It’s been a few weeks since the release of SOMA, and I still find myself thinking about some of the things it made me do. Decent folks don’t take helpless people off life support just to open a door, so in order to maintain the illusion that I am, in fact, a decent person, I have to put the blame on the game. A blame game, if you will.
While we’re on the subject of people, here’s a live-action series based on the game that stars real, live ones. They’re breathing and everything, at least for now.
Done? Good. That was the fun part, and now it’s over. It’s number time now. Let’s talk brass taxes. Cold, hard spreadsheets with formulas and shit. If you’re into this, here’s one for you: 92,000. That’s how many copies, or “units” if you’re feeling fancy, of the game that were sold in its first two weeks.
That’s a solid showing for a brand new horror IP with a minimalist marketing campaign that relied heavily on positive word-of-mouth. That’s considerably more than the 30,000 copies of The Dark Descent that were sold in its first month, though it’s not nearly as impressive its sequel, A Machine for Pigs, which moved 120,000 copies in its first week.
Piracy wasn’t as gargantuan of a dick as it usually is, since, apparently, this is the first game Frictional has shipped without it getting leaked. The stellar reviews SOMA has received — including this one — should keep future figures somewhat steady as we head into the holidays.
What’s most interesting about all this is how SOMA might impact how the studio approaches the reveal of their next project. “We might have unveiled the game a bit too early,” explains a post on the official Frictional Games blog. “We first showed off SOMA back in October 2013 and the plan was to keep content coming out until release. This turned out way harder to keep up with than what we’d initially thought.”
SOMA made quite the first impression when we first saw it, but even the most effective reveal can’t generate enough hype to last two years.
