SOMA has sold 250K, needs to sell 30K more to be profitable

Frictional Games has revealed that its latest title, SOMA, has now sold over 250 000 units, but it will take another 20-30,000 units before the studio sees a return on investment.

"Given that the daily sales are still solid (about 125 units a day) and we have regular boosts from various sale events, this is bound to happen well before this year is over," it said in its blog

It also compared the sales to those of the recent indie hit Firewatch, and saw positives.

"Firewatch (which has quite a few elements in common with SOMA) sold over 500k in just a month, so there's obviously room for SOMA to sell a lot more. It might seem weird, but this is actually very encouraging for us.

"SOMA was a really ambitious project which took 5 years to develop, used a load of external help and had a big chunk of money spent on a live action series and so forth, making it a very costly affair. Yet SOMA is well on the way to becoming profitable after just 6 months, despite not being a runaway success. This makes us a lot less worried about making another game of similar scope."

During the extensive post, the company also examined ways to differentiate its games portfolio to prevent one game cannabalising the sales of another - something it believes happened with SOMA and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

"So if we make another sci-fi game, we'll probably tone down the horror elements and make the sci-fi narrative more prominent. The reverse would be true if we made a new horror game. The idea is that this'll not only let us reach a new and wider audience, but also minimize the risk that people will mix up our games, and instead they'll see them as separate entities."

It also revealed that the Swedish studio is currently at work on two new titles, a first for Frictional.