Bulletstorm did not make a profit

[Maniacal]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-22-bulletstorm-didnt-make-money

OTT shooter Bulletstorm failed to turn a profit for Epic, president Mike Capps has admitted.

Capps told Kotaku that the People Can Fly-developed FPS "didn't make money for us."

However, he doesn't regret green-lighting the project over taking the easy option and tasking the Epic-owned Polish studio with churning out Gears of War content.

"The studio has shipped AAA content," he said. "The next thing we do with People Can Fly will be great."

Still, it's a pity. As detailed in Eurogamer's Bulletstorm review, it's one of the highlights of 2011 so far.

"This is a game that wants you to laugh so hard that you sneeze on yourself, but it's also a game that wants you to experiment as much as possible with the tools you've been given," wrote Christian Donlan back in February.

"Its cleverness is as lightly worn as it is unexpected. It's the best kind of guilty pleasure."

I am glad the president of the company doesn't regret greenlighting a new IP which means People Can Fly's next game could be something really cool. Ididn't play Bulletstorm but from what I read it seemed like it was a neat new IP but characterization suffered. They also probably spent way too much money marketing it (some major titles get ridiculous marketing budgets, iirc Battlefield 3 has $100,000,000 in marketing yet less than half the money is being spent on its development).

 

[GoodGame]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-22-bulletstorm-didnt-make-money



I am glad the president of the company doesn't regret greenlighting a new IP which means People Can Fly's next game could be something really cool. Ididn't play Bulletstorm but from what I read it seemed like it was a neat new IP but characterization suffered. They also probably spent way too much money marketing it (some major titles get ridiculous marketing budgets, iirc Battlefield 3 has $100,000,000 in marketing yet less than half the money is being spent on its development).

I guess that's a shame. Bulletstorm is on my Steam wishlist.


Still this comment from Wikipedia makes me go hmmm.:

Hal Levy of the National Youth Rights Association said that the game promotes innovative thinking through dispatching enemies in unique ways, and that "Plenty of emotionally unstable adults will play the game and they’ll be fine."

I think you're right in that it got negative mass media PR, which means it'd be hard to make money without expensive counter marketing. But also the economic downturn means less money spent on the gaming industry, so there's sleepers that weren't sequels to established big name franchises. Probable lesson is if you can't go big in marketing, go small in development and/or aim for the indie-loving market like Steam (e.g. Look at Minecraft and Terraria's sales figures vs development costs). Though timing is important too. Hard to create the next big franchise if it's being dwarfed by releases of sequels to already big franchises.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/uk-charts-killzone-3-outguns-bulletstorm-to-no-1




Interesting sales numbers article: http://www.huliq.com/10177/huliq-projects-bulletstorm-sales-figures-exceed-45-million

 

[Maniacal]

I think you're right in that it got negative mass media PR, which means it'd be hard to make money without expensive counter marketing. But also the economic downturn means less money spent on the gaming industry, so there's sleepers that weren't sequels to established big name franchises. Probable lesson is if you can't go big in marketing, go small in development and/or aim for the indie-loving market like Steam (e.g. Look at Minecraft and Terraria's sales figures vs development costs). Though timing is important too. Hard to create the next big franchise if it's being dwarfed by releases of sequels to already big franchises.

Um, no that isn't what I was saying at all. The complete opposite actually. I think EPIC focused too much on marketing the game and not enough money on developing it to make it better.

 

[cardgame]

I never really heard of this game...

 

[Eat_Up_Martha]

Um, no that isn't what I was saying at all. The complete opposite actually. I think EPIC focused too much on marketing the game and not enough money on developing it to make it better.

That seems to be contrary to the OP though. Your quoted article indicates that the game received pretty good reviews but failed to make a profit anyway. Wouldn't that mean that more money should have been spent on marketing, as the game itself was actually good (so they say, never played it myself).

 

[Maniacal]

The game itself was decent from what I've read and heard, but nothing amazing. It had lots of advertising, including the 'fake game' Duty Calls which parodied Call of Duty. The main issues I heard were the characters and while the game was funny it didn't stop letting you know it was funny (and it was apparently less than mature humour). The story was also uninspiring apparently but then again so are most game stories. It also didn't have much of am multiplayer mode, it was really just co-op levels.

Its marketing campaign also had a pretty lousy catch phrase they kept using, "kill with skill". I mean come one, really? They paid those guys millions of dollars and that is what they came up with?

 

[Polycrates]

The game itself is great (I wrote a far-too-long review in the reviews thread) - it's console-ish, sure, but it's a lot of fun. More importantly, it's exactly the sort of fun that taps directly into the inner 14-year-old boy in all (?) of us - an endless stream of hilariously gruesome, creative, and over-the-top violence; incredibly over-the-top cinematic cutscenes; gruff dudes being over-the-top macho; and an endless stream of dick jokes. The plot/writing are far better than they have any right to be in a game like this (though it's no Planescape: Torment, obviously) and serve to keep the game rolling at a fairly frantic pace - you could easily convert this game into quite a good Big, Dumb Movie. And the gunplay is more about getting in their faces rather than hiding behind cover or showing a modicum of patience, like in your Medal of Duty Warfare and other big-name shooters.
Honestly, all of that is the perfect recipe for mainstream success, and it happens to be a good game to boot.

I suspect the main culprit is the lack of competitive multiplayer, which seems to be the big thing for these other big-name shooters. The mechanics aren't well-suited to it, unfortunately. Marketing could well have been a problem too. The third thing is that it's pretty clear that they spent an enormous amount of money on the game, and perhaps it was more than they could reasonably hope to recoup.

 

[DirtyFinger]

didn't work at all on my pc. i suspect it wasn't optimized for ati graphics and it occasionally dropped to 5 fps and messed up textures. basically unplayable ... and I can run crysis 2 with no problems.

had similiar problems with latest gta ... that one was even worse. 5 fps across the board.

 

[HardRocker]

what is bulletstorm???

 

[GoodGame]

Um, no that isn't what I was saying at all. The complete opposite actually. I think EPIC focused too much on marketing the game and not enough money on developing it to make it better.

I guess neither of can really comment on the game play if neither of us have actually played it! To me it sounded pretty "good" as a mindless FPS with heart.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

It had lots of advertising, including the 'fake game' Duty Calls which parodied Call of Duty.

They should make that into a full game.

 

[salty mud]

Personally, I hate the silly, arcadey FPS genre that this game seems to fall into. Games like Serious Sam and Duke Nukem, similar to this, have no appeal to me, and the less made the better.

But that's just my opinion.