14 DAY TRIAL // The sandbox action adventure genre has been dominated by the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the brainchild of the Rockstar team. But as time passed, some companies decided that a fresh take, one filled with much more fun activities was needed to attract gamers. As such, the Volition studio decided to create the Saints Row series.
While the first did not sell too well, the second title, which was launched a few months ago, before the holiday season, on consoles and this January for the PC, has achieved very big sales. THQ, the publisher of the game, has just offered sales results of its top title, and it seems that Saints Row 2 is the second highest grossing game released last year for the company.
“We are focusing on delivering one to two high quality titles targeted to the core gamer each year. Today we have shifted more than 2.6 million units of Saints Row 2 posting sales in excess of $100 million on this title,” said Brian Farrell, THQ president and CEO. “Saints Row 2 achieved a Metacritic rating of 82 and we marketed the game aggressively. The conclusion, when we focus [we] make a great game and market it aggressively we succeed.”
The THQ executive also mentioned that this successful strategy would be implemented in future games nearing their release date, “We intend to apply these three steps to the upcoming launch of games like Red Faction: Guerrilla and Darksiders. Our goal with each of these titles is to launch high quality games, market it aggressively into windows where we can win.”
Other high grossing titles for the publisher have been WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, which has sold over 4 million units, given the huge number of wrestling fans out there, but also casual titles, like de Blob or Big Beach Sports.
All in all, it seems that the company is still managing to keep the profit up, even though a lot of rumors appeared about its negative earnings.