The original Mass Effect sold 2 million copies.
Mass Effect 2 sold 5 million copies.
Mass Effect 3 sold 7 million copies.
Mass Effect Andromeda sold 5 million copies.
While Mass Effect might not match the astronomic sales of game franchises such as Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, or Need for Speed, its sales figures nonetheless affirm its colossal presence within the military sci-fi genre. Mass Effect 3 stands out as the most popular title in the series in terms of sales, yet when examining the Mass Effect Andromeda sales, alongside other sequels, they all seem to echo a similar success rate, showcasing a relatively consistent hype and reception across the franchise, with the exception of the original game.

Mass Effect 3 sales made $200 million in revenue.
(Sources: MoneyInc, Destructoid, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, TechTimes)

Mass Effect 3 sold twice the number of copies as Mass Effect 2 did in its first month.
Mass Effect Andromeda was a financial success, stated as being a driving factor in BioWare’s revenue.
Mass Effect legendary Edition was also a success and sold better than EA had expected.
The $92.3 million that the Mass Effect franchise is worth is regarding total sales of games as well as other media and merchandise, but even without that, the series has still raked in a tremendous amount of profit.

On September 17, Darrah shared the data in a comment on X, saying that Dragon Age: Inquisition has sold over 12 million units globally since its launch in November 2014.

He noted that the game “massively oversold the internal EA projections,” adding that he doesn’t understand where the prejudice that it was a commercial failure came from.

In 2018, Darrah called Dragon Age Inquisition the best-selling game in BioWare’s portfolio. And it appears that it holds that title to this day.

Yeah I’m not sure where “DAI was a commercial failure” came from…
Its over 12 million at this point.
MASIVELY oversold the internal EA projections
…
Oh yeah and was GotY in 2014.

— Mark Darrah (@BioMarkDarrah) September 17, 2024

I think it's a shame, because all in all Dragon Age Veilguard is not really a bad game.

I sure was no top game, but certainly not as bad as those video's on Youtube and that rage on the Steam Forums let you believe. I personally have a good time with the game. Yep - There is some cringe stuff here and there, but far from as much as people said. To be honest - I think it's a bit better game than Inquisition, but that's a personal taste.

Will Bioware be over? Hmm... I think it all depends on how the new Mass Effect will turned out to be. If that is a success then Bioware probably will survive. If not - Well... It's EA that have their finger on the kill switch, so yeah...

I think Dragon Age Veilguard has suffered from the pressure of EA to make it a live service game half way development. All early development stuff had to be scrapped and rebuild again for that live service. And a few years later it all was scrapped and it suddenly must be a single player game again. All on-line stuff was useless, and the whole game had to be redesigned again by scrapping all on line stuff. Of course that included all art design too. Then they only got a short time to finish the game and get it out of the door. They had to cut corners, and well.. It's is a miracle we even got a game...

Don't get me wrong - I don't defend anything, but at least I can see the reason why the game turned out to be the way it is now. Still - The game, despite it's flaws, is a fun game to play. As I said above, I have a nice time with it...

The main underlying issue of why the big budget games keep failing is exactly that - the big budget and management. It is just not reasonable for games to require hundreds of millions of dollars to make. Look no further than Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which easily shows what you can do with a sub 100 million dollar budget (40 million total budget from what I could find). They recouped their development costs within 24 hours of release.

Triple A companies are used to throwing more money/people at problems instead improving efficiency and reducing bloat, which gets quite expensive quite quickly. They can't afford average at best, 5/10 like Veilguard or Star Wars: Outlaws. Anything below an 8-9/10 game is basically primed to fail and they are finding out the hard way. Whether they can course correct in time or not remains to be seen, but big corpos are notoriously slow to change their ways and they are almost out of time (in case of Ubisoft and Bioware).

They still seem to be operating under the assumption, that the triple A label will always guarantee them success, the same way it did 10-15 years ago. But with how saturated the gaming market has become over the years, they too now have to fight for their piece of the pie with the others and start creating good, generally liked games. Which Veilguard definitely is not.

Combine that with the recent trend of actively telling off your audience for pointing out why they don't like what you're offering and the reason for the current state of the industry is actually pretty clear.

I'm still figuring out the numbers to be honest, of course without any 'inside' information that is but a hopeless quest but a nice one.

My current problem is "why they did not make a Inquisition 2?" It was your best selling game so far ....

As far as the other Bioware releases go, they all seem to fall in their 'usual' 3 to 5 million copies sold pattern. Why expect more ? Why call those games failures ?

Of course there has been a tendency starting with Dragon Age to create this semi movie engaging rpg title, as many mentioned. Was Veilguard a stone to far for most fans that expected at least more 'group' control and more of a group to start with

5 controlleable characters for ME5 Bioware!!

Numbers are very clear at this point. The game "reached" 1.5 million players (key word, does not mean sales, expect like at least 33% less actual sales) vs 3 million sales target (also highly doubtful after Inquisition's 10+ million). You can bundle pretty much anything under "reached", including those who got the game for free or through a subscription service. It was a very deliberately chosen word.

Just do a quick search. The game was a failure, proven by the now officially reported numbers.

I'd say yes, at least in part. Drastically changing the genre of a long standing series from a party management (A)RPG to what is basically just a 3rd person action game absolutely did put off some of the core audience.

They should definitely up it to main character + 3 companions. Always felt that just 2 in Mass Effect was very limited compared to 3 in Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition.

Fans of Bioware always struck me as indecisive and cruel to Bioware's artistic decisions. I wouldn't take layoffs personally. I didn't know this mattered.

Yes, in spite of the generous reviews 79% pc gamer, 71% opencritic financially the game can be classified as a failure. For myself I was more looking for journalism stories that could complement the numbers.

Did EA really feel that the whole companies future lies in live service entertainment? Or Why did they want to turn an established developer with heart and style into a Tokyo bunny? That was what i was looking for. You almost want to be at shareholder meetings etc....

Yeah, this seems to be an evolution of the previous attitude that some of the big game companies had been taking for years. Generally, it seems to have been "The players will like what we tell them they should like. If we decide to put something in a game, even over their protests, then obviously we know better than them." I've complained about that history before with regards to EA, but it's not limited to just them, and not to just the gaming industry either. For as much as some people fanboy over Apple, how many times have they added or removed something from their products that immediately pissed off... well, just about everyone? Most of the gigantic corporations are guilty of this to one degree or another these days.

Innovating is fine, but stop ignoring what your customers are asking you for, and stop forcing things on us that no one wants.

The entire gaming industry seems to be lurching in that direction. The CEOs don't want to make single-player or offline games because there's limited potential for further fleecing your customers. Except... when they make a truly excellent or innovative game, there's a market for expansions and/or DLC. The original Sims certainly wasn't the first to that party, but they were the first to make historically ridiculous amounts of money off of expansions to the base game, which is why every subsequent release has followed a similar line, and why EA keeps trying to recreate that success with its other franchises, and ruining many of them in the process.

To really stretch a metaphor here, CEOs are never happy having just one goose that lays golden eggs. In their pursuit of having a whole flock of them, they accidentally butcher them all and then look at us like it's our fault somehow. CEOs are often naturally shortsighted like that, when you'd think they'd be better at thinking long-term.

I don't mind people trying to help make the world a better place. But this was beyond "better place" and more "you will do this in our game regardless of player agency".

An eggdicator can tell the difference between a good egg and a bad egg, and uneducated eggdictator, well, he simply makes an omelette fit for a king.