1C sees $1m digital Christmas sales

Russian publisher 1C made $1m in revenue from digital sales over Christmas, the firm has told MCV.

The revenue was generated through December and the New Year.

1C’s key titles also proved to be big sellers digitally even when shops were closed – 14,000 copies of Kings Bounty: Armored Princess were sold between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.

Kings Bounty is only available to buy digitally, and 1C was running a special $9.99 offer on Christmas Day through digital distribution platform Steam.

And following on the game’s digital success, 1C has teamed up with Focus Multimedia with the intention of releasing a boxed copy of Kings Bounty into retail.

We like to think of ourselves as a sort of gaming version of Rage Against The Machine, whereby real gamers, away from the casual purchase, have bought into a proper game in huge numbers by purchasing it over the digital networks, based on word of mouth and pure product quality,” 1C International publishing director Darryl Still (pictured) told MCV.

Still believes that these numbers are proof that the PC games market is still healthy in the UK, and that retailers shouldn’t be so quick to ditch PC games:

There is a huge disparity between the consumer demand – which is proven to be there through the amount of people that are buying it digitally – and the way it is being handled on the High Street.”

I think retail is getting out of the PC market too quickly. The digital sales we are receiving shows that there is still an enthusiastic audience out there.

Retail will never die. But it will need to be pro-active, and be less eager to drop platforms where there is
still demand.”