Even though Remedy Entertainment’s action-adventure game Control, released in August 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PS4, and Xbox One, has sold over two million copies since its debut, CEO Tero Virtala doesn’t consider the game a major hit.
"When a Remedy game comes out, it needs to stand out in some way. For the genre or category we go into, it needs to have all the elements that make it a memorable or category-defining game. [That means] with our capabilities and the market opportunities, all of our games can and should be successful games.
"We're really happy with the success of Control. It won Game of the Year awards, it has sold over two million units and continues selling -- but two million is not yet a major hit in our industry. When we talk about major hit games, we're talking on an industry level -- that's what we're aiming at," Virtala said.
Remedy, which has also developed the first two instalments in the Max Payne franchise, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break, enjoyed a record-breaking financial year in 2020, despite not launching any new games. The Finnish studio grossed nearly $49M last year, a 29.8% increase from the year before. Still, Virtala remains unsatisfied.
"In the past, we would have said the target is to reach X amount of units in terms of sales. Now the world has changed with the digitalised marketplace and longer-lasting games that provide post-launch opportunities as well. [So] I don't want to say specific numbers.
"What I can say is [if] we guarantee the quality is going to be there, that there's uniqueness... the likelihood of not only creating successful games, but major successes increases all the time. For us, major success means for some of our games we would want to reach the global top-selling charts and the game would stay up there for a long time," Virtala said.
Control still has vast potential for sales growth. According to the exec, Remedy’s developers are still working on the game to bring it to "selected new services and platforms." In addition, the game is still being added to subscription services, which Virtala believes "indirectly gives more vitality and supports longer-term sales."
He also stated that the studio is already working on other titles, including a AAA title and a smaller game, both of which are set in a shared universe. The studio will once again partner with Epic for the new games with Epic funding the games' development and splitting profits with Remedy fifty-fifty once costs have been recouped.
Source: GamesIndustry