Despite a not necessarily bad reception from players, The Callisto Protocol doesn’t seem to have had the success one would expect from its publisher?.
A mixed reception for a game whose sales expectations were too high
Developed by Striking Distance Studios and published by Korean Krafton, The Callisto Protocol would have cost about 200 billion won or about 150 million euros over three years, according to information from Korea Odyssey, a medium specializing in Korean culture.
But it looks like the game’s sales aren’t quite up to par, with media reports suggesting several investment firms have lowered their price targets for Krafton’s stock market. The reason is that the Callisto protocol would be considered a commercial failure.
Earlier this month, Samsung Securities predicted in a stock market report that the Callisto protocol would have sold much better than it actually did. “The company expected cumulative sales of 5 million copies, but given the current sales ranking, it will not be easy to reach cumulative sales of 2 million copies before this year. »
Korea Investment & Securities also lowered its estimate of total sales to 2.1 million copies from 4 million and lowered its estimate of operating profit for this year to 629.3 billion won from 813 billion won.
The game’s launch suffered greatly from technical issues that appeared in the PC version of the game (but also on console). The glaring lack of optimization had plagued the game’s reviews on Steam, and even today, only 61% of the platform’s reviews are considered positive.
According to Krafton’s annual and quarterly reports, the company paid Striking Distance Studio about 196 billion won to develop the Callisto protocol, or about 120 million. In view of the sales so far, this is too high a sum.
Although new content is expected for the game this year, it seems hard to imagine that the game will surpass the 5 million mark any time soon. In any case, Samsung Securities’ target, announced as selling 5 million copies, seemed very ambitious for a new franchise unknown to the public, even if the shadow of Dead Space has hung over the title since its announcement.