I do miss the dark humor of FO2 though.

Overall, I think it is a great game, but there are a few drawbacks:

1. Crash to Desktop - At first it wasn't bad maybe 7 or 8 hours of gamplay, then crashes became more frequent when the saved game file size grew larger than 2.5MB.

2. Freezing - Game simply freezes sometimes. No response from keyboard or mouse.

3. Sometimes when Fast Traveling, you drop directly into combat at your destination. Example, Paradise Falls, I travel there kinda often and boom a few times I appeared in the middle of combat. Grouse has been hurt. If he dies, then I can't get anymore slave collars. (Note: even though I am "Very Good", I was able to join the Slavers using Speech.)

4. Can't lower my weapon by pressing 'R'. I need to go into PIP Boy dis-arm myself, then lower my fists. Doesn't seem to happen when I am armed with a blade or bat.

5. Leveling up seems to be a little too fast and there's that Level 20 cap.

6. Dogmeat is nice to have I suppose, but leave him home when your level is high. I didn't get Dogmeat until I was level 13. He gets killed really easily; not surprising as enemies are leveled.

 

[Flakes]

4. you should be able to lower your weapon if you hold r for a few secs.

 

[infornography42]

When I found out Bethesda was doing Fallout 3 I was cautiously optimistic. I figured it would get the world right but have bland NPCs and a generic plotline much like Oblivion did.

Now that I have been playing it obsessively for the past couple of weeks I must say I think Bethesda nailed it completely. Knocked it out of the park. This game is everything I was afraid to hope for.

 

[bedwards]

I have to say after thirty odd hours of gameplay I am very very happy with FO3.

It's obvious their attention went on content creation rather than technology this time. Which is great, because you get a game with the same depth and number of world details we were used to back in the days of FO1 and 2, but is a little bit frustrating for technology whores like me because I can't help but wonder how mind blowing it would have been with higher resolution textures and better collision detection etc.

Still, the focus on huge amounts of content is so enormously refreshing that I would immediately award this game with my personal GOTY sticker. And given the quality of game coming out this year, that's saying something.

 

[bainy_shmall]

After playing many, many hours over the last week, Fallout 3 inspired me to make this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRh4EKDq1lQ

Violence FTW!!!

 

[San Pedro]

^ nice video dude.

 

[bainy_shmall]

^ nice video dude.

thanks
i dont know why, but ive never felt like making a video out of game footage before fallout, its wierd.