A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

Retail pre-orders for BioWare’s upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard are reportedly three times less than what Spike Chunsoft’s recently released Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO were.

A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

Craig Skistimas aka Stuttering Craig, the owner and host of the Side Scrollers Podcast, revealed that his retail insider shared with him that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has only received a total of 1,957 pre-orders between PlayStation 5 and Xbox.

He wrote on X, “Between both the “gold” and standard editions, in their 800+ stores, they have just under 2000 pre-orders between PS5 & Xbox: PS5: 1552 Xbox : 405 Total: 1957.”

This is an increase from the 1069 that Stuttering Craig reported had been pre-ordered back in September.

 

A retail insider, who manages over 900 stores, also shared with That Park Place that these numbers are three times less than what Spike Chunsoft’s Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO did in the lead up to its release on October 10, 2024.

The insider shared that Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO had a total of 5,952 total pre-orders on the Friday before the game released, October 4th. There were a total of 5,538 PlayStation 5 pre-orders and 414 Xbox pre-orders.

Furthermore, the insider shared that the pre-orders might have actually been higher for Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO, but they actually sold out of the Ultimate edition for PlayStation 5. Thus it was not available to pre-order.

A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

For reference, Bandai Namco recently confirmed that Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO sold 3 million copies in its first 24 hours.

 

As another point of comparison, the retailer insider shared that Star Wars Outlaws total pre-orders actually topped Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO with 6,469. There were 5,341 pre-orders for PlayStation 5 and 1,398 for Xbox.

Ubisoft admitted that Star Wars Outlaws sales were “softer than expected” and slashed its net bookings by 30% for the quarter from  €500 million to €350-370m million. Not only did it slash its net bookings for the quarter but it indicated that its net bookings for the entire year would only hit “€1.95bn, and around break-even non-IFRS operating income and free cash flow.”

On a Trading Update call, CEO Yves Guillemot was asked by Nicholas Langlet of BNP Paribas, “So the Q2 guidance … is it only Star Wars Outlaws or is there something else underperforming in the portfolio?”

Guillemot responded, “It mostly reflects the softer than expected sales for Star Wars Outlaws. We also had behind expectations for XDefiant, which we will give you a bit more detail at the end of October.”

A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

It was also rumored at the end of September that the game only sold 1 million copies in total, which was far lower than at least one analyst’s expectation of 5 million.

Grant Taylor-Hill at Insider Gaming reported, “We have secured a current sales figure from sources close to the game. At the time of writing, Star Wars Outlaws has just ticked over one million sales worldwide.”

That number was significantly lower than what market analysts were expecting. Barclays’ Nick Dempsey suggested that Ubisoft would sell around 5 million units back during the company’s Q1 FY2024 Sales report in May. And he thought that number was conservative given Ubisoft’s bullishness on the game despite multiple warning flags that the game was in trouble.

Dempsey asked, “When I look at the guidance for Q2 and if I assume something similar for back catalog in Q2 as Q1 kind of getting to €200 to €230 million, that sort of range. For the new release Star Wars Outlaws, when I look at the $70 price and then assuming what you might get from it, I’m getting to around 5 million units, something in that sort of bracket. First of all, where could I be going wrong with that thinking? Secondly, are you just being pretty conservative in your guidance because I guess given the interest in that game we might have thought it would be more than 5 million units?”

A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

This information comes in the wake of Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing to breach the top 50 on Steam’s Top Sellers list. However, the game has since broken through the top 50 and currently sits in the 42nd position. It also has moved up one spot to 27th on SteamDB’s Most Wishlisted Upcoming Steam Games. Its followers count also increased to 67,092.

A screenshot of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s ranking on Steam DB’s Most Wishlisted Upcoming Games list. Screenshot taken on October 16, 2024 at 8:27 AM ET.

Earlier this week the game was 28th in wishlists, 57th on the top sellers list, and only had 66,446 followers.

A screenshot showing SteamDB’s rankings for Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Back on September 20th, the game was 38th for wishlists, and 80th on the top sellers list and had 60,297 followers.

SteamDB’s Most WIshlisted Upcoming Steam Games Chart for Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

What do you make of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s retail pre-order numbers?