Enslaved sold 730k worldwide, and for a new IP, those are very average sales. We don’t know if Ninja Theory or Namco made their money back but we do know that both of them aren’t satisfied, or at least Ninja Theory isn’t.
The developer has said that the poor sales of Enslaved are due to shoddy marketing by Namco.
“I think it’s always a difficult equation, isn’t it? It’s like it’s not enough to just make a game,” he said in an interview with Gamasutra.
“All the ducks have to be lined up, and those ducks include the creative ducks, like the theme and the content. I wonder whether Enslaved was a bit too fantasy, or off the mainstream fantasy, on one hand.
“But it needed support, it needed a drive, a big push, and I don’t think it necessarily got that. I really kind of hate it when people make, say, ‘Oh, marketing didn’t support it,’ but a new IP needs to be visible, and I didn’t feel like it was. A lot of people still even haven’t heard of the game.”
They are working on Devil May Cry now, which belongs to Capcom and it is their best chance to redeem themselves. Ninja Thoery recently said they didn’t think a sequel for Enslaved would be a possibility in the near future.
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