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Monaco sales top 500k; only 36k on XBLA.

S

Saty

Member
So, Pocketwatch Games twitted about Monaco breaking 500k copies sold after the new Humble bundle started.

Sales update: We're well over half a million units of Monaco sold! (~520K), only includes about half the HIB sales since we are BTA
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Joystiq noted that at the time of that tweet 270k copies of the bundle were sold so that means before the bundle has started the game was sitting on ~385k copies.

When asked on Twitter, they added that only 36k copies came from the XBLA version.

https://twitter.com/PocketwatchG/status/436557255941427200

ah, 36K on xbox, the rest on pc/mac/linux
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Everytime one of these sales topics come up I wonder how much money the developer really is making. I feel like we all get caught up in the, "Whoa this sold HOW MANY COPIES?!" But if all those copies are selling at 2.74 or part of a 5 dollar indie bundle where they are getting a dollar, sure that's pretty good for 2-3 person indie studio, but it might not be the runaway success it seems like at face value.

Am I crazy?
 
ScottSullivan said:
Everytime one of these sales topics come up I wonder how much money the developer really is making. I feel like we all get caught up in the, "Whoa this sold HOW MANY COPIES?!" But if all those copies are selling at 2.74 or part of a 5 dollar indie bundle where they are getting a dollar, sure that's pretty good for 2-3 person indie studio, but it might not be the runaway success it seems like at face value.

Am I crazy?
Click to expand...

yes you are crazy

a couple hundred thousand dollars between a few people is a shitload of money for a game that cost so little to make
 
ScottSullivan said:
Everytime one of these sales topics come up I wonder how much money the developer really is making. I feel like we all get caught up in the, "Whoa this sold HOW MANY COPIES?!" But if all those copies are selling at 2.74 or part of a 5 dollar indie bundle where they are getting a dollar, sure that's pretty good for 2-3 person indie studio, but it might not be the runaway success it seems like at face value.

Am I crazy?
Click to expand...
No. Steamprices has Monaco at sub-5 during the winter sale, and numerous other sales. The dev said he was disappointed in xbla sales back in July but I wonder how many lost sales were caused by the demo, and how many PC sales were discount blind-buying.
 
ScottSullivan said:
Everytime one of these sales topics come up I wonder how much money the developer really is making. I feel like we all get caught up in the, "Whoa this sold HOW MANY COPIES?!" But if all those copies are selling at 2.74 or part of a 5 dollar indie bundle where they are getting a dollar, sure that's pretty good for 2-3 person indie studio, but it might not be the runaway success it seems like at face value.

Am I crazy?
Click to expand...


They're making more through PC than they were on 360 if they had 10x the sales on PC as XBLA before the Humble Bundle started. Even if they all came at the biggest discount of 66% off.

Pretty much every indie dev who has commented on it has said they made more because of cheap Steam sales than they did at full price on consoles. See Phil Fish and his BANANAS graph.
 
ScottSullivan said:
Everytime one of these sales topics come up I wonder how much money the developer really is making. I feel like we all get caught up in the, "Whoa this sold HOW MANY COPIES?!" But if all those copies are selling at 2.74 or part of a 5 dollar indie bundle where they are getting a dollar, sure that's pretty good for 2-3 person indie studio, but it might not be the runaway success it seems like at face value.

Am I crazy?
Click to expand...

I'd imagine they have made over one million dollars (an average of $2 per copy does not sound too unreasonable including the bundle) with the game. Even with three people that would still be a lot of money of them.

It isn't the amount of money that they can retire for the rest of their lifes, but it is a very decent income.
 
BennyBlanco said:
yes you are crazy

a couple hundred thousand dollars between a few people is a shitload of money for a game that cost so little to make
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Sometimes. But sometimes the games are made by more people than you expect, or take longer to deliver than you expect.

Maybe not this game in particular. I don't know. I think people generally underestimate gaming budgets, however, even on smaller titles.
 
