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Originally posted by PhilD:

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Originally posted by johan osterman:

The sales of dominions rose noticeably when the reviews appeared, especially the first one in CGW. But the relative lack of sales even after the game got good grades by independent reviewers in big offline magazines has made me somewhat skeptical to claims that advertising would have significantly boosted sales figures, especially considering the cost of an add in one of those magazines, or one of comparable size. The 'problem' seems to lie elswhere.

I don't know, I'd say it must hurt potential sales a LOT when a game isn't seen on display in stores.

My guess is that the average gamer will sometimes buy a mag, but most certainly will look through the local store. If the game isn't seen there, then it will take a pretty strong word-of-mouth, or an top review in a big mag, for the person to actually hunt for the game.

I learned about Dom in a newsgroup, so I downloaded the demo. But that's an atypical situation; I could as well never have found out about it.

Basically - even a good review in a (paper) mag will probably sell very few copies of the game if it isn't easy to find in stores. I know Galactic Civilizations is supposed to appear here in France these days; I know it got a pretty good review in at least one (non-mainstream) mag called PC4War (which is mostly about hardcore strategy/simulation/wargames, with a significant
RTS portion, but I don't think the game will be very proeminently displayed in stores. Well, I'm curious to know how many copies of the French Versions are actually sold in the end.

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Funny you mention the PC4War review of GalCiv just here : I happen to have written it ! I've just finished the strategy article for the next issue BTW , and will now make the Dom2 review !
The game did make it to France due to a good sales performance (for its genre) and very good reviews everywhere. I hope it will sell well here, even if the target sales are rather in thousands anyway, nothing comparable with the big RTS or console games, that sell in 100,000s ...
I nevertheless hope Dom2 sells as well as GalCiv..