Ninja Theory's independent title for PS4 and PC has hit a sales milestone, and is performing well ahead of the developer's expectations.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was quite the experiment. Ninja Theory set out to prove you can make a AAA quality title without breaking the bank, and the company has succeeded. Ninja Theory revealed that in three months the game has sold 500,000 copies across PS4 and PC with sales being split 50/50 between both platforms. Most importantly, the game is now making a profit way earlier than the company estimated.
"The escalating stakes in the AAA retail publishing model has killed off countless independent studios like us, many smaller publishers, and is now straining even the largest of publishers," said Tameem Antoniades, Co-founder and Chief Creative Ninja. "This isn't survival of the fittest but a routing of the creative base upon which this industry was built."
The game has surpassed all expectations in more ways then one. Here's all the milestones the game has reached so far:
- Over 75k pre-orders across PC and PS4 before launch.
- 250K units sold in the first week at $29.99.
- Over $13m in revenue generated in 3 months.
- 500k units sold in 3 months, which puts the project beyond breakeven and into profit. Our prediction was to be at this point in 6 months from release.
- Development took 3 years and with an average team size of 20.
- Game sold as digital-only.
- About half the sales were on PC.
Ninja Theory's next step is to help share their commercial model and digital sales data with other developers. While AAA games will always be around, there's still a huge market for AAA quality indie titles sold at a lower price. Let's hope we see more titles like Hellblade in the future.
Congratulations on the success, Ninja Theory!
https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU26331/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDvATt2VBxU