Freelancer wasnt promoted as well as some of the other big named games like, say, Warcraft 3 which has posters everywhere. I guess Microsoft is depending on word of mouth to get Freelancer around. Freelancer, itself, doesnt have anything really "big named" about it and none of it is really even advertised or shown off.

I just hope FL will sell well enuff to convince the guys at MS/DA to produce a sequel.

Oh yah, and concerning the list, it says "In the latest NPDTechworld top 10 best selling PC games list for the week ending March 1st ". Doesnt that mean 2 weeks ago before FL was released or am i reading this wrong?

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Edited by - ElectricBrain on 14-03-2003 23:18:52

I thik it'll start to pick up once the reviews come in. Most of this month's mags didn't publish theirs because of the release date I bet... Just wait till it hits GamePro. Not the best of mags, but certainly well circulated

Edited by - Aerundel on 14-03-2003 23:41:54

Ahhh...my bad. Didn't see the date for that. That may explain it. Hopefully the next list'll have it then.

And yeah, once the reviews come out, sales will probably pick up even more.

When Star Trek: Armada was released back in 2000 or so, it made it to the top 10 for a few weeks, and it wasn't even that great of a game.

I can't imagine Freelancer not making the top 10... if it doesn't, we might have to start worrying about the possibility of a good patch/expansion pack/sequel. Although, I suppose it would probably be in the top 20, which wouldn't be bad....

If it DOES make the top 10, though, I think our chances of getting the above mentioned skyrockets

Yeah, that's the March 1st week, I'm sure it'll probably be on the top ten for at least one week, judging by how many seemed to be sold out.

But Star Trek Armada was a, you probably guess it: Star Trek game. That's a big franchise with a huge fandom. Freelancer comes out of the blue so it can't rely on such a huge base of possible consumers.

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"Sorry for offending your delicate sensibilities. Perhaps my next film will be about a talking dog who braves the harsh realities of the world in a heart warming attempt to find his rightful owners, who mistakenly thought he was dead. That way you could watch it and get a fuzzy feeling inside and when it was over you could all go f*ck yourselves." - Troy Duffy, director of The Boondock Saints

I mentioned in a previous thread that the last time I went to an EB, they had absolutely zero copies of FL on the shelves, well past the time they should have gotten them in. I wasn't entirely sure if this was a good thing (maybe they just stocked very few copies, though I doubt it), but I think it is.

Anyway. My copy just arrived, so i did my part. Off for freelancing now! YEAH!!!

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"Sorry for offending your delicate sensibilities. Perhaps my next film will be about a talking dog who braves the harsh realities of the world in a heart warming attempt to find his rightful owners, who mistakenly thought he was dead. That way you could watch it and get a fuzzy feeling inside and when it was over you could all go f*ck yourselves." - Troy Duffy, director of The Boondock Saints

Yah, the EB here is sold out too. But Future Shop has a couple copies left.

'relying on word of mouth' basicly means not wanting to spend money on advertising.
Ubi-soft also relied upon word of mouth for conquest frontier wars, which, although being a superb game in it's genre, sold like crap.
If you're not publishing a game based on a licence (whether it's movie/book or previous game licence), you're a bit forced to hype the game into oblivion or put up a large marketting campaign.
I think MS did a good job for freelancer.

80% of the top ten are sim/tycoon games and the rest are licence based games.
If freelancer gets in the top 10 will mean that it's selling REALLY good. =)

Yup. The EB website also lists it as the third top seller on the front page (which counts all systems), and the first top seller on the pc games page. All things considered, I think FL must be doing quite well. Of course, it's got to continue doing well for a while, not just the first couple weeks. I'm feeling confident it will, though.

Not being in the top ten could also be a result of so many pre-orders.

These figures, like so many statistics, will lie. "Sales" refers to money passing hands and not shipments being made on pre-paid goods. in which case, FL may not get into the charts for a few weeks.

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My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

yeah the 3 eb locations that I'd went to was sold out of freelancer too! and couldn't find the freelancer guide book either! cuz me and my friend was looking around for it! cuz he saw how the game was and he wanted go buy one! so we went to futrueshop.. but damit! the guy infront of us picked up the last copy on the shelf! damn! so we have to drive anther 30 mins to goto another futureshop store to buy a copy for him! that store had like 2 copies left when we were there.. damn.. seems like this game is selling pretty well too.

Yup, I couldn't find any of the strategy guides either!