Epic Games' president Mike Capps is delighted with the early success of Bulletstorm, saying that the game sold out its first run at "one major retailer."
"We got a reorder on day one from one of the big U.S. retailers that focuses on games," said Capps. "So that was a pretty good feeling."
We would assume he did not want to say "GameStop" for some reason. Capps went on to say that launching a brand new IP is one of the most challenging aspects of developing a game:
"[Launching a new IP] is really hard. I read something that less than 1% of console games this generation launched as new IP sold a million units,” he added. “So if you don't sell a million units you lost money, basically. I'm pretty confident we'll be on the good side of that [1 million] number. I'd rather sell Gears-type numbers that'd be fantastic."
Nevertheless, the million dollar question is, did the Fox news controversy (I.E. games cause rape) help or hinder early sales of Bulletstorm? Capps was dodgy on the subject, offering two answers to the question:
"There are two ways to answer the question. The first is what it does for Bulletstorm and the second is what it does for the industry. For what it did for Bulletstorm... yes, there were people who were very excited about any attention at all. For a game that's over-the-top, they probably helped sell more units than they convinced people to pick at us," he said. "What was most exciting about it for me [was the reaction from the media in the industry defending us]. Every journalist said this Fox report is junk... It's wonderful to see a media that's defending free speech."
"As for what it does for the industry as a whole I think it's terrible,” he noted. “There are people who really respect Fox News' opinions and look at that and are [convinced that video games are bad]."
Source: The[A]ListDaily
Comments
Re: Epic's Mike Capps on How Fox News Affected Bulletstorm ...
Thing is though, Fox News is just like Epic games, the numbers are the bottom line for both of them, with Epic, it's sales, with Fox, it's viewers.
I agree that Fox's moronic report helped sales, there's a long history of Media paranoia promoting sales of films etc, the argument I always make is that most people have heard of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not because it was a good film, but because outlets similar to Fox News made sure we all knew about it 'for our own good'. The outcome was, in trying to ban it, they made it 1000% more famous than it deserved to be. Even go back as far as 'Lady Chatterly' and you'll see the same thing repeated over and over.
As for watching reports like Fox, taking it as gospel without even bothering to check out the facts from other sources to get the whole picture, well, people who do that are as dumb as they deserve to be, and would probably hate the Industry anyway, because they expect other people to do their thinking for them.