Stardock CEO Brad Wardell says that the company's strategy RPG Elemental: War of Magic will end up costing the company money in the long run. This will happen, the company says, despite the fact that the game managed to break even on pre-orders.
"Elemental made its money back on day one and has continued to be profitable to this point," Wardell told Gamasutra in an email. "However, based on our projections we anticipate by the end of second quarter 2011 that Elemental will end up losing money overall as our objective is to spend what is necessary to ensure that the game meets the expectations of our customers."
Wardell did not disclose how many units the game has sold to date or how much money the company made off initial sales. While the company will lose money on the game, Wardell sees it as an investment in its PC customer base, who were very dissatisfied with the launch of Elemental.
One of the reasons that Elemental will lose money is several high profile hires to help drive the future development of the game in the right direction. Earlier this month Stardock hired former Civilization V lead designer Jon Shafer to take the reins of the game's development. Shafer will oversee the development of two expansions for the game. After that, he will begin designing his own game for Stardock.
Source: Gamasutra
Comments
Re: Stardock: Elemental Will Lose Money
The only reason there was more risk in it was because they did not finish the product before releasing it... becuse they failed to finish and polish itbefor launch they have damaged thier repuation and thus thier bottom line.
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Re: Stardock: Elemental Will Lose Money
I disagre. I think the whole project was risky long before the release issues. When you only have the resources to produce one game at a time, starting a new series is always more risky then continueing one that already has a solid following, esp when the new one eats up suffient time that momentum from the last installment dies off.
Re: Stardock: Elemental Will Lose Money
Elemental was risky for them in general.. while there were people excited about it, it probably would have been better to invest further in their GalCiv series since that is what they are generally known for.
Instead they poured exclusive resources and years into this new product.... they should have at least done parallel development or something. Granted they ARE finally pouring some resources into making a new patch for GalCiv2.. but it might be too little too late.