I don't know about you, but I couldn't wait to finish Mass Effect 3. Sure, I wanted to close out the battle against the Reapers, but I played to complete the campaign in BioWare's threequel to see where all the characters I'd grown to know wound up.
Oddly, many other people who bought Mass Effect 3 didn't feel the same way.
In a talk given at GDC Europe, BioWare's Fernando Melo revealed that only 42% of players completed Mass Effect 3 in the five months since its release. 56% of players finished Mass Effect over the same time period. Melo said that the EA dev studio saw a spike in ME2 completions as fans geared up for the release of its follow-up.
Controversy about Mass Effect 3's original ending jumped off soon after the game's launch and, while it might make sense that some people may not have purchased it after hearing about a lackluster denouement, it seems weirder that those who did buy the game wouldn't finish it. I wonder if that completion number changed after the Extended Cut added new material to the final part of Mass Effect 3.
Fewer players finished Mass Effect 3 than completed Mass Effect 2 [Eurogamer]