A good example of when devs make a good game and are rewarded. They deserve it and I just hope they raise the crap standards we have today to a new and more positive level.


bigcrazewolf said:

"Your right the modding community shouldn't be relied on for fixing things"

30% of the game's valor will be on these fellas works and, agreed, they shouldn't be fixing the game as they don't earn anything from it.

Indeed love when negative naysayers try to speak for the whole PC community. Skyrim has run flawless on my system. Well over 150 hours in, grand total of one CTD

Indeed pc will continue to flood the market. Households that never had a computer or didn't need one have one now due to the internet.

Have to say, i am fully loving Skyrim but without the Skyrim4gb mod i would not be able to play as without this mod my game crashes every 5 or so minutes. Hopefully this patch Bethesda is releasing for PC will solve this issue for me.

I've put in more hours in no other single player game (Not even any one of the Final Fantasy games). I have reached a level with my character that I have never reached in any other of the TES games I've played. Despite being a major alt-aholic, I am still playing my first and only character.


Well Done Beth!!!!


*cough* use some of the money to develop a cognitive AI that you can talk to in the next one *cough*

Good for them.

I think they deserve it but also think it should have been released a few months later to iron out all the bugs and optimize the ports. Especially for the PS3.

Principle then.

Which is fine. I, personally, am not going to let Steam interfere with my enjoyment of playing those games on the PC that I think will work best on the PC, and since it hasn't interfered with my enjoyment of playing those games on the PC yet I guess our relationship is working just fine.

Ah, a 12 year old wanting to play the teacher. You seem eager to make a fool out of yourself. If so, congratulations, you're very successful at it. Companies present inflated numbers of their sales in order to build hype around their product. Bethesda has announced that they've shipped 10 million copies, which isn't the same as 10 million copies sold.


I think you'd better learn what "finance" and "marketing" mean before dropping the terms. It looks like you have yet to master grade 3 spelling, let alone developed the capacity to work with numbers. Why are you even talking about Steam vs retail cuts, as if that ties into things? If you wanted to calculate Bethesda's take of Skyrim's earnings, it'd be well below $300 million, even if you gave a value of $60 to every copy of Skyrim sold thus far. Perhaps once you finish the grade 3 spelling your reading comprehension will naturally also raise a bit.

Super Mario Bros was well earlier than Diablo 2, and it sold over 40 million copies. Many other games have also sold a lot more. What's your point, other than to make a clown out of yourself? No, it's not normal that a publisher's announced number of copies shipped is lower than the actual amount, they actually present the highest possible number in order to hype their product and help sales - which is why Bethesda announce the number of copies shipped and not the number of copies sold, because the number of copies actually sold is less. Are you done falling over yourself while rushing to the defense of a company which didn't need it? Watching you try was embarrassing.

Wait... Don't the sales mean people LIKE the game?

They aren't. Most figures for units sold do not include digital. And if steam is selling that many digital units of skyrim that can make up the difference. Also skyrim made money through lucrative deals. Such as the deal to Microsoft for millions of dollars or exclusive dlc.

I think the math is fine. Considering they know more about t than you do. Stupid skeptics on this board. Just because you weren't given every detail doesn't make something guanateed to be wrong. They can and would be sued for falsifying Financial data to their stock holders.

They haven't falsified anything. They said they've shipped 10 million copies, which includes physical and digital. Where's the falsification? The number of physical copies sold thus far is public and around 6.83 million. The digital sales make up the difference while the total number of sales is still below 10 million. Again, where's the falsification and where has Bethesda claimed otherwise?

Don't bash people for making dumb ass statements and then make them yourself. I'd love to hear your expert opinion on how you know for a fact their earnings are below 300 mill. If your going to slam people, back your own statements up with facts not grand statements with no data.

PC game sales rise as consoles get older, next gen it will revert to be similar most likely.
look at it from a console user view
you start out, get xbox, its fun,
few years later needs something new,
lets get ps3 to play exclusives
thats fun for a few weeks and you get bored

I know, save up $$ and get a decent PC so you can play some of the good pc games. after all, PC graphics are the best plus some games have awesome mods

personally i have all 3 systems now, my computer isn't good enough to run skyrim but i can play sc2 on medium as well as eve online which is awsome. i got the PS3 after feeling bored over the summer, my sister got the wii a few years ago no one plays it though.
i had xbox since launch
if i had money i would get a new PC ( assuming HDD prices start coming down, damn flood) since next gen consoles won't be released untill 2013ish

I didn't say there was a falsification. No idea how your reading that. Units SHIPPED never includes digital. Period. Factual. Units sold typically is worded as disk or cartridge units. I simply said if they were lying they would easily be sued and/or fined.

