Gish Sales Stats Released

By: Derek Yu

On: May 10th, 2007

Gish co-creator Josiah Pisciotta released a bunch of Gish numbers, including sales stats (approx. 4500 copies sold, $121,000 USD made over 4 years) and development costs (approx. $5700 USD).

I’m surprised that Gish didn’t sell more copies online, but when I think about it, how many people really knew about the game outside of the independent game community? Josiah also mentions “a lack of a shared vision among the developers” as a reason for missed opportunities such as console distribution (i.e. XBLA), which is really too bad.

Well, I hope Gish 2 sells a million copies, now that Edmund has complete control over the property. If anybody deserves the success, it’s him!

(Source: GameSetWatch)

Posted in Community, Developers, Platformers

FireSword

Seems a nice game..

With what compiler was made?
and or Game tool? libraries?

Did he write custom libraries
for phisic?
PoV

Custom yes.
juice

It is surprising to see numbers that low – though it does work out at about a 20-fold rate of return, which few people would sneeze at.

I’m not entirely sure what, if anything could have made the numbers higher – the closest comparison I can think of is Mutant Storm: a indy game with retro influences, which did manage to break out of the indy arena and into the commercial world. Maybe it just comes down to screenshots – MS does look quite impressive when standing still, whereas GIsh just looks like a platformer.

And therein lies the biggest issue: the temptation to describe Gish as just a “platformer” – we’re still recovering from the 16-bit glut of such things, which makes it harder to drum up interest unless people actually play the game…
raigan

um.. i thought anything over 1000 was awesome for an indie.
Fish

Before anyone starts assuming that XBLA is the answer to an indies financial prayers, which perhaps it is, read the article carefully. Note the bit where the author says his bridge building game has been his number one selling title consistently for the last 5 years.

Now, surely there is a lesson there?
Shawn

Those look like good sales to me.
http://www.arsecast.com DrDerekDoctors

I’m surprised at the low revenues myself, but thinking about it ~60,000 sales is still a metric crapload compared to what most people get.

As for it being a 20-fold return, Juice, that assumes that the developers have absolutely no living costs. Unless the game was made by a patch of lichen on a rock somewhere, I suspect that assumption is erroneous. ;)