Red Dead Redemption 2

[msteelers]

I need to stress that this is very much a game that wants you to take your time and soak in the world. The pacing is a stroll from beginning to end with a few sprints sprinkled in. And I loved it for that, but if you are expecting it to kick up a notch it doesn't. Hell I add mods that make it even more realistic and slow paced.

That’s good to know. The first few times I tried to play I had very little time for games. I don’t have a ton now, but more than I did.

[Rumpy]

I can't imagine that there won't be a RDR 3, as RDR 2 made them a ton of cash. RDO (Red Dead Online) didn't make them much and they abandoned it, but RDR2 was still the #8 top selling video game of all time.

I thought I'd heard that it was a financial disappointment to them, leading them to abandon the Online part. To this day, I've heard from only few people who have actually completed the game. Most people who pick it up seem to abandon it as they can't seem to stand its slow plodding nature, which has translated to less people playing Online. So, I can't help but feel that Rockstar shortchanged the game's support because of their low expectations for the game. They abandoned the Online when they realized it would never make them as much money as GTAO, when they should have realized RDO was feeding a different demographic altogether. They were trying to compare apples to apples when in fact they were comparing apples to oranges when the oranges never would have made them as much in the first place due to the nature of the game. It's their entire attitude towards the game that makes me cynical towards a 3rd one. And that's not even counting the fact that the leads that were involved in both the first and second games have left the company.

I don't doubt their focus is now on GTA6, and that's fair game, but it also makes me wonder if they're able to support two big games at a time. GTAO is obviously a money maker, but it's also their older game, with RDR2/RDO being newer, yet that didn't garner near enough support. GTA6 will eventually come along, along with a new GTAO, and even if they eventually manage to put out RDR3 and a new RDO, I see the same kind of cycle where GTAO will supersede it in terms of importance. And that's not healthy to a company in the long-term. It erodes trust in those who just want to play those games.

When the port of the original game came out, it came out without multiplayer. They should have used that opportunity to revitalize RDO, by having the RDR port point towards RDO for those who wanted multiplayer. But they didn't do that, and FWIW, I feel that was a lost opportunity to maybe use the southern part of the map that was underused and maybe even rebuild the Mexico portion of the map that people have long thought it should have. But RDO was abandoned before the port released.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I've had lots of feelings about this.

[Blackhawk]

Red Dead Online was absolutely a big financial disappointment for them. They make an insane amount of money on GTA Online to the tune of half a million per year, and that's without much spending on their part - it's almost pure profit. That's what they were hoping for with RDO, but they put out a half-assed game with very little content, weird restrictions on doing the content that made it harder to play, and in a setting that hasn't been mainstream since I was a kid.

But the base game was huge. They spent about $170 million to make it, which is a ton for a game. But from Wikipedia.

After the game's announcement in October 2016, analyst Ben Schacter of Macquarie Research estimated it would sell 12 million copies in its first quarter,while analysts at Cowen and Company gave a "conservative" estimate of 15 million sales.

[...]

Shortly before release in October 2018, Schacter estimated the game would sell 15 million copies in its first quarter, though noted investor expectations were at 20 million copies; Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities predicted 25 million. Michael Olson of Piper Jaffray projected revenue between US$400 and US$500 million in the first three days, while Doug Creutz of Cowen Inc. estimated between US$550 and US$600 million.

Highest estimate: $600 million in the first quarter.

The reality: 1.38 billion in the first quarter.

Red Dead Redemption 2 had the largest opening weekend in the history of entertainment, making over US$725 million in revenue in three days, and over 17 million copies shipped in two weeks, exceeding the lifetime sales of Red Dead Redemption. Additionally, Red Dead Redemption 2 was the second-highest-grossing entertainment launch (behind Grand Theft Auto V) and set records for largest-ever pre-orders, largest first-day sales, and largest sales for the first three days in market on PlayStation Network. The share price for Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, rose nine percent in the week after release. VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi noted the game likely broke-even in its first week and, based on analyst estimates, would begin to earn a profit by December 2018. The game shipped 23 million copies in 2018, generating US$1.38 billion in revenue, and sales reached 29 million in 2019, 36 million in 2020, 43 million in 2021, 50 million in 2022,and 57 million by September 2023. By dollar sales, it was the best-selling game of the latter half of the 2010s, and the seventh-best-selling game of the decade overall. It is among the best-selling video games.

The base game was absolutely not a financial disappointment. It was only after they tacked on a half-baked multiplayer mode that they thought would bring in GTAO levels of microtransactions that they became disappointed.

My prediction? There's no way they don't make RDR3, just like there will absolutely be another Call of Duty and Fallout. They're cash printing kits. They will, however, either look just at the base game and skip the full-scale multiplayer, or they will change the sequel to better appeal to people...

Spoiler:

There has been some discussion that it could focus on Marston's son, set in the 1920s prohibition/mob era, giving them cars, heists, machine guns, and the whole nine yards to work with, hoping it might appeal more than the western genre. As an aside, that might even let them link RDR and GTA.

[msteelers]

I finished the main story last night. The story took awhile to get its hooks into me, but by the end I was all in. I stayed up late last night because I sensed I was approaching the end and needed to see how it all came together.

I was not expecting the epilogue though. There’s another 6-8 hours after the main story ends?

[Brian]

Easily.

I recommend finding the scattered remnants of the gang and talking to them as well.
It's not easy but most of them are out there.