It looks like you were sending a memo to yourself. How do you know I don't know how their earning are below $300 million? It comes with the territory of knowing how much net profit comes through retail and digital outlets on games sold. The person I was responding to brought it up themselves and I only brought out the $300 million figure to point out how their attempted lesson was based in their stupidity. That's why I say "If you wanted to calculate Bethesda's take of Skyrim's earnings...," because they chose the conditions for their own argument, conditions which made their argument all the more flawed.

You implied the false argument of "these numbers can't be wrong because they can and would be sued for falsification" And you're wrong, shipped can, and in this case going by the numbers obvious does include digital.

It's a fun game with lots of replay value, but another reason it's doing so well is the lack of any other "epic" games this holiday season. Bethesda was lucky, as well as good.

i hope they put all that money back into development of the next awesome elder scrolls game.

more of the same. exactly the same, even if it means sacrificing bug testing for creating a gigantic totally open world.
im happy doing no quests at all and just wandering the world theyve created seeing everything.

i cant say that for any other game since fallout 3 and oblivion before that, and morrowind before that.

these guys are the only ones that do games like this. i want them to earn crap loads of money so they continue to make games like this.

Skyrim has sold so far
3.55million copies on xbox
2.02 million copies on PS3
1.26 million copies on PC ( not digital)
for a total of 6.83 million in SALES
this does NOT include steam sales.

Now, i doubt steam sold 3+million copies of skyrim but it would be close enough to 10million that is doesn't matter.
not to mention christmas hasn't passed yet. and many people are just waiting for the "zomg patch broke game" news to stop coming up.

Yeah, I believe we're up to something like 6% of the market, which is about 3x what's usually managed. Still have a way to go before we can ask for even more special things though.

No, BF3 DID not sold more copies than Skyrim... CoD-MW3 DID, BY FAR.

What a shame.
Now devs will think that they are going the "right way", i am already afraid what we will get in Fallout 4. (i am pretty sure after that kind of money that Skyrim earned Bethesda will make Fallout 4). I hope they at least crucify their writers and get guys from Obsidian.
Best game/rpg of this year it is Deus Ex: HR.
Skyrim dont have interesting caracters,quests, main story and atmosphere.
It has ONLY a huge empty open world.
And what is scary, it is score on PC is 94/100, such an overrated game.

Yep, these are the latest sales figures, accurate to within the week. You can probably count on there being an equal number of Steam sales as there are physical PC sales, but maybe more, though it's unlikely there are more sales on the PC than there are on the 360 (if there are, then Todd and Pete are all the bigger liars having both told us that the consoles are 90% of their audience). If you give the PC a generous 2 million copies sold digitally, that brings the total PC sales up to 3.26 million and the total copies of Skyrim sold as up to 8.83 million, around which makes perfect sense with Bethesda having declared that they've shipped 10 million copies, since copies shipped includes copies that are sitting on shelves and in boxed in store warehouses and not sold yet, leaving around 1 million in stock waiting to be sold. The numbers make perfect sense.


Bf3 has actually sold a lot more than Skyrim. It was already announced as having sold 8 million and shipped 12 million almost 2 and a half weeks ago. It wouldn't take long to get up to date figures.

edit: Battlefield 3 has sold 8.32 million physical copies so far, compared to Skyrim's 6.83 million physical copies.

Why all the Steam Hate? As far as game companies go, I was under the impression Valve were the 'good guys.'

You are completely forgetting digital distribution. Even if only 6 or 7 million of the 10 million shipped have sold, that is only retail box sales. The rest of that $650 would be through digital services such as Steam.


Typically in today's market digital PC sales are much higher than box sales. As high as 6:1 digital over box sales. Being generous and assuming it is only 2:1 for the best selling Steam game ever, PC could easily be the highest selling platform and certainly the highest in terms of profit (far less overhead cost in all those digital sales, no printing, packaging, shipping costs, etc).