Despite being from a renowned developer, it feels like the marketing around Control never could pick up steam. For whatever reason, whether it be timing or just a difficult time conveying the odd title (the marketing was never clear what the game was really about), it just couldn’t get that mindshare. When publisher 505 Games released the revenue generated from the title, it seemed pretty dire. But developer Remedy Entertainment insists it isn’t quite as bad as it looks.
In a piece highlighting Remedy Entertainment via GamesIndustry, Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said that the game’s reduced budget helped overall in not having to expect a huge amount of front-loaded sales, and they are focusing on lifetime sales, saying that overall that part is “steady.”
“Control was developed in three years with a budget of less than €30 million,” says Virtala. “We don’t quite require the same huge lifetime numbers as many other games with bigger development budgets. Therefore, even though Control didn’t have chart-topping sales right from the get go, we are in a good position with steady sales. We always take the long view here.”
While the budget was relatively small, it only generated roughly half of said budget according to the publisher. The €10 million given by Epic Games for the EGS PC exclusivity no doubt helped, as well as exclusive deals that were cut with Sony for PS4 content. Still, it’s hard to look at those numbers and not see a pretty big slide. Hopefully, Virtala is right and the game will find its audience as time goes on. Until then, Remedy already seems pretty busy on other projects. No rest for the wicked.
