Frictional Games has published a new article on its blog about the present and the future of SOMA, as well as the company itself. According to the indie team, SOMA has not made a profit yet as it has sold 250K units in total on all platforms.
The good news is that Frictional Games expects to earn back its entire investment in the project by the end of 2016. The team needs around 20K-30K additional sales in order to break even, and expects to meet that goal by the end of the year.
As Frictional Games revealed:
“The total number of sales, across all platforms, is currently at a bit over 250 000 units. This is pretty good; it’ll only take 20k – 30k more until we’ve earned back our entire investment in the project. Given that the daily sales are still solid (about 125 units a day) and we have regular boosts from various sale events, this is bound to happen well before this year is over.”
Frictional Games is currently working on two different games. As stated, this will give the team the ability to experiment with the concept of their games. Of course, this begs the question whether Frictional Games will be able to polish, optimize and take good care of them. After all, Frictional Games is a small indie team, so another question is whether these two games will be as big and ambitious projects as SOMA and Amnesia were.
“For the first time in company history we’re now developing two games at the same time. This will require non-trivial changes in how we manage the team, but in the end we’re very sure it’ll be worth it all. By having two projects going at the same time, we can release games at much higher frequency. In turn, this let us be more experimental as we don’t have to rely as much on each new game being a big money generator. We’re still in the early phases of this transition, but it’s shaping up really well so far.”
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I wish they had all the money in the world.. they are awesome. All of their games made me think. All of their games shocked me in some way.
I really cant wait for their next game. Shame SOMA didn’t sell better. I actually watched like 10 different youtubbers after finishing the game. I was really curious on what people thought about the story.
And? What was the reaction of players?
Oh so many 🙂 Some people ddn’t understand the game at first and it was very interesting to see their reaction later on. Others knew how the game will end from the first 10 m of the game, but even they got shocked.
In general, everyone went there with a different mind set. Some people went there to just have fun and make jokes, but eventually even they began to.. well.. get more serious as the game progressed. It is a heavy game if you start thinking about some of the things. In general, the story can be written down in like 1 small paper, but its good enough to make you go crazy.
Not many got super emotional like me when i saw the ending.. just the text in the end made me feel really sad. I don’t wanna spoil anything obviously.
The story and game was fantastic. Better than so much stuff I’ve played and I’ve played lots!
I agree! The story alone not only made me think, but it also made me discuss the game itself and its story. I usually just finish a game(random game), i say cool cooollll.. and i move on.
Not with their games.
To be quite honest, I’ve not seen enough of this game to entice my interest in buying it. Too many offers from indie devs to pay attention to all. Maybe I’ll take a look at it eventually. But I’m not expecting it to be good.
On a side note: It is fair that the monthly comment is updated yearly. After all, the weekly was updated monthly 😀 😀
The story is pretty good but overall the game is not as good as the Penumbra series or Amnesia TDD.
Exactly, we already have Amnesia and it got the reputation as being “Amnesia at the Bottom of the Sea” but being a step down from Amnesia gameplay wise, and that’s exactly what it is. The story evolved but the gameplay took a step back.
it is clearly piracy and not that the game did not generate much interest as it was far simpler than the predecessor and other games like it. After all the heavily promoted firewatch has sold twice as much.
Didn’t you hear about it selling across other platforms in total?, it;s not piracy, it’s that the game just isn’t as popular and hasn’t been marketed to the fullest.
this game has probably the best ending i seen in a video game in a long time and the writing based on the limitation they had budget-wise is great. as far as writing goes this is the winner of 2015 fo me easily and i played lots of games already so i experienced a lot of different stories already in the industry. as far as gameplay is concerned though, it is really lacking but i am more than satisfied with the story i got.
this game however lacks elements that trigger some people’s interest story-wise. including heavy budget presentation, IP power or nudity. not everyone needs these elements of course, but some do.
I bought it on launch day and I have yet to finish it. Too much walking and hiding and too little of the good old Penumbra-style puzzles and interactivity.
Just sad! And that crappy halfbaked Fallout4 is reaching 4kk on STEAM! Lame
goVEGAN
This is what happens when you release on consoles. You need much a higher budget to cover the cost on advertising, sometimes that budget is higher than the cost of the games development but it is needed to make console gamers aware of it.
Everything releasing on consoles needs these huge marketing efforts to compete with the likes of EA and Ubisoft. On PC their games get advertised for free on social media platforms.
My thoughts too.
That proves that it’s all in the marketing campaign. I mean, this game sold half the numbers of Firewatch even though it is a better experience in all categories.
Your opinion, as I think Firewatch is better in most regards.
Of course it’s my opinion, I made the comment. Chill out.
Personally I prefer when narrative driven games are not incredibly boring and have a good story payoff in the end. Having more than 2 hours of gameplay with no padding also helps.
They simply didn’t market it well enough..
That’s why when releasing on consoles you need to sell a lot. If they just released on PC like their other games I’m sure profit wise they would have been ok.
Well their previous games sold around 6x as much as this game did on PC alone, maybe the loyal PC fanbase weren’t happy with yet another developer chasing after console market instead of catering to the market they already have?. Who knows but the previous games sold over one million just on PC alone so I have no idea why this one has bombed despite launching on more than one platform?. Apparently 130000 sales were made on Steam?. I honestly can’t say why their latest game has bombed.
good. soma was a ripoff and NOTHING like what was promised. it was literally a meme game.