Jeff Vogel: How Many Games I Sell, Part One

Posting on his developer blog, Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel provides the sales details of one of his titles, Geneforge 4.

Of course, I can’t say how much money Geneforge 4 is going to make overall. Its sales are pretty slow now, but it still sells. The game has always sold for $28. (That might seem very expensive for an Indie title. I will discuss the price at length in part two.) In addition, a hint book is available. The vast majority of copies of the hint book sell for $7. There are also some profits from CD sales, but it’s only around a thousand bucks, so I left it out.

So let’s look at the interesting numbers:

Total Copies Sold of Geneforge 4 as of March 13, 2009: 3979.
Total Gross Sales Geneforge 4 as of March 13, 2009: $111412.

Total Geneforge 4 Hint Books Sold as of March 13, 2009: 807.
Total Gross Sales Geneforge 4 Hint Books as of March 13, 2009: $5649.

As you can see, we don’t sell a huge number of copies ourselves. Our other titles, which are also available from other outlets, sell much higher raw numbers. (The original Geneforge, for example, has sold jillions of copies, though we got far less cash for most of those.)