Civ III Conquests — Hard Numbers

[Gatekeeper]

Everyone:

According to an article posted among 'Poly's news items, Conquests sold more than 100,000 units for the PC in its first month of release.

Here's my question: Is that number anywhere near enough to indicate that there's enough support to bring Conquests/PtW over to the Macintosh?

Gatekeeper

[Grason]

Well...holy crap, you know...if they'd give us the opportunity to buy Conquests for the Mac, they might just fall off their chairs! It's hard to gauge interest in a potential product when you don't give any support to the user base...

[Gatekeeper]

Tell me about it. I have been severely disappointed by TPTB thus far.

[Grason]

You know what would be a relatively easy way to determine interest from the Mac gaming community? Port the new civs from PtW over to Mac. That's all. Don't include multiplayer or any of the "engine" modifications, just make the newer civs available, not as a fanboy mod, but as a legit Firaxis/Atari/Whoever Owns The Rights This Week RELEASE. That way it will have the chance to get some coverage on MGL or Macworld, or maybe even Apple's "New Releases for OSX" page. When C3Mac first came out, OSX was still an OS in transition. With more users having switched over now, dangling a first-rate OSX-ready game is a nice enticement...

Then, make it $10. Hell, make it $20 with a $10 off coupon valid on C3C-Mac when/if it comes available, which gives Mac gamers a chance to "invest," so to speak, in the development of the port.

Given that anyone with time and the Editor could add new civs, I can't imagine it would take that long to port already created data on the PtW civs to add into C3Mac. It's a minimal investment. And if it goes nowhere, then at least they can turn us down with an understandable, "We tried, but there wasn't enough interest." Then I could at least retire C3 with no hard feelings.

[Kuciwalker]

According to an article posted among 'Poly's news items, Conquests sold more than 100,000 units for the PC in its first month of release.

Here's my question: Is that number anywhere near enough to indicate that there's enough support to bring Conquests/PtW over to the Macintosh?

Doesn't Apple have something like 3-5% of the market share? If so, that means they would sell somewhere between 30 and 50 units in the first month, right?

EDIT: 3000 to 5000

[Gatekeeper]

It'd be more like 5,000 units in the first month based on a minimum of 100,000 PC units sold and 5 percent of the market share. That's quite a ways off of 30 to 50 units.

Gatekeeper

[dojoboy]

Re: Civ III Conquests — Hard Numbers

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Everyone:

According to an article posted among 'Poly's news items, Conquests sold more than 100,000 units for the PC in its first month of release.

Here's my question: Is that number anywhere near enough to indicate that there's enough support to bring Conquests/PtW over to the Macintosh?

Gatekeeper

Well, here is the problem,.....expansions never sell as well (= #s) as the original game. So, if the number of Civ3 mac copies is x amount, they (MacSoft) determine what number is likely to be sold for an expansion. We'll see....

Btw, FWIW, I believe RoN is currently a secret project at Westlake.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
It'd be more like 5,000 units in the first month based on a minimum of 100,000 PC units sold and 5 percent of the market share. That's quite a ways off of 30 to 50 units.

Gatekeeper

Oh, oops, I messed up on the math there

[Gatekeeper]

dojoboy:

Insofar as I'm concerned, Macsoft shot itself in the gut the instant it began pubicly hedging on whether to port the expansion packs. That kind of stuff gets back to game buyers and then — voila! — they stop buying the parent title. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, IMO.

It'd be nice if RoN is a secret project. The Mac platform needs Civ-type games. Hell, I don't care for shoot 'em up RTFP games, and thrive on strategy-type games.

What have you heard and read about RoN? Is it decent competition for the Civ series?

Gatekeeper

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
What have you heard and read about RoN? Is it decent competition for the Civ series?

About RoN, I've heard its pretty good. I downloaded the demo on my laptop but didn't play into it. I enjoy specific RTS games, but I detest cherry-pickers. You know, where you've got to build x amount of workers and gather food. I also don't enjoy games when its 1v1, prefer a grander scale.

I do know some strong Civ3 players who get their asses kicked on moderate levels in RoN, which is encouraging.

A fellow civver in Australia saw it expo'ed at MacWorld in San Francisco, and Westlake has three secret coded projects still in production. He is bascially adding 2 + 2 to predict a RoN port in early 2004.

As far as MacSoft is concerned, you're probably right about scaring away potential Civ3 purchases by never making a public statement about expansion packs. Their biggest arguement has been Mac v PC net play, which is a joke. Everyone knows this is a rare occurence these days, look at AoM. It has no cross-platform net play capabilities but MacSoft published it anyway. We'll discover the truth soon enough if MacSoft publishes Titans (AoM expansion). Its almost as if we're being punished for something. You didn't say anything did you?

[Gatekeeper]

Heh. Aside from some rather civil — IMO, anyway — posts about Macsoft's position regarding Civ III XPs, I've been fairly quiet. In all honesty, though, I am seriously looking at getting a PC instead of an iMac in 2004. I love Apple ... but, by gosh, I'd like to have at least *one* game I can play on a computer system I own (so I can to do something on it other than writing and research).

I'm in no hurry, though. And, really, a lower-end iMac nowadays doesn't cost much at all.

Gatekeeper

[FlameFlash]

I'm waiting, but I really like that idea about porting just the civs.

Maybe everything from PTW without the multiplayer with the coupon offer being made available if/when they port C3C with unofficial hints that it would be done.

Doing the coupon thing prior to even a confirmation that they will port it might get them into some legal hot water, after all.

[Spiffor]

Does Mac Civ3 work with .flc for art? Can you read (I don't mean install, just read) the contents of PC CDs? If yes, then you could buy a PC version of Conquests, and import all the Animations in your Mac version, using some copy/paste + the editor.

You may have some trouble creating precisely the same Civilizations as the PC version of Conquests (since you won't be able to open the .biq file), but I'm sure someone at the Civ3-general or Civ3-creation will give you all info about these new civs. You'll lose the new traits and new unit abilities though