Sales of adventure games

Hi there,

I'd like to ask you , if you dont know (by chance) the selling numbers of adventure games (worldwide would be the best). I've tried to search for them, but I have not been successful. I know for example, that Black mirror has something around 300 000 world-wide sold copies, and i had also heard, that Runaway (1) has something around 400 000 only in France! What about you, do you know some sales of adventure games yourselves?

And one other thing, im quite interested, if you guys (or women), do not know, how much % from one sold copy of a game sees the developer. Heard something about 20%...?

What do you think?

Nothing at all?

Roamn, that is a great question, but unfortunately, I don't have any answers for you. I'd love to know them when you find out.

roamn, hi,

The reason you can't find this information is that it's very valuable to retailers, who are willing to fork out quite a lot of dosh for quarterly/annual reports. The company that (used to) compile these reports was PC Data. But the data was only for the U.S. retail market, and didn't include on-line sales.

The last time I looked, PC Data had been taken over by another company, and the annual report subscription was in the neighbourhood of $15,000!

So the short answer is: the only time you will see figures of this nature is when they have been (illegally) leaked from someone in the retail trade to a journalist.

As for Runaway selling 400,000 copies in France alone?! I sincerely doubt it. That would put worldwide sales at well over 1 million copies, something that not even the venerable Grim Fandango ever managed. I'd be surprised if Runaway even sold 40,000 in France

By my estimation, the total number of people who *regularly* play adventure games worldwide can be no larger than 500,000. And I think that's on the high side. That's why there are fewer adventure games being made by the larger studios. They have no way of getting a return on their investment

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

Perhaps the number of 400.000 copies sold in France is based on this press release about Runaway 2:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22782

However, this number doesn't refer to Runaway.

Unlike Grim Fandango, to which it was compared in the previous post, Runaway was indeed very succesful. Grim Fandango had horrible initial sales figures, despite the rave reviews, whereas Runaway was an instant hit, and according to some 600.000 copies were sold in Europe.

I fear too that the number of 500.000 people that regularly play adventure games is on the high side. An amazing low number, given the potential buyers in e.g. the USA and Europe. Very sad. (I have been trying to educate my friends and neigbors for years ;))

BTW, I noticed that similar questions were posed in other forums:

http://www.adventure-eu.com/forum/index.php?topic=1750.msg10191;topicseen
http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21021

Just to show some odd sense of comparison, Halo 3, the new FPS for the XBox 360 sold some $300 million dollars worth in its first week. At $49 per game, that's just over 6 million games. Since it can only play on the XBox 360, it's amazing to me that Microsoft still hasn't made any profit from the console's sales numbers. Weird.

Point being? Many folks are members of and post on the other adventure gaming sites. The better your chance of getting an answer.

Ana

martinc, hi,

Indeed, from TFA you linked to:

"Focus Home Interactive is a French publishing and distribution company based near Paris, France. Founded in 1996, Focus earned an early success by publishing the music software range eJay. With over 400,000 copies sold in France thanks to strong promotion and a solid marketing campaign, Focus has made eJay one of the most popular brands for contemporary youth."

So the 400,000 figure was for some music software called 'eJay' which is also sold by Pendulo's publisher, NOT Runaway! Definitely a bit of misinformation being thrown around there

I do, however, find it implausible that Runaway could have sold 600,000 copies in Europe alone. That would make it, like, one of the most successful adventure games of all time... and if you agree with me that there are probably no more than 500,000 potential buyers of adventure games worldwide, then what piece of the woodwork did these 600,000 Runaway fans come out of?

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

The same woodwork that spawned millions of Myst buyers?

Becky, hi,

Although 6 million copies of Myst were sold, most of those were bundled with OEM systems. So in fact, most people who 'bought' Myst never played it... or at least never got past the first puzzle.

The only place I could find any concrete sales figures for adventure games was in the 2001 - 2002 time frame when Just Adventure was leaking them in Randy's 'State of Adventure Gaming' column. Google for:

adventure game sales figures

Old data, but instructive nonetheless.

Regards,
MetzO'Magic
P.S. Ah, another piece of the puzzle. Found this little trade snippet:

"NPD Intellect, which bought PC Data in March. 2001"

So it was NPD who took over PC Data!

I remember getting Morrowind with the purchase of this computer I'm writing on now. I also got Duke Nukem, but never played the game, though.

It is really difficult to get sales figures for adventure games from publishers and such. Bethesda announced that 3 million copies of Oblivion has shipped to stores within the first 1½-2 months. Now, just because a game has shipped to store does not a sale make.

The same could be true for games like Runaway and Dreamfall and othe3r adventure games.

/Karsten

Hi MetzO'Magic

Thanks for the reminder of this info on Just Adventure. It's a pity that kind of data isn't readily available any more.

Ana:

Point being that at least some people are wasting time by answering the same question, for there will be overlaps of course. And like you say, many people are members of other forums or read the postings in other forums.

