Alan Wake 2 fastest-selling Remedy game, but yet to turn a profit
Scratch 22.
Alan Wake 2 is developer Remedy's fastest-selling game to date, but the studio is still to recuperate the project's development and marketing costs.
In its latest financial report, Remedy said Alan Wake 2 had now sold 1.3m units, with 1m of those occurring by the end of last year. This equates to 50 percent more copies and over three times more digital copies of Alan Wake 2 sold in the game's first two months than its previous release Control managed in its first four months (though it's worth noting Alan Wake 2 was a digital-only release).
Control has since gone on to sell over 4m units, and Remedy said it expected a similar trend with Alan Wake 2, as "a great game can generate excellent long tail sales". But, of course, games lose value over time - so copies sold after prices drop generate less revenue than at launch.
Remedy's CEO Tero Virtala said the company was "happy with the start of Alan Wake 2's sales". "The price point has also remained at a high level, and the game has already recouped a significant part of the development and marketing expenses. We will continue to develop the game to serve existing fans and attract new players and expect the game to continue selling well."
Following Alan Wake 2's launch, the Remedy team is also looking to its other franchises' futures. Virtala stated the studio's other projects Condor, Control 2 and Max Payne 1 & 2 remake have "all increased development pace" thanks to additional staff moving over from working on Alan Wake 2. "We expect these projects to reach their next development stages during the first half of 2024," Virtala said. The CEO also added that "growing and expanding" on both Control and Alan Wake will be a "key part" of Remedy's future.
Indeed, two paid DLC expansions are on the way for Alan Wake 2. The first expansion - Night Springs - will allow you to play as "several familiar characters from the world of Alan Wake" as you "experience the unexplainable in multiple self-contained episodes of Night Springs" (which is, of course, this universe's in-game TV show based on The Twilight Zone).
That will be followed by a second expansion, known as The Lake House. This expansion will see players exploring a "mysterious facility situated on the shores of Cauldron Lake set up by an independent government organisation to conduct secret research... until something goes wrong".