Infinitron do you happen to have an insight on how well it did in sales?
No hard data, no. I don't think it did extremely well, but the real question is how much money it made relative to its budget.
Blackguards seems to have made more money than MMX when it came out (although it didn't do as well when it was an Early Access title, so perhaps it all evens out in the end).
From what I gathered doing a quick Steam exclusive research and very basic calculations (I know both titles are not Steam exclusive, but those numbers are the most easily accessible for a quick estimation and both titles were available via the Steam Early Access program so I assume Might & Magic and The Dark Eye hardcore fans alike and probably a significant chunk of the target audience bought it there to get immediate access... I know for a fact that at least I personally did purchase via Steam in both cases
):
Concurrent players, all-time peak according to Steamcharts.com
Blackguards: 2,348
MMX: 7,953
Both games peaked player wise around release day.
General research into concurrent players to sales ratio, once again based exclusively on the Steam numbers:
The
post-mortem for Eldritch for example states that on release day they made roughly $15,000 while selling for $11,99
Which equals around 1,250 sales with 116 concurrent players tops during the first sale days.
So applying this sale/player ratio for a very crude estimation of Steam sales up until / on day 1:
Blackguards sold 25,300 copies
MMX sold 85,700 copies
Like I said this whole thing is only a very crude and quickly done estimation, but it gives me the impression that MMX sold more copies than Blackguards.
And even though a copy of Blackguards costs more than a copy of MMX, the apparently big sales difference also gives the impression that MMX actually earned more money than Blackguards.
Once again this is all based on Steam numbers exclusively, so you might have based your statement that Blackguards did better than MMX money wise on other more reliable and/or more diverse sources.
For example one big German retail store chain ("Saturn") releases weekly video game sales charts, for this week Blackguards is No. 10 and MMX is No. 11.
In regards to the Budget of both titles I have not the slightest idea and as you pointed out that's an important factor as well. I only know that it was hinted at several times on how small and "indie" the budget for MMX was, since it has been something along the lines of an experiment for the suits upstairs more than anything else really.
