Despite being one of the few EA titles to be stocked by GAME in recent months, Starbreeze has suggested that the retailer’s collapse contributed to lower-than-expected sales of its hi-tech shooter Syndicate, saying that “the retail space is hurting, and I think that hurt us because we were such a retail product.”
“There’s so many reasons why a game succeeds or fails from a commercial point-of-view,” said CEO Michael Nermark talking to GamesIndustry.biz.
“We released the game about a month or more ago, and we’re doing our post-mortem right now: what did we do right, what did we do wrong, and of course we will look at the commercial side as well.
“The numbers are not as high as we would like, and I think if you asked anyone they would say the same thing about any game they made.
“But [Syndicate] was released in the midst of GAME going under; the retail space is hurting, and I think that hurt us because we were such a retail product.”
Syndicate launched on February 24th, over a month prior to GAME entering administration on March 26th.
The title entered the UK top 40 chart in seventh before tumbling out of the chart altogether three weeks later.
Starbreeze’s next projects, however, likely won’t be affected by the high street’s status.
The studio currently has two projects in development, an XBLA/PSN title codenamed “Project 13”, and a free-to-play title codenamed “Cold Mercury”.
GAME was bought out of administration on April 1st.
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Comments
yeah. of course. and the poor sales figures have got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that syndicate is a very mediocre product in a genre (shooter) where the market is way oversaturated. yeah, but keep on finding surreal reasons so the decisionmakers will not have to admit that their decisions were as poor as the product.
Not the reason i didn’t buy it, i refuse to buy the game because i have to use origin, can’t buy it on steam where all my other games are. don’t see why i shouldn’t be able to get this or Mass Effect 3 on steam, EA still get the money in the end.