Ghostbusters spooks 1 million

Terminal Reality was probably hoping for an alternate reality when it launched Ghostbusters: The Video Game last month. As reported by The NPD Group last week, game-industry retail sales in the US were down 31 percent in June, the steepest year-over-year drop yet in four months of consecutive decline. Within that weak overall climate, the Xbox 360 edition of Ghostbusters narrowly missed the top 10 best-seller chart--while the other version didn't even crack the top 20.

Rankings aside, Terminal Reality is hailing the game as a success. Speaking to the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Terminal Reality said that Ghostbusters: The Video Game has sold 1 million units worldwide since its release on June 16. Besides the Xbox 360, the game was released for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP, Wii, DS, and PC.

The Lewisville, Texas-based developer also noted that the Atari-published title spent three years in development, had a final budget of $15 million to $20 million, and up to 80 developers worked on the project at its height. Notably, the game featured the voice work of original Ghostbusters Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, and Ernie Hudson, with Aykroyd and Ramis also contributing to the game's script.

"It took us years to build the physics into the game of how one of those proton beams might hit a wooden table and just cut it in half, with one-half actually falling away from the other--and then one of the characters could actually interact with the destroyed object," Terminal Reality cofounder and president Mark Randel told Star Telegram.

Randel also noted that the game's commercial success has apparently rekindled Hollywood interest in making a third Ghostbusters film.

"It is great to realize that if they are thinking of rebooting Ghostbusters, of handing off the torch from the old guard to the new for a new Ghostbusters, that the success of the game definitely had something to do with green-lighting that project," Randel stated. "And you can bet that if that movie were to come out, we’d just love to do another Ghostbusters game based on it."

For more on Ghostbusters: The Video Game, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.