Troika's sales figures

Mr. Teatime · Post by **Mr. Teatime** » Mon Feb 28, 2005 10:49 pm

[Company -> Update] - More info on <a href="http://wikipocalypse.duckandcover.cx/in ... tle=Troika Games">Company: Troika Games</a>

There's an <a href="http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?a ... 2">article at Game Daily Biz on Troika's death</a>.
It's mostly commentary, and an intelligent theory on the company
getting a reputation for unfinished games preventing them from signing
a publishing deal, but the interesting bit is when they mention the
sales figures of each game.

<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.

</blockquote>
That figure for Bloodlines is a lot less than I expected. The game completely sank by the look of it.

Being released on the exact same day as Half Life 2, which used
a more polished and better looking version of the same engine, and was
the most anticipated PC game in six years, couldn't have helped.

Spotted @ <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.com">RPG Codex</a>

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:27 am

I'd like to know how much sales, in dollars, a game must sell to make it's developement profitable.

Mr. Teatime · Post by **Mr. Teatime** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:30 am

The amount bloodlines sold is very, very low. Games that have been out for years sell that amount in a month. I'll try and find an example.

Subhuman · Post by **Subhuman** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 2:47 am

I figured profit is when a product makes more money than it cost.

Fez · Post by **Fez** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 3:10 am

Bloodlines sold so poorly they could have made more profit pimping out the staff. 72k units after the cost of Bloodlines is probably making some accountant cry somewhere.

Mr. Teatime · Post by **Mr. Teatime** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 5:21 pm

And if you consider the amount of hype Activision put into it... with those press events, real bands making the music, the well-known voice actors...
They could have put some money into Q&A I guess, but still.

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 6:05 pm

If they had included a fucking interesting multiplayer and a CD-Key maybe I'd have bought it.