Company News Troika games sales figures

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Troika Games

<a href=http://biz.gamedaily.com>Game Daily Biz</a> has posted an <a href=http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=9052>article on Troika's demise</a>. The things of interest are the sales figures and an opinion of PC Gamer's Editor-in-Chief. Here is an outline:
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<b>Arcanum - 234k - $8.8 mil
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ToEE - 128k - $5.2 mil
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Bloodlines - 72k - $3.4 mil</b>
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<blockquote>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.
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"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.
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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," </blockquote>
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Well, poor Bloodlines sales certainly explain Troika's situation. I didn't think it was THAT low.
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Edit: The infamous Mandrew <a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=187491#187491>has strongly disagreed with the numbers</a>:
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<blockquote>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.
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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.
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I do not know any numbers on Vampire, but I do know what I think of this source's accuracy.</blockquote>
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WE NEED MORE RUMARZ PEOPLE!!!
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[Sammael]

Damn, Bloodlines probably didn't even manage to cover the production and licensing costs for Activision... and I thought ToEE was a bigger seller than Arcanum.

 

[Volourn]

WTH? That seems way too low for TOEE..... Bl bombed. That kinda sucks. And, I thought Arcanum sold far less than that number? Weird...

Hmm.. This brings up an interetsing though. TOEE supposedly outsold the NWN expansions so I'd like to see the expansion numbers...

Hmm.. No wonder Troika had to close. Their sales figures are way less than I thought they were...

NOW THIS IS NEWS!!

Good job. :idea:

 

[triCritical]

Damn, Bloodlines probably didn't even manage to cover the production and licensing costs for Activision... and I thought ToEE was a bigger seller than Arcanum.

Thats activision's fault then!

EDIT: What I mean is, Its publishers fault in general for raising the bar and the general overhead in what it takes to make a game. We charge about 2.5 times the employee cost and that is good for a couple years for a team the size of troika's and we as a whole get paid most likely more. The point being publishers are directly to blame for raising the cost of game production, IMO!

 

[NeverwinterKnight]

is THIS going to be enough proof for someone in another thread who insisted that bloodlines was a great seller?

those figure surprise me though, considering how many people on this forum drool over troika and their games. i figured itd sell more than it has.

 

[DemonKing]

Arcanum - 234k - $8.8 mil
ToEE - 128k - $5.2 mil
Bloodlines - 72k - $3.4 mil

I'm no mathematician but Arcanum & TOEE have been out a lot longer than Bloodlines, which may account for the lower sales figures. Remember that BL is still a full price product, as far as I know, wheras the other two have been in the bargain bins for a while.

What does surprise me is that Arcanum outsold TOEE by over 100K units. Sure it was released earlier but it still seems too high...I was sure the D&D licence would bring in a few more punters than that.

Could it be that with internet access reaching saturation point a buggy release on a non-sequel product is really a death wish these days?

 

[obediah]

I'm really surprised that Arcanum outsold ToEE. I'd love to get my hands on a graph of the Arcanum and ToEE sales by week. I'm mainly interested in if Arcanum was gangbusters out of the gate or if it just had a long steady burn. I would expect for ToEE's sales to drop off fast after it became clear that the game was dumped and wasn't going to be properly finished. It's hard to imagine anything with Dungeons and Dragons on it doing so poorly.

 

[Volourn]

What's weird is that TOEE was in the top 10 upon release...

 

[DemonKing]

What's weird is that TOEE was in the top 10 upon release...

True, TOEE was in the top 5 for 2 weeks, I seem to remember - and I can't remember Arcanum even scratching the Top 10.

I like this from the article:

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

Kind of a catch 22 for Troika if the publishers pushed them to make early releases and then refuse to fund them because their releases are always buggy

Although I also believe Troika were their own worst enemy with feature creep and investing valuable time and resources in buggy features that no one wanted anyway (eg TOEE NPC looting).

