Development Costs and Kickstarter Funds also Included
Over a year after their initial Kickstarter announcement, Yacht Club Games has had their first game, Shovel Knight, released for a little over a month. While only the English version is out on 3DS, Wii U and PC, Yacht Club has been more than happy to present the results of their labors for everyone to see. It can all be found
on their official blog, but we'll highlight the main points of interest here.
Firstly, the success of Kickstarter for Yacht Club Games is a well known fact; they report that there were 15685 total backers, through both Kickstarter and Paypal. Surprisingly however, 64% of backers were for the PC version, leaving 15% and 21% supporting the Wii U and 3DS versions, respectively. For a Nintendo centric game, these numbers surely surprise us, as almost two thirds of backers wanted a PC version. Regardless, this was more of a celebration for Yacht Club Games, who were already planning ahead to release.
With their funds of $328,000, Yacht Club set off through a difficult year of development, and managed to release Shovel Knight despite running out of funding. Most likely at a low point in their lives, Yacht Club was finally prepared for release... and there was a lot riding on the sales of Shovel Knight.
So how did Shovel Knight sell you ask? In the first week, around 75,000 copies were sold across all platforms. These are very impressive numbers, considering this was a new game from a new studio, releasing during the Steam Summer Sale. 38% of sales were on PC, a number much lower than the original expectation. 35% were from 3DS sales, and the final 27% come from Wii U; very impressive forNintendo's struggling home console indeed, considering the number of PCs and 3DS's it was competing against.
By the end of Shovel Knight's first month on the market, it had sold 180,000 copies across all platforms. This exceeded their total initial sales predictions by 30,000; and this was only in the first month!
Overall, Yacht Club Games have crated a winner, and his name is Shovel Knight. Yacht Club is actually hoping to sell a total of 1 Million copies during its run, something wich would surely be an impressive feat. Regardless, Yacht Club had plenty to be proud about, and hopefully has many more sales to come.