Alan Wake Sells Under 200k In US
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Ruh-Roh, Shaggy. This can’t be good for the folks over at Remedy, who have said they are “betting the farm on [Alan Wake] and if this isn’t a success we’ll be selling hotdogs in Helsinki. Really.” Of course, Alan Wake isn’t the only title cowering in fear behind the shadows of Red Dead Redemption and Super Mario Galaxy 2–reportedly, Prince of Persia, Blur, Shrek, Lost Planet and Skate all failed to hit the 200k mark. Patcher speculates that these underwhelming performances by big-name titles are “beginning to reinforce the notion that the video game industry is in a state of persistent secular decline.” “Everything’s gone into this project so this will ultimately set us up for how we continue and how many video games we can make in the future,” Remedy has stated in the past. And yet, they are apparently hiring someone for a “key position in a AAA console project.” I mean, we all know that they’re itching to make Alan Wake 2 a reality. In fact, that’s probably exactly what they’re hiring for. Is that endeavor really a good idea with such sale figures flying around? I may have disliked Alan Wake, but I really dislike hot-dogs! |
Releasing a game on a single platform that it wasn’t intended for on the same week as R* release their latest multi-platform open world epic is not the worlds greatest business plan.
Max Payne 2 was also a terrific game hat sold poorly – and yet the franchise lives on.
The problem with videogames, however, is that it’s always either a drought or a flood. There are months with more games than we can play or buy followed by months with nothing new. That’s why I don’t believe in these “first month” results. The weekend results is more applicable to movies than games. For games, I believe we have to wait until the current flood-drought cycle is completed.
In any case, they can always pump some marketing down into people’s throats… it’s not like we are talking about schlock like Bionic Commando anyways. If I could, I would tie everyone (Graham at the first row 😛 ) at the Ludovico machine until they love this game!
Fern, outside of the tight, in-the-know gaming circles, Alan Wake does not exist. I don’t think things are going to get any better for it. In one of the linked articles, Remedy says this:
“We were in a good situation after Max Payne 2 and we invested everything after selling the intellectual property”
That is not the case with this game (Alan Wake), so I’m not sure you can draw the comparison, especially when you consider that they aren’t the ones that are keeping the franchise alive–Rockstar is, people who probably have the biggest budgets in the industry–and this is why they said the quote about selling hotdogs.
So… if that’s true, what can I make out of this?
http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/06/30/xbox-360s-alan-wake-half-a-million-sales/
and this?
http://www.vgchartz.com/game.php?id=13817
This is the same chart from VGChartz, but ordered in function of absolute time (instead of time elative to launch)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v354/explorerslair2/AW-chart.png
You can see that by the end of May, Alan Wake had already sold more than 200K in the Americas. Now, I don’t know how the NPD got their (late) figures, but they either messed it up (which would justify why they released these numbers so late) or they only considered US (while VGChartz consider all Americas). In either way, the worldwide number of sale, which is the number that matters for a company, was way above 200k by the end of May and has reach half a million units sold by the end of June.
Well, Michael Patcher might be right. I mean, if you say an industry is going to decline every other week, eventually he’ll be right. But he’s been wrong a lot before. Usually around now, he seems kind of right, because there’s fewer dollars in the Spring shopping season.
Really, Alan Wake was a failure of marketing. No, a failure of scheduling. When you launch a game on the *same day* as *the* killer app of the spring and (console) summer, a few months after the busiest March ever, and what do you expect? There’s not a lot of video game money in May, especially when it follows a very crowded March.
I think it’ll do better in the coming months, though, so long as they don’t cut and run. And here’s why. If I buy one game in May, it’s Red Dead Redemption. But I’ll probably buy a game in June or July, too (as a casual hardcore gamer, who plays serious games rarely), and…Alan Wake will get consideration, I’m sure. I think (unfortunately) what we’re seeing is casual consumers prioritizing experiences with any sort of multiplayer over other games, regardless of quality. Multiplayer is replay value; quality is immaterial. Alan Wake has the trappings of a game you play for 12 hours, so people wait for the inevitable price drop. For 60$, 12 hours is a terrible price. For 20$, 12 hours is fantastic.