HL2 Only Sold 4 million?

[Sparda]

I seem to remember that thats 4 million in retail, Steam sales have never been given.
Still, if you consider Valves takes 100% of the cash from every Steam sale, Theyd need to sell, what...1,000,000 copies (roughly) to COMPLETLY cover all the development costs, which isnt a lot considering the popularity of the games. If you add into that the 4 million retail Valve have made a lot of money with the game.
And, even if they hadnt, 4,000,000 copies is a huge amount of games.

Agreed, if Valve did NOT make a lot of money from HL2 they would not even bother with EP1.

 

[ThrasherX9]

Ok, lets just think about this for a minute.

4 million * aprx. $50 per/copy = 200 million big ones. In a period of only 1.5 years. That's 133.333 million a year. And we have no idea if these are Steam figures, or retail, or both. I consider this a success. Even compared to HL1 and any console game. Sure GTA and Halo sold more in a much shorter time span, but they appeal to a much wider audience.

 

[Llama]

ThrasherX9, most of the money in retail goes to other companies, but its still a lot

 

[ríomhaire]

Ok, lets just think about this for a minute.

4 million * aprx. $50 per/copy = 200 million big ones. In a period of only 1.5 years. That's 133.333 million a year. And we have no idea if these are Steam figures, or retail, or both. I consider this a success. Even compared to HL1 and any console game. Sure GTA and Halo sold more in a much shorter time span, but they appeal to a much wider audience.

Valve don't get 100% from every retail.

 

[doomed - uk]

HL2 had sold roughly 2,000,000 on Steam around the time of its release.

I remember seeing an online news article around that time.

I have not a clue what it would be now, though.

 

[Kadayi]

http://www.steamreview.org/?p=16

25% of Valves sales came via steam, but those 25% made more money for the company that the other 75% retail sales.

 

[Cole]

If valve sold 2 million on steam valve made $70 million from steam alone.
That covers that $40 million and give them a nice $30 million to stand on. Not only that but Vivendi sales $7 x 4 million = 42 million. Now EA figures havn't been released yet. Not only that but there also selling other games through steam and are making probably 20-30% of the profit from them.

Valve are easily sitting on $70 million+ for future game development. How in the world is that a failure? Not only that but you still have money from the first HL to spend! Probably quite a bit because I believe Valve made far more than $40 million off of HL1.

Valve are probably sitting on $150,000,000 for there next game.

 

[Kadayi]

Oh btw:-

“Making Shadowgrounds available to Steam’s eight million gamers is a great opportunity to get the game out to a wider market,” said Steven Milburn, Director of Marketing at Meridian4."

Guess the figures at episode 1 are out of date....

 

[Insano]

If valve sold 2 million on steam valve made $70 million from steam alone.
That covers that $40 million and give them a nice $30 million to stand on. Not only that but Vivendi sales $7 x 4 million = 42 million. Now EA figures havn't been released yet. Not only that but there also selling other games through steam and are making probably 20-30% of the profit from them.

Valve are easily sitting on $70 million+ for future game development. How in the world is that a failure? Not only that but you still have money from the first HL to spend! Probably quite a bit because I believe Valve made far more than $40 million off of HL1.

Valve are probably sitting on $150,000,000 for there next game.

Valve takes 50% of the games sold on Steam from 3rd party developers.

 

[Ricgar]

Oh btw:-

“Making Shadowgrounds available to Steam’s eight million gamers is a great opportunity to get the game out to a wider market,” said Steven Milburn, Director of Marketing at Meridian4."

Guess the figures at episode 1 are out of date....

You do realize theres other games on Steam besides HL2? It's called HL1 and CS.

 

[Cole]

Valve takes 50% of the games sold on Steam from 3rd party developers.

But do Valve supply for the bandwidth to? Which I believe they should(Like a Retail company transporting the project), depending on the size it would probably end up somewhere 35% - 45% in actual profit they gain.

 

[Spoonoop]

I recall hearing from somewhere that Half-Life 1 sold best in its 3rd year...

 

[SPARTACVS]

I bought a XB360, and a friend of mine gave me Halo 2 for my birthday. I gotta say, i was surprised. The story was way better than Halo (c'mon, it was an HL ripof), and it had a more dinamic gameplay. I am a HL2 hardcore fan, and i dont give a sh*t about sales. And that is all i need to know.

You're right, Halo 2 wasn't that bad. I actually find the whole concept of the Halo story fascinating (even if the actual storytelling part of it was lacking in Halo 1). If you other guys keep insisting on bashing Halo, keep this tidbit in mind: It took VALVe 6 years to make Half Life 2 versus 8-10 months for Bungie to make Halo 2 from scratch. Half Life 2 single player is NOT 9 times as good as Halo 2's.

If we're talking about straight sales (which I agree means almost nothing- HL2 was much better in my opinion than Halo 2), HL2 sold 4 million units versus Halo 2 which sold 125 million units in it's first day.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

I think it's unlikely that Halo 2 sold 125 million, as there aren't that many Xboxes...

