It’s no secret that Starbreeze and Tigon Studios’ Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay had less-than-stellar sales. According to Tigon head honcho Ian Stevens, the reasons for the game’s lackluster performance are varied. Stevens recently told CVG that when Butcher Bay debuted consumers weren’t big on Vin Diesel and were highly skeptical of a film property translating well as a videogame.
But what success it did have was the direct result of gamers talking to each other. From the interview:
It wasn’t until the game got out there and was reviewed that people came back around to it. So we sold purely on word of mouth. So we kind of have that out there now and Starbreeze has gone and done another game that’s been really well received. So I think that gamers genuinely are going to give us a better shot this time around.
He also mentioned that Vivendi’s lack of marketing dollars might have impacted the sales. Money, as we have found through thorough research, has the ability to make anything look good. We submit this picture of Madonna as evidence.
