Alan Wake sold 700k, is this considered a failure?

700k is not bad is it? thats the same amount as Demon's souls

By how much the game was hyped...I say yes it is a failure. I enjoyed the game a ton and I must say that I do wish it would have sold more. It really is a good game.

700k oh my god thats quite a nasty number... I didn't fancy the game but the story and hype had me check up on the development as it was being made... never thought it was that bad, i expected easily 2mill which would be fairly ok considering the hype but damn that is certainly a flop if you ask me.

Generally speaking, no. When you consider the time it had in development (it was the first confirmed game of this gen!), absolutely.DarkCatalyst

I thought darksector was the first confirmed/announced game this gen.

We would need to have budget figures at hand to determine that. However, is very likely the game had hefty budgets both for development and for advertising, so not even breaking a million could be considered a failure.

I would imagine the reason why Alan Wake sold lower than expected is that it was released on the same day as Red Dead Redemption. Had Alan Wake had its own release date, I would think it would have sold me.

Here's why I think it probably "failed": The game took a vacation to the Wild West. When it got there, it got lost. Soon, it found its way to a million players/cowboys and outlaws and they killed the game. And guess what? Every one of those players, cowboys, and outlaws were those of....you guessed it. Especially since it came out on the same day, too.tjoeb123

I would imagine the reason why Alan Wake sold lower than expected is that it was released on the same day as Red Dead Redemption. Had Alan Wake had its own release date, I would think it would have sold me.

MathMattS

Ik...6 years of development and they kill sales because they decide to release on the same day as RDR...all that time and then a poor decision like that. Releasing anytime during June would have been infinitely better.

The game took six years to make but sold that many and heavy rain sold more in a week and has been in development for 5 years i think remedy should make it multiplt for their sequal just like dead rising 2.johny300

There is a sequel in the works from an article I read a month or so ago, which says plenty for it success. It just didn't do nearly as well as hoped.

Yep. I'm still surprised the game didn't sell better than it did. Being a hyped and long anticipated blockbuster game, it should have sold atleast twice as much.

By how much the game was hyped...I say yes it is a failure. .

UnknownElement4

That is what you get for abandoning. the PC.

Depends on its budget. Did the game cost $5 million to make, or $50 million? If the former, it probably is a success... if the latter, a failure (so far). The developers don't get the $60 from the retail cost, they get at most 10% from cost, and if Microsoft didn't eat a large portion of the investment, they could be in bad shape after this.

That is what you get for abandoning. the PC.

spookykid143

[QUOTE="spookykid143"]

That is what you get for abandoning. the PC.

jasonharris48

Also, they aren't big enough to work on multiple versions. They picked the 360 because they thought that would sell more AND Microsoft was publishing. The only reason Max Payne got a console port wasbecause somebody BESIDES Remedy did it.

Given the long development cycle and the fact that Remedy was selling Alan wake underwear (?!), flashlights and whatnot prior to launch, its a safe bet they were expecting more than 700K in sales.

http://store.alanwake.com/

Its also worth noting that Remedy admits that they pissed away a lot of time working on concepts they ultimately abandoned (originally AW was an open world game).

700k is not bad is it? thats the same amount as Demon's souls

multiplat

I don't understand why it hasn't sold more, although part of me thinks it's because a sizeable chunk of gamers nowadays will only buy games that have multiplayer. :roll:

I heard it's supposed to be scheduled for a PC release soon, so hopefully that will push sales.

I don't understand why it hasn't sold more, although part of me thinks it's because a sizeable chunk of gamers nowadays will only buy games that have multiplayer. :roll:

I heard it's supposed to be scheduled for a PC release soon, so hopefully that will push sales.

KlepticGrooves

I agree that a lot of people care more about multiplayer than singleplayer nowadays, but there are still a lot of fans of singleplayer games out there.

Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13 didn't have any problems selling this year despite their lack of multiplayer.

First of all where is this 700K figure coming from? The NPD? Is it WorldWide? Are those shipping numbers? A link would be nice.

Let's assume it is just NPD numbers then no, 700K is a very respectable number and considering its sub 200K sales for the first month, it's very impressive to see a single player game add 500k after its launch month.

If it's worldwide then yes it's a flop, but not a very big one. It was in development for over 6 years and Remedy is a pretty experienced team with a hit franchise under their belt and around 45 employees according to wikipedia. That's the same number of employees as the Epic team that made Gears and Gears 2, both of which cost $10 million with a development cycle of two years each. We can assume that Alan Wake cost around $30 million and 700K worldwide simply means $28,000,000 in revenue for Remedy after the $12 cut for retailers, and around $6-7 in MS's royalty fee on each copy. (I am also assuming that in exchange for the exclusive, MS agreed to take up the marketing and distribution costs, if not then we are looking at $30 of revenue for each copy sold. Which would then amount to only $21 million in revenue and then it would be very big flop.) But yes, it's still got a chance to break even and if we look at how many copies they shipped, they probably broke even already and maybe even made a profit just selling the game to the retailers.