 

[space captain]

the release date of Bloodlines had EVERYTHING to do with its sales... there were at least 4 other triple AAA legendary status games that had just been or were about to be released

if they had waited till January, it probably would have sold alot more

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I agree that if Activision and Troika could have waited a couple of more months (fixing the game up more in the meantime), they could have had a big hit on their hands.

Arcanum is my personal favorite of the Troika games and it doesn't really surprise me how well it's sold considering I still see it in stores. Matter of fact, they have it on the shelves at the local Best Buy right next to the more recent titles.

 

[Screaming_life]

I'm really surprised that Arcanum outsold ToEE. I'd love to get my hands on a graph of the Arcanum and ToEE sales by week. I'm mainly interested in if Arcanum was gangbusters out of the gate or if it just had a long steady burn. I would expect for ToEE's sales to drop off fast after it became clear that the game was dumped and wasn't going to be properly finished.

I would imagine that Arcanum had steady and increasing sales as word of mouth spread and positive non hype reviews were written.

A hyped FPS will usually get inflated reviews on it's initial release and sell loads but probably not consistently.

Boom and bust!

I think RPG's have alot more potential for prolonged sales but this probably doesn't match with publisher perception. For them it seems to be all about the number of units shifted in the shortest time.
This is probably why co-op mode keeps getting dropped from games, but if they only realised that there is potential for more prolonged sales!

To get the most out of RPG's publishers probably want to keep promoting it well after release... that's what i'd do anyway.
If the game is good people will play it - i just with publishers would let the developers make more in depth games and stop cutting corners.

 

[taks]

We charge about 2.5 times the employee cost and that is good for a couple years for a team the size of troika's and we as a whole get paid most likely more.

if you're government contracting, the number is almost 3.6x for direct labor on a contracted job. there are other rates, however, and the 3.6 does account for all overhead plus profit, e.g. anybody that performs a support role is not direct, and therefore that person's wages + benefits are actually covered under the direct labor folks.

The point being publishers are directly to blame for raising the cost of game production, IMO!

not necessarily. i suppose it depends on the deal. the problem with self-publishing is that developers are good at developing, not publishing. interplay is a good example of an inability to do both. too bad. EA gets away with it, but they're so big now they probably have separate divisions for each function...

all in all, the 128k number actually sounds more realistic to me than the original 250k i had figured on... of course, that means HotU and SoU did even worse than that which is a bit of a surprise. also, 234k for arcanum seems big, but that's what happens when we don't get sales numbers on a regular basis...

taks

 

[Fez]

Most publishers are concerned with the first few months, after that discounts mean they get less money and they stop caring.

Those figures are awful though, much worse than I thought possible. What's the breakdown for countries? Or is that just the US?

 

[tilting_msh]

I honestly think word-of-mouth is what hurt ToEE so badly. The fact that it was D&D gave it early sales success, but that game was in a sorry state when it was released, and people were pissed. Word got out that it was an extremely buggy game with some questionable design decisions, and the sales numbers dropped.

It's too bad because I think had ToEE been better handled it would have been a cash cow for Troika - or at the very least given them the resources to stay alive. A sequel would have been guaranteed (and was initially planned, but poor sales killed that idea), and Troika may have been in a better position to market their own IP. Too bad.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's kinda ironic that Bloodlines - a first person action game based on a hot engne and a popular license, a game that was supposed to save Troika is what killed it. It's hard to say whether they had a choice or not, but they would have been better off with isometric RPGs.

 

[Greatatlantic]

Well, in other related news... if this wikipedia article is right, Bloodlines has already outsold Planescape: Torment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment

You also have to be careful about placement in a top 10 spot representing how many and much were sold. For example, being in the top 10 from November though December means a lot more than a top placement in June or July. Plus, you have to remember PC games are selling fewer and fewer total units. Sure, there are few top notch titles that do well, but when the some added up is less and less... I think Activision thought they'd have a better shot going against Half Life 2 than Knight's of the Old Republic II. Plus, Christmas time does help sales, no doubt about it.

