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Frictional estimates that Amnesia has sold over 1M units

Jordan Devore, News Editor
8:00 PM on 09.10.2012
Frictional estimates that Amnesia has sold over 1M units photo


Excuse the weird phrasing there, but as Frictional Games writes in its latest report on Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the number of units sold for a digitally distributed game is "actually really hard to pin down."

Excluding the Humble Indie Bundle and Potato Bundle, both of which Amnesia was a part of, there have been 710,000 units sold. With those bundles, that figure jumps up to 1,360,000 units. "A slightly pessimistic guess (not far from reality I think) is that 2/3 of every bundle and pack buyer already owned Amnesia. This gives us about 920,000 units in total, pessimistically speaking. So saying that we have sold a million units seems fair. Wait... a million units! Oh shit!!"

Not bad for a game that took $360,000 and three years to develop. Frictional attributes much of this continued success to the modding scene and, in turn, YouTube clips. People like watching other people get scared, it seems.

At the bottom of the post, there's also a tease for the first-person horror game that will follow Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Expected for release in 2014, this unnamed project will try to [create] horror in a much more disturbing way." I don't know if I can handle that.

Amnesia sales surpass a million, dev working on new horror game [Joystiq]





Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)


I appreciate that they still understand the difference between creepy action and survival horror.
Frictional estimates chafe, I prefer well lubricated estimates.

But seriously, awesome to see this game did well. I haven't been so scared playing a video game since Silent Hill 3.
Yeah, and they deserve every penny because that game was fuc--

Wait wait wait. Machine for pigs is in '14 now?! I thought it was out this year! WHAT HAS HAPPENED?!!?!?!?
Glad to hear they got lots of sales. Amnesia is widely known but I feel it isn't played so I always do my best to encourage people to play. Defiantly love me a horror game that does it right like Silent Hill 2.
I don't see why a game that was sold twice can't be counted as so. Shit there were some companies reporting shipped numbers instead of sold to paint a brighter picture than it already was.


Anyway, best of luck to them, I love the series.
2014?!?!!!?!?!? Is that a typo or did they push it back again?! :'(
Okay okay okay....

The blog post says 2013.

And then all was fine on the prairie.
Whoah they didn't delay it to 2014 right? I thought it wasjust 2013?
As much as I love horror, I never actually finished Amnesia. That seriously was one of the most terrifying games I've played. I was play it in the dark at 1am after smoking a bowl... I do not recommend that!
Mother fuck, damnit. There just had to be bad news in a good post lol. Good for them though to get those sales. These guys are actually doing quite well for themselves apparently, cause they apparently sell 10,000 copies of this game a month at full price lol. not record breaking numbers at all, but I'd say that's good for an indie dev.
Jordan you fail us, why didn't you tell about that second to last paragraph.

"At Frictional Games our main concern is our new super secret project. We do not want to say much about this project yet,but we can disclose that it will be horror and that it will be first person."

Their working on another game XD.
I tried to make that clear, but you guys are reading it differently than intended. There's no comma after "follow," as in, this new game is following A Machine for Pigs. I'll try to clear it up, though.

At the bottom of the post, there's also a teaser for the first-person horror game that will follow Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Expected for release in 2014, this project will try to [create] horror in a much more disturbing way." I don't know if I can handle that.
I see you mention a teaser... but there is none on the blog post, nor joystiq, nor here.

Lies.
Haha, jeez, you guys are really busting my chops tonight. "Teaser," not "teaser video" or "teaser image." I know how there could be some confusion there, but I did intentionally use those words (or not use the words, in this case). I think about these things! Though, clearly, not hard enough. Again, I'll try to clear that up.
This game made me motion sick so badly, I wanted to play through it but just couldn't.
Amnesia = Survival horror without the shit controls. Kudos on making the impossible possible.
@CBunn

It really depends on what you want your numbers to mean. If you just want to post high numbers, then you count whatever you can, like counting pack-ins or units shipped.

If you want some measure of fairness, then you at least put an asterisk besides debatable sales, like pack-ins and bundles. A lot of copies of Wii Sports were moved, but how popular would it have been if it wasn't a free pack-in? This gets even weirder when you have a game that is both sold separately and given away or repackaged. I believe Dragon Warrior was both sold and later given away as a Nintendo Power bonus? Super Mario Bros was given away, repackaged in multi-game cart form, and later both remade and ported on other systems.

If you want an idea of how many people own the game, then you want to try to account for and remove duplicate copies. Bundles are particularly bad in this regard, as you can get so many (often 5-10) games in a single package, and there is generally neither indication of which of those games a buyer really wanted nor how many copies of the same game that person had previously bought. You cannot even always count unique registrations, as some bundles give you a game across multiple systems (PC, Linux, iOS, etc), across multiple store services (Steam keys, Desura keys, in addition to straight no-DRM downloads), and some give a single key for every game while others give a separate key for each game (which allows people to give away games that they don't want,) or even a combination of the two.
Unnamed? It has been named. 2014? It says 2013.
Aw, come on, guys. Read it properly.
It's TWO games. A machine for pigs in 2013 and a NEW, yet UNNAMED game in 2014.
Which is pretty good news btw.
What a great game! Pity I can't play it for more than a half an hour before I have to turn it off... 0_0
I-never-fully-understood-development-costs...salaries-especially...say-there-were-10-people-working-on-the-game....at.-60k-a-year-for-3-years-thats-already600k-per-year...and-1.8-mil-at-3-years...those-are-just-random-numbers-mind-you-but-its-one-aspect-of-development-cost-that-always-confused-me
I-never-fully-understood-development-costs...salaries-especially...say-there-were-10-people-working-on-the-game....at.-60k-a-year-for-3-years-thats-already600k-per-year...and-1.8-mil-at-3-years...those-are-just-random-numbers-mind-you-but-its-one-aspect-of-development-cost-that-always-confused-me
this world is a machine fit only for pigs
fit for the slaughtering of pigs
Well done, a unique and entertaining game is always welcome. They might do ok from an XBLA/PSN release too, worked out for zeno clash.
Easily the most gripping survival horror game this gen. Glad to see it sold well.
They deserve every single penny IMO. These guys are the current keepers of the survival horror genre. Capcom and Konami signed off years ago.
I picked up the retail version of Amnesia. I wanted to support it that much, it's one of the best games I've ever played.




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