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3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2016 4:12 pm
by Martin III
So I don't know if any of you knew this, but I spend a fair amount of time doing research for Wikipedia. Some time ago I found an article in GamePro saying that as of July 1995, Gex had sold over a million copies.

Wow. Over a million copies. Of a 3DO game. And please take note that July 1995 is before Gex became a pack-in game. Could this really be true? Shortly after, I found the same claim in an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly. Well, probably that 1 million plus copies was what was shipped to retailers rather than what was sold on to the consumer (since that would have been hard to determine), but it seems like it's true.

Then I found an article in Next Generation, coincidentally with the same cover date as the GamePro and EGM articles, which mentions how many 3DO Interactive Multiplayer consoles had been sold to date. Their figure? 750,000 units worldwide.

So seemingly we have a contradiction here, because I find it hard to believe that Crystal Dynamics would manufacture 250,000 more copies of Gex than there were 3DO owners. But both figures come from reliable sources, and on their own, both sound plausible. Astounding, in the case of the over 1 million figure, but still plausible.

Anyone here have thoughts or info to contribute on the issue of how many 3DOs and copies of Gex were sold?

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 9:28 am
by CasetheCorvetteman
It was on Saturn and PS1 as well, so yeah, 1,000,000 copies across 3 consoles seems easy enough to believe.

While there may have been 750,000 consoles out in the consumer hands, no good reason not to make enough copies in one batch to cater for another 750,000 consoles that may sell the following year.

They make 500,000 copies and it costs X per copy, make 1.5 million copies, its probably only twice as much cost for 3 times the copies available. Much cheaper than going back for a second and third batch.

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 3:19 am
by Austin
CasetheCorvetteman wrote:It was on Saturn and PS1 as well, so yeah, 1,000,000 copies across 3 consoles seems easy enough to believe.
Only issue with this is that by July 1995, the PSX hadn't been released in North America yet, and thus Gex wasn't available on it (I don't think it came to Saturn until a little bit later either).

It could just be false information provided by the writer of Game Pro.

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 8:41 am
by CasetheCorvetteman
Austin wrote:
CasetheCorvetteman wrote:It was on Saturn and PS1 as well, so yeah, 1,000,000 copies across 3 consoles seems easy enough to believe.
Only issue with this is that by July 1995, the PSX hadn't been released in North America yet, and thus Gex wasn't available on it (I don't think it came to Saturn until a little bit later either).

It could just be false information provided by the writer of Game Pro.
Could be, i dont own it on PS1. I think it was out pretty early on Saturn though.

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 5:49 pm
by goldenband
I've never been able to find reliable total sales figures for the 3DO, though I've seen everything from 1.38 million to 2 million.

But there have been non-pack-in games with a 50+% purchase rate among console owners -- I think one of them was a PC Engine CD game, though I can't remember what it was -- so maybe it's possible that Gex hit very high numbers.

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 3:41 pm
by Martin III
CasetheCorvetteman wrote:Could be, i dont own it on PS1. I think it was out pretty early on Saturn though.
The Saturn and PlayStation versions did come out pretty early for those systems, sometime in late 1995 or maybe early 1996. I don't have exact dates, however, they were definitely released after Gex reportedly broke 1 million in sales, since the reviews for those versions were all published several issues later on.

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 4:05 pm
by Martin III
goldenband wrote:I've never been able to find reliable total sales figures for the 3DO, though I've seen everything from 1.38 million to 2 million.

But there have been non-pack-in games with a 50+% purchase rate among console owners -- I think one of them was a PC Engine CD game, though I can't remember what it was -- so maybe it's possible that Gex hit very high numbers.
Hmm, maybe. I considered that possibility (some guy from Id Software claims Wolfenstein 3D and Doom had a 1:1 attach rate on the Jaguar), but I found it hard to imagine that a game could find that percentage of appeal on a system with as broad a software library and user base as the 3DO. On second thought, though, the lack of competition in the platformer field could have played to Gex's advantage. The 3DO version of Soccer Kid preceded it, but that was just a port of a game which was already out on several platforms. I still feel like it's something of a stretch but I can at least see the reason in what you're saying.

I guess that might help explain the high production run, too; I can imagine someone saying, "Look, when this baby comes out, hundreds of thousands of platformer fans who had zero reason to own a 3DO up until now are going to be running out to buy the system. We have to be ready."

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2016 8:14 am
by Austin
Martin III wrote:(some guy from Id Software claims Wolfenstein 3D and Doom had a 1:1 attach rate on the Jaguar)
He's probably mistaken. There are official Atari documents that show official sales numbers, and I believe no game outside of T2K and AVP had more than a 25% attach rate (about 50,000 units of the 200,000 consoles sold). Of course, had the Jaguar actually sold more, I'd wager that attach rate would have gone down as the library and user base diversified.

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 2:25 pm
by Martin III
Austin wrote:
Martin III wrote:(some guy from Id Software claims Wolfenstein 3D and Doom had a 1:1 attach rate on the Jaguar)
He's probably mistaken. There are official Atari documents that show official sales numbers, and I believe no game outside of T2K and AVP had more than a 25% attach rate (about 50,000 units of the 200,000 consoles sold). Of course, had the Jaguar actually sold more, I'd wager that attach rate would have gone down as the library and user base diversified.
This piques my interest. Are these documents (or copies of their data) available online?

Re: 3DO and Gex sales

Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2016 2:08 am
by Austin
Martin III wrote:
Austin wrote:
Martin III wrote:(some guy from Id Software claims Wolfenstein 3D and Doom had a 1:1 attach rate on the Jaguar)
He's probably mistaken. There are official Atari documents that show official sales numbers, and I believe no game outside of T2K and AVP had more than a 25% attach rate (about 50,000 units of the 200,000 consoles sold). Of course, had the Jaguar actually sold more, I'd wager that attach rate would have gone down as the library and user base diversified.
This piques my interest. Are these documents (or copies of their data) available online?
Here:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/252748 ... ?p=3512855

This is just one sheet from sometime in '95, but there are other interesting examples of scanned Atari documents buried within some Jaguar forums.