You know what, the fact this game was hacked and released online a few days before its scheduled released probably didn't help things either.

 

[DemonKing]

It's too bad because I think had ToEE been better handled it would have been a cash cow for Troika - or at the very least given them the resources to stay alive. A sequel would have been guaranteed (and was initially planned, but poor sales killed that idea), and Troika may have been in a better position to market their own IP. Too bad.

I actually think one of the reasons TOEE bombed was because they adapted an old D&D module, rather than develop a new scenerio themselves. Whatever attention they got from old time D&Ders was probably lost as their storyline was constrained by the rather simplistic Gygax "Giant Dungeon" scenerio they inherited, and while the combat engine was good, the adherence to the original module and poor monster AI meant challenging combats were few and far between.

 

[AlanC9]

What's weird is that TOEE was in the top 10 upon release...

How accurate are those sales figures, anyway? Don't the early figures reflect shipments to retail locations instead of actual customer sales?

 

[Kuato]

I thought sales from Arcanum secured the TOEE and Bloodlines contracts for Troika but looking at those figures, I can't figure out why Publishers would even go near them which makes me question the accuracy of those figures, I mean just what are we looking at total sales to date , US market, World sales or just the first week of sales? or just what Walmart Bought?

 

[Elwro]

Weird. I thought that Arcanum was their poorest seller and BL their best, while it was exactly the opposite. I remember that 2+ years ago someone either here or on terra-arcanum posted info saying that Arcanum had sold less than 100k copies. On the other hand, the game is still being sold...
And judging from Polish fora that I've frequented it seems that in Poland PS:T was one of the biggest hits...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Bloodlines was supposed to be the CRPG that brought in mainstream players. Obviously, that was a bad idea.

Of course, I think everyone knew that it was rather stupid of Activision to release Bloodlines the same day as Half-Life 2 for many, MANY different reasons. It's hard enough to get sales when you release a game at the same time as one of the most anticipated games EVAR. It's especially hard when one of the big pitches for Bloodlines was USES THE SOURCE ENGINE DEVELOPED FOR HALF LIFE 2. You also run the problem of using an older version of that engine in the game that licensed the engine because Valve is free to update it whenever they want prior to shipping and for whatever reason, but the other game has to lock down and go with whatever changes they've made to that engine at some point.

But honestly, I think the ulitmate conclusion to the sales figures is that the further and further Troika got away from their niche, the worse things got in terms of sales.

 

[Vault Dweller]

But honestly, I think the ulitmate conclusion to the sales figures is that the further and further Troika got away from their niche, the worse things got in terms of sales.

Yep, that much is clear. Troika was the best niche RPG developer and only a mediocre mainstream studio. Arcanum is a Hall of Fame - type game that will be remembered and recommended just like we recommend Darklands today. Bloodlines will be forgotten soon.

 

[Spazmo]

That's... astounding. It's really fucking nice to see some kind of evidence to back up the idea that proper RPGs like Arcanum actually do sell better than action-y hybrids.

 

[Greatatlantic]

That's... astounding. It's really fucking nice to see some kind of evidence to back up the idea that proper RPGs like Arcanum actually do sell better than action-y hybrids.

That being said, Diablo has still sold over one million units. I'm sure when Dugeon Siege II is released it will sell a couple hundred thousand copies in the first few weeks.

I think Bloodlines still had plenty to impress fans of "proper RPGs" and what not, and its not like that many Arcanum types are being released now. If anything, its evidence that Ion Storm had the right idea with Invisible War, considering the number of reviewers who thought Bloodlines was the game Invisible War should have been. Now, that is just sad. But who knows why Bloodlines sold that poorly. You would think 1 out of every 10 HL2 fanboys would buy it right away just for the Source, or at least that must be what Activision thought. The fact it was Ripped a couple days before release probably didn't help things either.