Troika games sales figures
Troika games sales figures
Company News - posted by Vault Dweller on Mon 28 February 2005, 21:13:26
Tags: Troika GamesGame Daily Biz has posted an article on Troika's demise. The things of interest are the sales figures and an opinion of PC Gamer's Editor-in-Chief. Here is an outline:
Arcanum - 234k - $8.8 mil
ToEE - 128k - $5.2 mil
Bloodlines - 72k - $3.4 mil
Boyarsky, Cain and Anderson formed Troika in 1998 after leaving Interplay where they created the classic RPG Fallout. Troika only created three games in the past six years: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001), The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004). These games catered to the niche RPG market, and although most were well received critically, the titles simply failed to generate enough revenue for the studio to survive. Arcanum was the company's best selling game, and it only managed to sell 234K units and generate sales of $8.8 million, according to the NPD Group. It was downhill from there; The Temple of Elemental Evil sold 128K units ($5.2 million) and Bloodlines sold a paltry 72K units ($3.4 million). It didn't help either that Bloodlines, which was published by Activision and powered by the Source/Half-Life 2 engine, was released at the same time as Valve's blockbuster first-person shooter sequel.
...
"We were always big fans of their stuff, a couple of us rabidly so," PC Gamer Editor-in-Chief Dan Morris told GameDAILY BIZ. "Arcanum is right up there with the great RPGs of all time as far as we're concerned. They'll be missed; they always had original game designs and they're pretty passionate developers.
They may have developed—and possibly through no fault of their own—a reputation for unfinished games. Certainly if you look back at their last two or three releases they all hit the market in various states of bugginess. And you can probably get away with that if the RPGs are blockbuster sellers out of the gate... I think the combination of sales with the reputation for not having the most bug-free products at launch day made it tough to find financing for their projects going forward,"Well, poor Bloodlines sales certainly explain Troika's situation. I didn't think it was THAT low.
Edit: The infamous Mandrew <a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=187491#187491>has strongly disagreed with the numbers[/url]:
This is incorrect. By a signficant factor. I was there when the royalty checks came in, and Arcanum did much better than that. I do not think the publisher would have written checks for copies that they hadn't sold.
I never heard a final number on ToEE, as I wasn't directly involved in it, but the number I recall for its first-month sales was more than this article claims it did overall.
I do not know any numbers on Vampire, but I do know what I think of this source's accuracy.WE NEED MORE RUMARZ PEOPLE!!!
Arcanum - 234k - $8.8 mil
ToEE - 128k - $5.2 mil
Bloodlines - 72k - $3.4 mil
Boyarsky, Cain and Anderson formed Troika in 1998 after leaving Interplay where they created the classic RPG Fallout. Troika only created three games in the past six years: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001), The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004). These games catered to the niche RPG market, and although most were well received critically, the titles simply failed to generate enough revenue for the studio to survive. Arcanum was the company's best selling game, and it only managed to sell 234K units and generate sales of $8.8 million, according to the NPD Group. It was downhill from there; The Temple of Elemental Evil sold 128K units ($5.2 million) and Bloodlines sold a paltry 72K units ($3.4 million). It didn't help either that Bloodlines, which was published by Activision and powered by the Source/Half-Life 2 engine, was released at the same time as Valve's blockbuster first-person shooter sequel.
...
"We were always big fans of their stuff, a couple of us rabidly so," PC Gamer Editor-in-Chief Dan Morris told GameDAILY BIZ. "Arcanum is right up there with the great RPGs of all time as far as we're concerned. They'll be missed; they always had original game designs and they're pretty passionate developers.
They may have developed—and possibly through no fault of their own—a reputation for unfinished games. Certainly if you look back at their last two or three releases they all hit the market in various states of bugginess. And you can probably get away with that if the RPGs are blockbuster sellers out of the gate... I think the combination of sales with the reputation for not having the most bug-free products at launch day made it tough to find financing for their projects going forward,"
Edit: The infamous Mandrew <a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=187491#187491>has strongly disagreed with the numbers[/url]:
This is incorrect. By a signficant factor. I was there when the royalty checks came in, and Arcanum did much better than that. I do not think the publisher would have written checks for copies that they hadn't sold.
I never heard a final number on ToEE, as I wasn't directly involved in it, but the number I recall for its first-month sales was more than this article claims it did overall.
I do not know any numbers on Vampire, but I do know what I think of this source's accuracy.
