Jurassic World Evolution 2 sales underperform and Elite Dangerous: Odyssey underperforms • Eurogamer.net

[ad_1]

Developer Frontier said that sales of Jurassic World Evolution 2 aren’t that big and Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is underperforming.

In a trade update, the Cambridge-based company said sales of Jurassic World Evolution 2 were “less than expected” on the PC platform specifically. Frontier believes this is the “short-term effect” of the crowded release window, with a number of other highly-anticipated PC games releasing in the same window.

Jurassic World Evolution 2 launched on November 9, which turned out to be the same week as Sports Interactive’s 2022 Director of Football, Forza Horizon 5’s Playground, Rockstar’s GTA Trilogy and Bethesda’s Skyrim: Anniversary Edition.

Frontier said sales of Jurassic World Evolution 2 on PlayStation and Xbox “were largely as expected.”

But there is hope in the game. Frontier said it believes Jurassic World Evolution 2 will overtake Jurassic World Evolution in terms of revenue in its first 12 months of release, calling initial PC sales a “primarily a staging issue.” Frontier believes it will see “big” sales around Christmas from behind more than 440,000 wishlists on Steam, and is also expecting a boost when the late Jurassic World Dominion movie comes out in June.

As it stands, according to Frontier President David Braben, Jurassic World Evolution 2 has about half a million players across all platforms.

“A big thank you to everyone involved in the launch of Jurassic World Evolution 2,” Braben commented. “Although initial sales on PC were lower than we targeted, the game is already enjoyed by nearly half a million players across all platforms, and shows very strong player reviews and critical reviews. We are confident that it is another great addition to our fantastic portfolio of games.” Frontier’s future looks strong and our portfolio continues to grow.”

For Elite, it looks like the much tarnished Odyssey expansion had as hard of a time in virtual plows as players were in the virtual cockpit. In its trade update, Frontier said sales of the space game have been “more muted” so far in fiscal 2022.

In July, Frontier was forced to delay an update of Odyssey on consoles indefinitely to focus on fixing the PC version. At the time, Braben said the studio had accepted the “frustration” players have been feeling with the Odyssey expansion since it was introduced in May.

Odyssey, which finally gives players the much-needed ability to get out of their ships and roam the galaxy in first person, was panned by players upon its release, and soon earned a ‘mostly negative’ rating on Steam as buyers highlighted performance issues, Server outages and a pile of bugs – although Frontier kept a paid alpha for a month prior to launch, ostensibly to fix any glaring issues prior to release.

A batch of updates were released to try to resolve the issues, which had the effect of slowing Odyssey development on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The underperformance of Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Elite Dangerous: Odyssey has led Frontier to revise reducing projected revenue for the financial year ending May 31, 2022, from £130m to £150m to between £100m and £130m.

Looking ahead, Frontier highlighted the release of the first F1 management sim in 2022, as well as the launch of the real-time strategy game Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. It also has some games from outside developers that it intends to publish, such as Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters.

[ad_2]