Ben-DutkaWhen we told you Joe Danger was one of the best downloadable titles we've ever seen, we weren't kidding around.
And thankfully, many gamers took such review scores seriously. In speaking at the Develop Conference 2010 , Hello Games Managing Director Sean Murray revealed that Joe Danger not only managed to sell 50,000 units in its first week of availability, but also allowed the studio to break even on the very first day . We're talking about a team comprised of four individuals; not forty or four hundred… four . And they go and make what amounts to Excitebike for a new generation, and do it so unbelievably well that it turns out to be one of the most addictive experiences on the PSN. Being able to make all your invested money back on day one has to feel great and we're already anticipating the team's next game. Keep this up, and Hello Games might end up being one of the premiere PSN developers, right up there with thatgamecompany (TGC) that has already delivered flOw and Flower , and is currently working on Journey . Whatever the Joe Danger guys plan to do next, we wanna know about it.
And if you haven't picked up the game in question just yet, shame on you! It really is for everyone; I hate trick-based anything (like those off-road games based around tricks and stuff) and this game rules . Seriously.
Related Game(s): Joe Danger
WOW! That's awesome. They broke even non day 1? That sounds like the kind of return on investment that we used to see in the heyday of home computers when a couple of guys in a basement could put out a game, sell 25,000 copies and go buy a sports car with the profit.
This is excellent. Not to mention that such a quick return on investment will absolutely encourage others to follow their example on PSN.
One thing from the article, "And they go and make what amounts to Excitebike for a new generation, and do it so unbelievably well that it turns out to be one of the most addictive experiences on the PSN.". This is what I love to hear because it shows that games can be simple and yet great execution and design can make a game that is fun to play and addictive without requiring a multi-million dollar budget or the power of a multi-national to promote it. This is how games *used* to be. This is how games were when we had the most innovation in gaming since the initial wave of home consoles arrived.
I love it. I'm smiling now, because to me this says that gaming is not the exclusive domain of multi-national conglomerates with teams of 100 working on games with budgets that make Hollywood blush.
Just, excellent.
Last edited by TheHighlander on 7/13/2010 10:56:08 AM
I know what you mean simple elegant, effective and damn fun to play games. Don't get me wrong I like the complexity of todays games, but sometimes you just want a jump in and play game, this will only be my third PSN game once I'm back online, once I heard it was like exite bike but better I was sold, any body remember the days when almost every game was sinlge player and your buddies and you would just pass the control around. Hell does anybody remember the NES classic Kung Fu that came with it man we need somebody to get a game like that on psn.
Wouldn't the fact that they have an amazingly small workforce mean that their costs are less? And hence can break even quite easily?
On a different note, is this game that good? Should I absolutely get it as my next PSN purchase?
Yeah, that's the point. I also means that the start up cost of getting into making PSN games is very low.
Yes. Get it.
Sorry, I'm still excited from the fact that a small start up with 4 people making a game can see a return on investment within the first day of sales. It's really reminiscent of the good old days of gaming.
Good for them. Joe Danger is absolutely addictive and a joy to play. They deserve all the success they are having.
Ive been meaning to get Joe Danger, ill definitely get it this week.
I played it non-stop for the first week it was out then went back to Red Dead Redemption. I should probably go back and finish Joe Danger, it's quite addictive.
Ninja Theory could learn something from these guys. 1.5 million copies (and counting) and they couldn't get the profit that they wanted…
I'm glad to have attributed to there success.
This game is more fun than playing pick-up sticks with your butt cheeks.
All I can say is…ow!
That's really awesome news. I have yet to purchase this game, I have so much stuff to play right now, I've put off purchasing anything until I can finish my backlogged games, but I have been super interested in this game and I'm not a big fan of psn games.
About the only psn game I have really enjoyed and continue to pick up again and again is Pain, but I think this might just be psn hit #2 on my ps3.
I recently read an article in a magazine about 'indie' games/developers. Its interesting to hear about how much freedom they have when making a game, they can basically have an idea and role with it, whereas retails games can be changed by the men in suis (read: producers) as they see fit if they think it'll help shift a few more copies.
We should be thankful to Sony for allowing these games to happen and if anything, supporting these indie devs so we'll see more games like this on the store
BTW Joe Danger is enormous fun
I purchased this game on the recommendation of psxextreme and my daughter and I are having a pretty good time with it. I think the game is worth buying.
50,000? It should be 10x that. this game is great.
i was wondering the other day if this game did well sales wise now seeing that it has makes me happy and i still cant belive 4 people made it
anyone who has not bought this should be thrown in jail!
this is one of the very few games that have not only met, but exceeded my expectations and i was expecting allot!
these 4 guys have shown big companies how its done, good on them!
amazing what 4 people can do, this reminds me of when a group of college students up showed M$ and released linux!
Um….well if you want to be fair you might ought to give Andrew Tanenbaum a lot of credit for creating Minix and Richard Stallman for the GNU project. Neither of whom were students at the time of their work, and both are necessary precursors to what we now call Linux. Minix and the GNU project were kinda, sorta the basis and genesis for Linux. LINUX = Linus' (Torvalds) version of Minix… Now, yes Linus rewrote every line of the original Linux kernel himself, but everything he wrote was based on work done by Tanenbaum and Stallman.
So, let's really get to it here. Linux was not the work of a bunch of students, it was one student, and it was based heavily on the work of a respected computer science professor and a software engineer who'd been working for 8 years on open source code.
As for showing up Microsoft. Well, Windows Vista was about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit, the world still loves Windows XP, and Windows 7 has been received very well. You don't see Linux desktops selling all that well, do you? Linux' biggest impact has been in the server space where it made life difficult for traditional UNIX vendors. But the impact on Microsoft has been fairly minimal.
linux is not popular because the latest version is years old!
it has so little features compared to windows or even leopard OS X.
linux is not as popular also because it does not have a multi billion dollar company behind it.
you have to give credit to the guys who made it though!
first unix came out, than M$ copped most of it and gave us DOS (disk operating system).
than they released linux, so M$ released windows.
that is one thing ive always hated about M$, they always copy people.
look at almost everything they have made, they coppied.
cant remember the details, but M$ just got sued recently in the US because of some software infringement with microsoft word, apparently they used some copyrighted code or something and the company was suing them.
not to mention they never own up to anything, prime example allot of people who adopted windows 7 on release kept getting the blue screen of death.
also allot of crashes, it was not very stable took a good few months to fix that!
windows 7 is a great OS, i use to use vista windows 7 is so much easier to use, so much easier to customize.
even my computer is running faster with 7 over vista.
i just think its amazing how a group of students (no matter where they got the work from, the fact is they released it!) can release a OS that up shows one of the worlds largest software companies!
just like hello games, the guys who did joe danger i can not believe 4 people made this!
"Windows Vista was about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit,"
BRAVO! I'm not too much into computers or OS' and stuff but I do love my Mac. It may be more expensive but the experience is worth it to me. My computer has never randomly restarted or get stuck on booting amongst other things. But I do have parallels on my lap top for Vista and I HATE it. I wish it were XP.
Yeah, Vista on any laptop that wasn't both 100% on Microsoft's secret "real" hardware compatibility list and utterly top of the range was truly awful. My wife has a Toshiba with Vista and it's been nothing but trouble since day 1.