Saints Row was released a few weeks back and while some reviews were somewhat positive (like mine which you can read here), the game also suffered from some harsh feedback from the media. If anything, the game was buggy and cheesy but it did manage to deliver a true Saints Row experience to some degree. Sadly, Embracer Group, the parent company of Volition, isn’t happy with the overall reception of the game but hasn’t deemed it a failure just yet.
Speaking during Embracer’s annual general meeting this week, CEO Lars Wingefors confirmed that the game wasn’t a success. Lars says that reviews for the game were “very polarising”. He said it is too early to tell what the future of the series looks like at the moment but he is confident that by the look of the pre-release forecast, the game will at least break even when it comes to funds spent to make it.
“Personally, I had hoped for a greater reception to the game. It’s been very polarising. There are a lot of things that could be said in detail around it, but I’m with one hand happy to see lots of gamers and fans happy, and at the same time I’m a bit sad to also see fans not happy, so it’s difficult. I think we need to wait for the quarterly report in November to have more details around this. We’re still fairly early in our release window and still collecting data, and there is also bug fixing and more content coming.”
Lars says he is confident that Saints Row will make money for the company. However, he doesn’t expect it to return a large investment back as much as other games from the publisher do. He said:
“On the financial side, I know, or I’m confident we will make money on the investment. Would it have as great a return on investment as we have seen in many other games? Not very likely, but we will make money, and that’s a very good starting point at least. Obviously you always want every instalment of any IP to be greater than the last one,” he responded. “And what you do is, this is quite a process to evaluate your position, the outcome, and there are hundreds of people engaged in this game within the group, so I still have a great trust in those people and I’m sure they will recommend things for the future.”
Saints Row is now available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Source: VGC