Lastly, if someone can pull up the shipped numbers then we would have a clearer picture of whether it is a flop or not. Right now, considering it's a relatively small studio being supported by MS in exchange for the exclusive, we can safely assume that it's not a flop.

People seem to think anything less than a million units SOLD is a flop when in fact, the devs and the publishers make money on how many units they SHIP. Also, it's all relative to how big the budget was as well. If God Of War 3 with its $44 million budget sold less than a million copies worldwide then we can safely assume it was a major flop. Gears 2 with its $10 million budget would have been profitable even with 500K units shipped worldwide.

For the amount of time it was in development? Absolutely. For a typical new, IP Game, no.

Think about it, 700,000 is a lot of copies. But Alan Wake was in development for like 6 years. It probably lost quite a bit of cash.

Like Silent Hill Homecoming sold about the same. But it was in development for like 2-3 years. So 700k is decent.

anything over a million I would call a pretty big success.

how many years put into this game? well at least compared to mafia 2 its not that bad i guess

i think they need to sell like 2millions to gain profit

Given the long development cycle and the fact that Remedy was selling Alan wake underwear (?!), flashlights and whatnot prior to launch, its a safe bet they were expecting more than 700K in sales.

http://store.alanwake.com/

Its also worth noting that Remedy admits that they pissed away a lot of time working on concepts they ultimately abandoned (originally AW was an open world game).

CarnageHeart

Most game developers only wish their games could sell 700k. So no, its clearly not a failure.

We can assume that Alan Wake cost around $30 million.S0lidSnake

I don't think it cost anywhere near as much. Yes, it took a lot of time to develop (most of the time was spent of various prototypes, not full-on development), but I don't see it having some enormous budget. Also, Remedy has another source of revenue which probably supported the long development cycle via its sister company, Futuremark which makes 3DMark, a popular benchmarking software.

I've spent a bit of time looking and wasn't able to find a source for the 700K number that has been mentioned (never with attribution) on a couple forums and fansites. The number is suspiciously close to VGChartz's 698K guesstimate so I strongly suspect they are the 'source'.

Remedy's community manager posted a FAQ in February 2007 which stated that in its first couple years (before MS picked up the project which happened back in 2006) Remedy spend seven million on AW and that it had been in development for over five years. He stated the subsequent budget is 'secret'.

http://forum.alanwake.com/showthread.php?t=1216

How long has Alan Wake been in development?

Over 5 years.

"Alan Wake is a concept that we've been working with for over a year now. Once Max Payne 2 shipped we spent a little while recovering from the crunch, and then started working on different concepts trying to find the concept that would excite us and that we could be passionate about. And after several drafts we found something that we really liked... and that concept was Alan Wake." - Petri Järvilehto (31 May 2005)

How much has it cost so far to develop Alan Wake?

The game's production costs were estimated at 7 million dollars before Remedy entered in to a publishing deal with Microsoft. Remedy was financing the production itself for a couple of years until Microsoft Game Studios came in with its vast resources. The game's final budget is a business secret.

Such an excellent game too. What happened? Did Red Dead kill its sales?cametall

pretty much.

[QUOTE="cametall"]Such an excellent game too. What happened? Did Red Dead kill its sales?S0lidSnake

pretty much.

Games like Alan Wake are fairly niche, or niche-chic like Heavy Rain and the like. I frankly don't know why people would ever have the expectation that games like that would sell into seven figures.

You can't blame people for buying Red Dead over it, RDR had ALOT more bang for your buck, in terms of the massive amount of (high quality) content. Alan Wake is a great game, but it practically had "rental" written write on it's forehead (short, yet great singleplayer experience). Most people can't just pull $60 out of their ass, so the choice between which game justifies that amount money more, is somewhat obvious.

[QUOTE="tjoeb123"]Here's why I think it probably "failed": The game took a vacation to the Wild West. When it got there, it got lost. Soon, it found its way to a million players/cowboys and outlaws and they killed the game. And guess what? Every one of those players, cowboys, and outlaws were those of....you guessed it. Especially since it came out on the same day, too.jasonharris48

Yep. Other than September 14th, this was proabably the worst day to release a game this year. Also, dropping the PC version probably didn't help them any either.

If 700k sales is the mark of a failed game then the video game market really isn't sustainable and the entire industry is probably headed for a crash.

If 700k sales is the mark of a failed game then the video game market really isn't sustainable and the entire industry is probably headed for a crash.

Dire_Weasel