 

[Llama]

yeah thats bullshit, sorry Spart, but there is no way that many games would be sold in a day. Now, lets go back to that report. If its accurate than the numbers of Retail to Steam is roughly 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 (If 4mill includes Steam) or 1,300,000 to 4,000,000.
At that number Valve would net made perhaps...$80 million dollars. Not including any other game sales.
Not bad for 4 years work

 

[$kelet0r]

so by the above reasoning HL2 has sold ~6m units through retail and steam in 1.5 years comnpared to 8m in 8 for HL1

 

[Tamer17]

Spart , you're comparing developing a game on a console with developing a game on the pc and that's just wrong. Not even mentioning the fact they built a new engine.

 

[Cole]

It sold $125 million worth of units. Which translated into about $37.5 million considering if Bungie is not funded by Microsoft(Going at a rate of $7 per game as thats often when a publisher will take).

It was 2.38 million units sold of the game. It sold about 7 million copies worldwide so far.

 

[99.vikram]

It sold $125 million worth of units. Which translated into about $37.5 million considering if Bungie is not funded by Microsoft(Going at a rate of $7 per game as thats often when a publisher will take).

It was 2.38 million units sold of the game. It sold about 7 million copies worldwide so far.

Now that makes some sense!

And BTW, I recently convinced 2 of my friends, Halo fanboys to buy HL2, and they recommended it to their Xbox pals. So HL2 is still going strong, IMO.

 

[Cole]

I've played both Halo and Halo 2, I prefer Halo. I think there both very good games. I do like HL2 better, but just because I like one game more than the other dosn't mean ones complete crap.

There are a lot of ignorant people on both sides. I mean Halo 1\2 didn't sell so well for no reason. And HL 1\2 both havn't got some of the highest review scores ever by Pc Gamer and hl 1\2 are considered to have raised the bar for no reason.

 

[drunkymonkey]

Halo owned its mediocre sequel.

But the Half Life series owns both anyway, thanks to its atmosphere, excellent graphics, physics, and story.

I've played both Halo and Halo 2, I prefer Halo. I think there both very good games. I do like HL2 better, but just because I like one game more than the other dosn't mean ones complete crap.

There are a lot of ignorant people on both sides. I mean Halo 1\2 didn't sell so well for no reason. And HL 1\2 both havn't got some of the highest review scores ever by Pc Gamer and hl 1\2 are considered to have raised the bar for no reason.

Eh? Are you saying that HL1 and 2 didn't get good scores from PC Gamer?

 

[blackflag486]

the thing, I feel about this is, That most people around the world still have slow PCs. When I was in brazil for a while, I noticed internet cafe's with HL and CS advertised for their main boots. As well as WC3. These PCs dont have the graphical PUSH power as those of us lucky and blessed enough to be here in the United States. Most of us here, have a PC over 2GHZ and with a video card greater then a Gf4 5200... So what does that tell you about why Hl2 hasnt SOLD as much. Im compleatly Satisfied with the ammount that hl2 has sold thusfar.

 

[Cole]

Eh? Are you saying that HL1 and 2 didn't get good scores from PC Gamer?

No im saying they did, and there is a reason behind it.
-Because there damn good games.

 

[drunkymonkey]

No im saying they did, and there is a reason behind it.
-Because there damn good games.

Oh I see. It was badly expressed, so I didn't understand it. I quite agree.

 

[Cole]

Yes I would agree, im horrible at writing some of the time.....or most of the time lol. IDK.

 

[doomed - uk]

http://www.steamreview.org/?p=16

25% of Valves sales came via steam, but those 25% made more money for the company that the other 75% retail sales.

Oh btw:-

“Making Shadowgrounds available to Steam’s eight million gamers is a great opportunity to get the game out to a wider market,” said Steven Milburn, Director of Marketing at Meridian4."

Guess the figures at episode 1 are out of date....

75% retail and 25% Steam would mean it was 6,000,000 retail to the 2,000,000 Steam sales I saw reported at the end of 2004.

Of course, these numbers are all approximate but that's all we've got.

 

[Elendil_]

On the Episode One thing it says "The continuation of the HL2 franchise, which has sold 4 million units.". This is kind of sad, considering *edit*, and HL1 also sold a lot more than HL2 has sold thusfar. What do you guys think?

it's more than 4 millions retail, we don't know the STEAM sales.

 

[Sparda]

We can never know the steam sales because they are selling all the time, people are still geting it, i know of 13 people who got HL2 in the last 2 weeks(by steam)

 

[Kirkburn]

We can never know the steam sales because they are selling all the time, people are still geting it, i know of 13 people who got HL2 in the last 2 weeks(by steam)

Your reasoning no worky ... the exact same goes for retail units

 

[john121]

"xtreme paintbrawl sold poorly, HL2 did not... look at how many sales HL2 had via steam... the servers almost shut down and it took what, a week to get everything straightenef out? I dont think valve will ever give out how many people bought hl2 via steam, i didn't, though.