I'm one of the 36,000 copies sold. And, honestly, I felt burned by the $15 price tag. The game really could have used a tutorial, rather than cold-dropping you into it with minimal pointers.
 
BennyBlanco said:
yes you are crazy

a couple hundred thousand dollars between a few people is a shitload of money for a game that cost so little to make
Click to expand...
How little did it cost to make? Apparently it was in development back in 2010. I assume the devs had day jobs because otherwise after the various revenue cuts that starts to be less and less money per person per year.
 
Of All Trades said:
No. Steamprices has Monaco at sub-5 during the winter sale, and numerous other sales. The dev said he was disappointed in xbla sales back in July but I wonder how many lost sales were caused by the demo, and how many PC sales were discount blind-buying.
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I imagine the majority. It was a truly terrible demo.
 
What the hell happened to xbla? The service had so much momentum those early years.

Edit: I see the demo hurt sales.
 
BennyBlanco said:
yes you are crazy

a couple hundred thousand dollars between a few people is a shitload of money for a game that cost so little to make
Click to expand...

Not really. A lot of people working as indie developers could make the same money working for a bigger development house while taking far less risk. They may only have been able to pay themselves for their time and very little else (i.e., very low rate of return).
 
Opiate said:
Sometimes. But sometimes the games are made by more people than you expect, or take longer to deliver than you expect.

Maybe not this game in particular. I don't know. I think people generally underestimate gaming budgets, however, even on smaller titles.
Click to expand...

I am sure if you told these guys 2 years ago that less than a year after launching their 1st game would have sold half a million copies and made 200k+, they would sign up for that every time. They seem pretty happy about it on twitter.
 
Reg said:
What the hell happened to xbla? The service had so much momentum those early years.

Edit: I see the demo hurt sales.
Click to expand...

It's not a very good game to be honest. The demo was bad (truly bad), but the game itself is only slightly better.

Good games sell well. Look at State of Decay hitting 1m in just a few weeks...
 
Reg said:
What the hell happened to xbla? The service had so much momentum those early years.
Click to expand...

XBLA sales just seemed to have fell off a cliff a few years ago.

Did PSN hit the same wall?


Is steam just eating everyones lunch or is this just down to MS burying the XBLA store in favour of doritos ads on the dash?
 
BennyBlanco said:
yes you are crazy

a couple hundred thousand dollars between a few people is a shitload of money for a game that cost so little to make
Click to expand...
"Cost so little to make" isn't really true; even simple indie games can easily cost hundreds of thousands if you're doing it as your job (running a company and all the costs it includes) with more than 2-3 people.
 
Reg said:
What the hell happened to xbla? The service had so much momentum those early years.

Edit: I see the demo hurt sales.
Click to expand...

Big publishers took all the slots, leaving genuine independents to either sign relatively shitty publishing deals with Microsoft, or be consigned to the XBLIG ghetto.
 
BennyBlanco said:
I am sure if you told these guys 2 years ago that less than a year after launching their 1st game would have sold half a million copies and made 200k+, they would sign up for that every time. They seem pretty happy about it on twitter.
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That's still only 50K a year before health care, taxes and retirement funds.

That's not much for an experienced programmer.
 
_machine said:
"Cost so little to make" isn't really true; even simple indie games can easily cost hundreds of thousands if you're doing it as your job (running a company and all the costs it includes) with more than 2-3 people.
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it's 2 guys. with day jobs. without paying to license an engine.

I don't see what people are getting at. Do you think indie devs set out making games with the expectations of selling millions of copies? Is an indie game not a success unless it does minecraft or rust numbers?
 
I just got this in the Humble Bundle -- is this something that can be enjoyed (and is playable) solo, or is it purely intended for co-op?
 
I'm one of those sales, day one on Steam, and really loved the game (got all coins in all levels in local coop). Good to see its success.
 
BennyBlanco said:
it's 2 guys. with day jobs. without paying to license an engine.

