Apparently FONV sold nearly 3.5 million copies. Less than half of Skyrim, just a little less than Oblivion and FO3, but more than any of the individual Mass Effect games. Of course these numbers are suspect, as I doubt they include online purchases for PC copies, such as through Steam (who do not publicly release their sales figures).
They did blow a
bonus because of one point on Metacritic. They had to fire 30 people afterward, and cancel a new project they were working on, so obviously they were counting on that bonus.
It also says later in that article that Obsidian did not get paid on a per sale basis (Bethedsa published the game, so they made all the money from sales, and then in turn paid Obsidian some unknown amount). They just got a straight, one time payment for their work. My guess is Obsidian negotiated a bad deal, or Bethesda simply screwed them out of their money. Hmmm, my understanding is that Bethesda did the Q&A for FONV, not Obisdian. Perhaps Bethesda deliberately ignored bugs in the game so it shipped in such a sorry state as it did, in order to keep the Metacricitc score down?
There is no way of knowing how much Obsidian expected to make off of it either, or promised their shareholders/financiers that they would make. Maybe they expected to make a lot more, or even spent more creating it than they got paid by Bethesda?
This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 5 2013, 04:28 AM