Machinarium Has Sold Lots And Lots Of Copies
Point and click on purchase
It's rather lovely when you learn of a tiny company consistently making splendid games is succeeding, rather than struggling to stay alive. Amanita Design, who RPS have championed for their witty, beautiful and smart adventure games since we launched, sent us some very interesting sales information about their robotic point-and-clicker, Machinarium [official site], after its four millionth sale.
Released in 2009, the game took Amanita from relatively obscure to suddenly in front of the crowds, the game much more immediately accessible than their previously more esoteric offerings, despite still featuring their trademark collage of nature and machinery, distinctive animation, and a design that encourages you to explore the screen with your cursor.
The data reveals some interesting information, not least that PC delivered (ever so slightly) more net revenue than mobile, which proves a hefty achievement when you look at accessibility. 49% to the desktop, 44% to the handhelds, with a piddly 7% on the PS3 and Vita builds. (There's an interesting aside for mobile there too, with iOS scoring a whopping 72% of sales, compared to Android's 25%, and the rest giving 3% - bearing in mind Android makes up something like 80% of the market, you can see why developers still focus on Apple's products.)
Also interesting to see is where sold it best. Steam wins, unsurprisingly, with 26% of bespoke sales. But their inclusion in Humble Bundles actually saw more units shift, at a massive 35% of the total. The Mac App Store gave them 13%, direct sales from their own site are 8% (and that's about to get more impressive), and just 2% on GOG. The other 16% is the total of the sixty squillion other channels.
This all gets lots more interesting when you look at the revenues from those sales. Those massive Humble sales got them an extraordinarily small 7% of the total - of course being in a pay-what-you-want, shared across a number of games, will always make it worth a lot less, but cor. But the most revealing number is how 27% of net revenue came from that seemingly small 8% of direct sales. Indies: SELL YOUR OWN GAMES!
You can see those and the other figures here:
Oh, and p.s. scrollers: we have word that Amanita's next game will be designed by Jara Plachy, who created Botanicula!