I don't see what people are getting at. Do you think indie devs set out making games with the expectations of selling millions of copies? Is an indie game not a success unless it does minecraft or rust numbers?
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Is it just two guys? Then that means at least one of them was working a full time job with the logistics of getting their game on one or more digital marketplaces if Brian Provinciano's talk from GDC last year is anything to go by. If they're really happy about it on Twitter that's fine but honestly you can't just compare two approximate numbers ('half a million copies' vs 'cost so little to make') before reaching a conclusion about the degree of that success.
 
BennyBlanco said:
yes you are crazy

a couple hundred thousand dollars between a few people is a shitload of money for a game that cost so little to make
Click to expand...

No, it really isn't. Try splitting a couple hundred thousand dollars among a few people and asking them to live on that for 4 years (roughly how long Monaco took to make based on the game first being shown off in 2010 & coming out in 2013). Oh and don't forget you have to pay high self-employment taxes.

Not saying that Monaco hasn't been successful, but money made from an indie game isn't some sort of magical bonus money - it's everyone's salary for however long it took to make the game
 
Opiate said:
Sometimes. But sometimes the games are made by more people than you expect, or take longer to deliver than you expect.

Maybe not this game in particular. I don't know. I think people generally underestimate gaming budgets, however, even on smaller titles.
Click to expand...

You think? People do underestimate gaming budgets, or well, do not care about gaming budgets. Otherwise, the Triple AAA titles wouldn't be only $60 and require a ton of DLC to make its money back. Thing is, it is the consumer who decides, ultimately, what price games should sell for, and if they don't like it, they will just wait until it drops to the price they want it for, either as a used game or through a digital sale.
 
I'm one of the day 1 sales too, and I loved the game for its visual style and because it played very similarly to a boardgame. I'm glad to know it achieved 500K sales, but reading some of the posts here I didn't thought there was... the occasionnal bit of resentment against it ? More particulary against the Xbox one version ?

What was the problem with this XBLA demo ?
 
Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
No, it really isn't. Try splitting a couple hundred thousand dollars among a few people and asking them to live on that for 4 years (roughly how long Monaco took to make based on the game first being shown off in 2010 & coming out in 2013). Oh and don't forget you have to pay high self-employment taxes.

Not saying that Monaco hasn't been successful, but money made from an indie game isn't some sort of magical bonus money - it's everyone's salary for however long it took to make the game
Click to expand...

Well, even at a incredibly conservative estimate of $1:1, they made well over a half million between 2 people. What do you think they were shooting for when they started making it? I dont know how you could look at that as anything but a rousing success for a 2d downloadable only indie game.
 
Let's not forget that the 360 version game was supposed to come out day and date with the PC version on April 24th, but the day before release it was delayed because of a bug and we had to wait for a patch. Then that patch didn't work and it got delayed further. It didn't end up coming out until May 10. It was a highly anticipated game and that's a long time to keep people's enthusiasm up, maybe if it hadn't gotten delayed sales would have been better. I know my friend and I were very frustrated waiting for it.
 
The Xbox version would be much better if it allowed couch co-op. Would be a perfect game for that.


Please note: if it had couch co-op and I'm just too dumb to figure it out forgive me and teach me how to be less dumb please.
 
Truelize said:
The Xbox version would be much better if it allowed couch co-op. Would be a perfect game for that.


Please note: if it had couch co-op and I'm just too dumb to figure it out forgive me and teach me how to be less dumb please.
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I don't know about Xbox, but it'd pretty be weird if it wasn't there considering the PC version does have local.
 
Just bought it from the Humble bundle. XBLA sales seem pretty low but the PC numbers are looking good.
Heard good things about the game so I hope they are making good money with it.
 
Congrats to Pocketwatch! I'm also in the bundle, which has so far been a fun experience. And Monaco deserves the sales, it's a great couch coop game oozing with style.
 
Chake said:
Is it me or are indies sales keep increasing?
Click to expand...

Indie's are filling the gap of low/mid tier publishers. It's great because we're actually getting the most interesting games from indie's. A lof of the things you see in big budget games are sequels that do the same things over and over.
 
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