Good news to all Ninja Theory fans out there because Hellblade turns a profit after three months! According to the developer’s Twitter account, the game has sold 500,000 copies in three months, beating company expectations.
#Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice has reached 500k sales in 3 months, moving the game into profit ahead of our expectations! Find out more on this and how the game's launch went in the final #Hellblade dev diary: https://t.co/RehX4JEbsr
— NinjaTheory (@NinjaTheory) November 22, 2017
In the attached video, Ninja Theory elaborated on how the launch day was, and the nerves that acted up during launch.
Launch Jitters
Back in September, Ninja Theory had huge media coverage for their character death game mechanic. Said mechanic divided fans about whether the game lies or not. It all turns out that this may not be true, considering no one has achieved the permadeath situation yet.
Little did gamers know, the team’s concern revolved around showing concepts of mental illness instead. As Game Awards Nominee for Best Performance Melina Juergens recalls, she worried about authenticity of her performance for the mentally-ill Senua’s character. She feared offending anyone about the mental-illness side of the performance she did.
Chief Creative Ninja Tameem Antoniades seconded the concern instead of worrying about review scores. They also mentioned about Jim Sterling’s 1/10 review and their speedy action into resolving the progression-breaking bugs. The team can’t thank enough the community’s praise of the game, and that the mental illness portrayal in the game struck the right chords. They further elaborated receiving fan messages thanking the team for making the game. These fans gave their loved ones a means to communicate their suffering, leading to understanding of the condition.
The team only expected just above breakeven for the game to further develop newer games. But as it turns out, Hellblade turns a profit after its third month since release.
Accolades
Since then, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has won Best Action/Adventure game at The Independent Game Awards. They also received nominations from TIGA, The Game Awards, on top of their SIGGRAPH award they got in 2016.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is available on Steam and Playstation Network as digital-only downloads. Plans for a physical release have not been announced yet, and they would seem to keep the game digital-only for the time being.
