High Voltage compares The Conduit to GTA
"Nobody knows anything about GTA 1, 2."
The developer behind Wii-exclusive first-person shooter series The Conduit has compared its difficult beginnings to the journey taken by gargantuan sandbox series Grand Theft Auto.
Responding to the issue of disappointing review scores for the 2009 shooter (Oli turned up a 5/10 in Eurogamer's The Conduit review), High Voltage Software pointed towards the first two Grand Theft Auto games and their lack of success.
"I'm not going to make a comparison to Grand Theft Auto... but okay, I'm going to make a slight comparison to Grand Theft Auto," senior producer Kevin Sheller said in a new The Conduit 2 interview published today.
"The first two GTA games, nobody knows anything about them, right? Grand Theft Auto 1? Nobody even said that word. They never said two either. It wasn't until Grand Theft Auto 3 that people really got excited about what they were doing.
"We look at the first Conduit as our learning experience, our foundation work – and we'll see where we go from there."
The Conduit 1 fell flat both commercially and critically despite High Voltage's promise of a Wii game that would look like and offer the same features as a shooter on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
While High Voltage admitted reviews were "fair", the developer was satisfied with the game's performance, and revealed its deal with publisher SEGA was, from the beginning, for two games.
"We were pleased with the first announcement of the sales," producer Keith Hladik said. "I don't recall exactly, but it was about 100,000 for the first few weeks. Coming from where we were at – we're an independent studio and this is our first IP – we had pretty decent sales and the reviews were fair.
"I don't recall anyone being down. We already knew we were going to make a sequel, so the fallout from that was we were determined to make the sequel way better than the first one."
In October The Conduit 2 was delayed to February 2011 to incorporate new content and fan feedback from its E3 2010 showing.
High Voltage has promised local split-screen multiplayer, revamped online play, MotionPlus functionality and Classic Controller support.