14 DAY TRIAL // Journey was a big hit for developer thatgamecompany, but the team behind the PSN hit says that despite its impact, the title has failed to generate a lot of revenue for the studio.
Jenova Chen, the founder of thatgamecompany, tells Joystiq that, “When the game makes money, the money first goes back to pay back the money they’ve invested. So, that’s going to take a while – Journey cost multiple millions of dollars to make. Once that money is recouped, then we will get royalties.”
He says that about one year after the launch of Journey, his team is not relying on revenue from it and wants to make sure that it has independent sources to fund the development of its next project.
thatgamecompany had a three title development team with Sony, which they completed after the launch of Journey, and since then, the company has found funding from Benchmark Company, a venture capital firm.
They have access to 5.6 million dollars (4.29 million Euro) in order to create their next project.
The creation of Journey has brought the independent studio close to bankruptcy and has forced it to fire a number of those who have worked on the game.
Chen adds, “So, creatively I’ve never gotten any input from the venture capital. It’s actually very similar, we are always ourselves, and no one is really messing around with us. With Sony, it was the same thing.”
thatgamecompany has offered no details on its current project, but it seems that it will once again focus on the creation of emotion and that it will make extensive use of touch-based control.
It’s unclear whether the team is working on current-generation consoles and the PC or whether it plans to deliver the game on the PlayStation 4 from Sony and the Xbox 720 from Microsoft.