And here's another link with a similar posting ;-)
http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/forum/index.php?topic=1411.msg8322;topicseen

Metzomagic:

There's no contradiction (500.000). You spoke of gamers that "regularly" played adventures games. A game may attract casual gamers of course. The number of 600.000 in Europe came from the manufacturer I think, which may be considered as an obscure source. But in general there was agreement that Runaway was indeed a best selling game (like Syberia for instance). The Just Adventure figures (orig. PC Data) you mention were monthly sales figures, and they didn't reflect international sales I believe.

I did some research for an article that never became an article around May 2001. As part of that research I collected sales figures for Adventure games (and a few others for reference) from various sources. If there is interest I'll put them up on the web somewhere. This is data up to May 2001 but may be helpful as a guide.

I'm interested.

I'd be very interested.

I'm interesred, too Maybe it will show how and why adventure games suddenly became popular and then went sort of downhill since 2001-2002. It seems to me, though, that the adventure game genre is about the recover. Mainly due to many detective stories out there. So at least the stories sell well...

/Karsten

OK that's some interest!

I'll get the figures out there, but need to carefully word the notes. Terse enough so people read them, yet conveying what the figures mean and don't mean.

Thanks Peter, the information will be very useful to the over-curious amongst us

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

I've gone back and forth on this myself. I've gotten numbers back from some indies that would bring a tear to your eye knowing how much work they put into something, and what they got back in return. An indie (self-published) game breaking 1,000 sales is an extremely RARE thing. Most seem to settle into the 200-600 range, with quite a few never even crossing the 100 mark until several months after they were released.

Scratches has probably been one of the more successful AGs to have come out recently and according to GotGame's press release the world-wide sales figure was 150,000.

As far as Myst selling millions, there are a few things to consider:

- It came out during the heyday of Adventure Games
- It was one of the first games to come out on CD which made LOTs of people want to buy it to try the new technology.
- It was completely different from the other AGs that had come before it (1st person)
- How many of those copies of Myst that have been sold are repurchases? I own 4 copies of the game myself.

The sad part of all this is that even the developers don't really know how many copies of their games have been sold. They have to take the publisher's word for it. From my understanding, a developer getting sales figures from publishers for their game is a ridiculously difficult thing to do.

Also note that Got Game gives it's games a long shelf life. A year after Scratches came out, you could still find it on major retail store shelves which helped boost the sales. Other companies seem to only give a game a month or two on the shelves before they replace it with another title. I can only imagine that the sales of those games are pretty dismal as a result.

My 2 cents...

Given Ivinia's info above re sales of indie games, I wonder how many sales Dark Fall 1 racked up as an indie before it got purchased and distributed by its publisher.

Not that Jonathan has to tell us, but it'd be interesting to see some figures given all of the hard work he and his friends put into the first Dark Fall game.

I also have at least 3 versions of the first Myst game and 2 versions of Riven.

Darkfall was one of the rare ones that broke the mold - not to mention being one of the first to self-publish his game which got a lot of interest. According to an interview Jonathan gave, he sold 2,000 copies of Darkfall before it got picked up by a publisher. I think that is a bit harder to do now with so many indies self-publishing. Not saying it can't be done, but the quality definitely has to be there.

I'd love to know if Barrow Hill also broke the 1,000 mark before getting picked up by a publisher. Matt was issuing out some special trinkets for the first 100-150 people who bought the game. I purchased it within several hours of it's release and never got anything special with mine, so I'm assuming he did very well self publishing it. The graphics quality was there, the spooky atmosphere, and Jonathan Boakes involvement all helped. All of this added to the good buzz Barrow Hill was getting way before it's release which is HUGE when it comes to self-publishing.

Even then he still ended up going to a publisher which pays a mere fraction of how much he could get per copy selling it himself, so it makes you think that maybe it wasn't as many copies as you would think. I dunno...

I was looking at best selling albums earlier today and I found it interesting that you can get *rough* numbers for those. I say rough because some of the sources come from the artist's publicists and those can be taken with a grain of salt. Likewise you can get sales numbers for all sorts of games like Halo and various sports games. The fact that AG sales numbers are SO secretive and hard to obtain, makes me think that the numbers aren't very good. Well, they might be good for a 1 or 2 man development team, but for anything larger?

Any conspiracy minded people out there want to speculate on why these numbers are so hard to obtain and why publishers keep them so guarded?

(ok, maybe that should be an evil grin?)

So let's see . . . 2,000 copies times $20 each = $40,000. Not bad at all but it's not going to make anyone wealthy. Besides, Jonathan was working on Darkfall for a long time so I'm glad he was doing it at all; it was a great game.

I'd forgotten about Barrow Hill but that's a good example too.

I imagine the actual sales figures are hard to obtain because the publishers want it that way. For years, movie actors taking a percentage of the "profits" got nothing thanks to studios' creative accounting. The smart ones now get percentages of the published ticket sales as they are readily tracked by Variety and other movie publications. It is harder to get similar info on game sales though due to the way the publishers have things arranged.

