Success Of Recettear
Carpe Fulgur, the translation company behind Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, has released numbers recently--numbers you really won't find with the NPD Group. Through various distribution models, they have managed to sell 26,000 copies.
Pause a moment and smile. In the grand scheme of Blizzard's latest selling millions, or another Mario doing the same, contemplate that this was a game with very little budget in marketing, shared on various blogs, sold only digitally, and still selling a respectable amount. While the math would be difficult to ascertain due to there being a pre-order sale, and not knowing the numbers of pre-order versus post-launch purchases, theoretically they made somewhere between $467,000 (impossible, since they weren't all pre-orders) and $519,000 before any prices they needed to pay to their digital distributors. For an indie team in Japan, as the majority will likely go to them, and a small localization company, that is hardly something at which to sneeze.
Of course, it's useful to consider what Carpe Fulgur did right. Unlike some companies who believe the strength and good word of the game will sell copies, they made one important move that you can see in our own comments on the blog post in which I talked up the game: they provided a demo. According to their own numbers, they had at least a 20-30% conversion rate of people who played the demo and bought the full game. At least three of you admitted to doing the same.
Carpe Fulgur also mentions that the number was likely inflated by pirates who downloaded the demo, unlocked the game, and then decided to pay anyway. Instead of railing against them, however, Carpe Fulgur goes a step further and thanks them for some of their support in going back to actually pay for the game.
Direct from their fingertips:
So thank you again, everyone. 26,000 copies in four weeks is an incredible success in the indie scene, especially for an unknown Japanese game nobody had ever heard of a few months ago from a couple of dudes with no previous work to their name.But even with all this, one should not think this is the end. We hope to announce a couple of very exciting projects in the near future, and we've begun to look at a number of future potential titles for localization.
Here's to hoping they find much success with their future projects.
VorpalBunny
Posted to Video Games on 30 September 2010
· Comments (3)
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That is an excellent thing the hear! Good going Carpe Fulgur!
I found it during pre-sale while on Steam and pretty much immediately bought it - with only the story and premise of the game. I never downloaded the demo thinking I should just wait for the whole game.
Also gifted it to a friend after I got hooked playing it!
Hopefully this will open up other game publishers eyes that we need something different genre wise - not just a new point and shoot clone.
And this is only for the English version? Nice! :D
I too purchased it without ever playing the demo, and glad that I did. Been hooked on it ever since. It's simple, but with enough depth. It's repetitive, yet very addictive and it has more charm than most of the A-list titles.
Really excited to see what Cape Fulgur publishes next.
Now back to filling up my item encyclopedia :D
The demo was also impressive in it's length, that's the main reason I bought it, I got to play for at least an hour, almost two, and keep my progress.
One of the most impressive demos I've seen.