Take-Two: Evolve had an ‘incredibly successful launch’

Evolve has been a commercial success, according to publisher Take-Two.

The multiplayer shooter did debut in the UK charts at No.1 but has since fallen to No.9, with Warner Bros’ Dying Light having already surpassed its sales, despite being launched digitally back in January.

Take-Two’s title has also faced some strong criticism from fans and press alike regarding the perception that an unnecessary amount of its content was locked away behind a DLC paywall.

GameSpot, however, reports that the publisher’s president Karl Slatoff told the Piper Jaffray Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Conference that Evolve is delivering commercially.

"And as the game evolved, and I guess the pun is sort of intended, I think our instincts have proven out right," he said. "We’re very pleased; we’ve had an incredibly successful commercial launch with Evolve.

We’re very happy with where things are going, particularly on the digital side. Digital has been very strong with us. Not only with full-game downloads, but also the attach rates for our season pass have been very strong. I’m not going to give you specific numbers, but we’re very pleased. So I would say, in general, Evolve has been a fantastic experience for us and we’re very pleased with it."

Cowen & Company’s Doug Creutz was more tempered in his response, adding in an investor note that he estimates the game sold a comparatively low 300k physical copies in the US in February.

"Even assuming a generous physical/digital split, we think the game will likely top-out at around 1.5m units of total worldwide first-year sell-through," he said, adding that Evolve might be "too niche to reach a wide audience" and accusing it of employing a "confusing and over-elaborate DLC plan" that turned off some potential consumers.