I imagine it's along the same lines as why employers do not want employees telling each other how much their salary is. Someone might get the idea they're paying too much for a game and they wouldn't want that anymore than an employer wants an employee to think he's doing the same work and making less than another.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

The great mystery to me is why there are so few Adventure Game players. With PC's almost as common as TV sets in people's homes, (and I'm sure millions of homes have more than one computer,) there should be a huge market for these games. After all, everybody is at the keyboard these days, from toddlers to senior citizens like me.

Don't read too much into them but see sales figures up to May 2001.

Thanks Peter! You know, with sales figures like that for Myst, Riven and Carmen Sandiego, I wonder why Broderbund went under.

I think Broderbund were quite large, and covered a numbe of areas?

Good point.

Thank you very much for sharing these

Wow. Poor Clandestiny. I think I shall put it higher on my to-play pile in sympathy.

I thought Journeyman Project 1 had done better than that. For one thing, it was in several discount bundles in the mid-90's. At one point, I had three copies!

OTOH Sierra's numbers don't surprise me at all. Everybody played King's Quest back when. I bet Infocom's numbers were pretty high too, at least compared with the numbers of pcs people had back in the 80's.

I remember hearing or reading that Myst's figures eventually cracked 10 million - what with the trilogy and all...so Myst III & Riven should be higher now too. Course some of that is due to fans like me who have a number of personal copies one way and another (plus those we gave as presents).

Susan

It's interesting to see that the King's Quest series sold 7 million units until 2001-2002 or so. However, if one divides this with 23 years, then we only get about 300,000 units pr. year or so.

The longest Journey proobably sold about 300,000 units in the first year or so, I'd guess. 7 years from this the sales could easily reach 1 million games or so.

Back in 1999-2002, companies could afford to sell 300,000 copies each year just to stay in business. Today, publishers etc. expect to sell 3 million units pr. game during a game's first two to six weeks or so.

And adventure games just doesn't do this...

/Karsten

Don't read too much into the numbers, it's possible some of the figures exclude non-US sales for instance.

I hope that newer ways of publishing games (like GameTap or digital downloads) will reduce the break even point to what Adventure games can achieve.

Peter, hi,

Thanks for the figures. Question arising: the 1,000,000 figure for 'Gabriel Knight series'... since it has a date of 1993, is that figure actually for Sins of the Fathers only? I would have thought the 3 games would have sold over a million copies collectively.

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

Hello Metzomagic,

The Gabriel Knight figure is one I collected off the Internet - it was for the series, but where I got it from didn't indicate how the figure was arrived at. Sorry, I no longer have the references. It may well be low.

I'm not sure that GK3 sold that well, it had one or two bad reviews which may have impacted it.

There may be other ways of gathering at least comparative data which might be interesting. Like one could regularly analyse Amazon sales charts.

Cheers,

Peter.

Though considered to be best-selling games in those days, the sales figures of the Journeyman Project 1 and 2 look a bit poor today.
According to Broderbund's Mike Salvadore in a press release (1996) the series sold approximately 500,000 copies. As he mentions that 200.000 of The Journeyman Project 2 were sold in the year after it was published, JMP 1 would have sold 300.000 copies by then.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Broderbund...h...-a018490706

You know, often when developers stop making adventure games, that is just a temporary setback. Somehow or other they often come back to making adventure games, even if they have to create new development companies to do it.

For publishers like Broderbund who once published adventure games, the story isn't so positive. It seems that once a publisher drops adventure games (or disappears altogether), they very infrequently surface again to begin publishing adventure games.

I'm not sure what the implications are, though it undoubtedly isn't good.

Peter -- I agree that online distribution would definitely solve certain problems, and may be the wave of the future. Before that happens, though, I think online distributors of large games like adventure games need to somehow solve the problems of long download times, frequent glitches encountered by people who are the first to download, and costs that are exactly the same as the boxed versions of the game.

The Presto figures came from Presto. "Approximately 500,000 copies" won't be a number close to half a million.



I wonder if casual games (like "Azada" etc) will evolve to having more complex story-lines, and thus become Adventure games in all but name. But that's wandering off topic.

Good question! Want to start an additional topic?

Does it matter? Even if the figure is 460.000, it means that sales of JMP 1 were higher, and that was the question I responded too. But of course this isn't all hard info (coming from Broderbund or Presto; which stays unclear in the article). But the games must have done very well for Presto, otherwise it is a miracle that they published The Jourman Project Turbo! and the remake Pegasus Prime. But even these numbers amaze me, as these are great games. Like some other figures mentioned in your listing; it upsets me to read that another great game like Obsidian sold 80.000 copies.

You're right that none of this is hard info - all is an approximation, on the order of, all measuring slightly different things. Perhaps the most interesting and important numbers are those from Ivinia about how low indie sales are.