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Frictional Games’ horror title SOMA sold 92,000 copies across all platforms in its first ten days.
The studio noted that its sales target for the first month was 100,000 downloads. Following its first ten days, sales are said to still be continuing strongly with around 2,000 copies sold every day.
Despite meeting its initial targets, SOMA will need to sell nearly 300,000 units for the team to recoup all of its development costs, having worked on the project for five years. That said, the title was completely self-funded and the money coming in will already cover the studio’s expenses another two years.
SOMA hasn’t been able to match the early success of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs however, which sold 120,000 copies in its first week.
Frictional Games noted that the release of SOMA has also negatively affected sales of its other titles, despite there being no IP crossover.
“When the pre-orders for SOMA started, Amnesia sales dropped by about 30 per cent or so and this drop still remains,” read a blog post from the studio.
“This feels strange as the two games are not connected apart from being made by the same company, so we wonder what mechanism it is that causes this. It might be that Amnesia’s sales will rise again a bit later on though, so it’s too soon to tell yet just what the effects are.”
