Infocom All-Time Sales Numbers

Somehow or another, the guys over at GameSetWatch have gotten their hands on a list of Infocom’s sales numbers over the course of the company’s lifetime. While they’re best known for developing many blockbuster adventure titles back in the 80’s (Zork, Leather Goddesses of Phobos), Infocom is also responsible for publishing a handful of RPGs (like Westwood’s BattleTech titles), so I think this information is worthy of a newsbit. Interesting stuff, especially when you consider what the development costs were 25+ years ago compared to today:

This is the data from 1981 to 1986, and reveals that Zork I was by far the best-selling title in that period – selling around 380,000 units from 1981 to 1986, with quite an impressive ‘long tail’.

Of course, the classic Douglas Adams co-authored Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy game is second, with 254,000 sold, but there are some other surprises in there – Planetfall has a decent 70,000, and even the super-odd, super-rare Fooblitzky sold 8,000 or so. I guess that’s not too good, actually – oh well.

The total is just over 2 million units sold, and considering that I believe Infocom games retailed for $30-$40 even back then, this was a bit of a raging success, one suspects. (It’s surprising how little the games’ purchase cost has appreciated – anyone know exact costs for Infocom games at the time?)

In fact, the Infocom Wikipedia entry specifically notes how well the company did with its ‘evergreen’ approach: “Infocom had a successful marketing approach that kept all their games in store inventories for years. Because of this, older titles’ sales often kept pace with sales of newer games. For example, because Zork was available for years after its initial release in 1980, it continued to top charts in sales well into the mid-1980s.”