After the smoke cleared...

[infornography42]

So, it has been a couple weeks since Mass Effect hit store shelves in the US. Comparing relative success of this title to others that had a console version come out a few months earlier, did it do as well as it should, or did it bomb?

I am mostly curious if the massive negative publicity it got for it's DRM actually amounted to any substantial loss of sales, or if it was a minor issue at best for the publisher.

It certainly did not deter the pirates as I have heard word that it took less than a day for it to be cracked.

So anyone keeping tabs on this? Anyone know what the aftermath was?

 

[stemnin]

I totally forgot about that game..

 

[SpinachEater]

I haven't heard anything about this game yet.

 

[ovaltineplease]

Bought it and loved it, as far as "public opinions" go, I really couldn't tell you.

The game was honest to god incredible though in my opinion, I loved the graphics style, the world, the story, the side quests, really everything was great.

I think the only downsides if you could call it that is there is not really much to encourage you to do sidequests other than "leveling and XP." There are some story side quests which is cool; it is an RPG so you have to expect that there will be some... less centrally oriented content.

Also, i've heard from reading Bioware's forum that there are some crash issues for some users; but i've had basically none of these issues myself and most of them are being addressed/have been addressed.

As far as the DRM goes, it didn't dissuade me from buying the game - if I ever have a significant problem with the DRM I can always just contact them to rectify it given that I have registered my copy on their website.

All things said i'd recommend it to anyone, I enjoyed it a great deal.

 

[clay12340]

I've not seen anything on sales figures, but they certainly had a lot of technical complaints with the PC implementation. Getting it to run under Vista 64 took a little bit of work due to the stupid way they set up the launcher and the configuration tool doesn't seem to work for sound in a lot of cases. Kind of funny that they slap the X-Fi logo all over the game and manual and then it won't work without tweaking it in many cases

It seems like it would be even more difficult to determine what effect the DRM had on this title's sales than others. It is a port from a very popular system, so I'd think a lot of people wouldn't have bought it as they've already played it. It also came out quite a while after the hype machine had calmed down. I'm guessing bioware never expected sales of the PC version to be great, but it probably cost them very very little to port it.

All in all it's a good game, though probably better suited to the xbox than the pc. It lacks freedom, but the story and gameplay are lots of fun. It is basically a prettier KOTOR without light sabers.


I'll be more curious to see how the numbers come out on Spore. I'd expect it to be a higher seller, and it still seems to have the 10 day reactivation schedule in place.

 

[infornography42]

Actually I'm pretty sure Will Wright came out and said that was not a part of it. But he was unclear as to whether it would still have limited activations. The only part he was really clear on is that it would have online activation during installation and no CD checks.

 

[Mathos]

I haven't really seen a problem with the DRM stuff yet, granted I only have one PC at the moment. May have some issue after I change boards once the sb750 790gx or 790fx boards come out though.

The only real issue i've had so far, is the launcher doesn't work with AMD Phenom based systems. The auto config program crashes out on anything using a phenom so you have to use a work around to start the game from the main exe file. First time I've ever had that kinda issue with a Bioware title. Otherwise I've actually enjoyed the game so far, though I wish they'd hurry the hell up and come out with a patch to fix that phenom issue, and the sound issues.

 

[Oh Snap]

Graphics looked nice, but gameplay wasn't my cup of tea

 

[Jaevric]

I had little trouble getting it to run on Vista 64. Had to run as Administrator, no big deal beyond that as I recall.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game -- the combination of RPG and FPS elements was great. Tore through it as a Vanguard, heavy on the guns with biotics for backup. Throw followed up by a generous dose of shotgun fire at close range, lovely. My only complaint is that I wish the game was a lot longer, more along the lines of BG2 length, but I suppose you can't have everything.