Duke Nukem Forever: How Did It Succeed?Duke Nukem Forever looked like vaporware for the longest time. Many assumed it would never see the light of day, but after 15 years in development hell, the title actually hit retail shelves and was quickly savaged by critics. Despite this, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford boasted that it's selling well, like a "greasy hamburger," and publisher Take-Two confirmed recently on an earnings call that the game is actually profitable. How could this be? How could it have succeeded against all odds?
Fans of the series obviously had something to do with it. Many gamers still have fond memories of Duke Nukem. "Duke Nukem is a rare case where the anticipation of its release was so large that many gamers didn't want to 'believe' the game critics or in other cases really just didn't care, they just wanted to play Duke Nukem, whether it was good or bad," EEDAR's Jesse Divnich told us.
He added, "I believe Duke Nukem was a case where the community desperately wanted it to be a great title. Despite the review scores, however, I still believe Duke Nukem is a game everyone should experience, just because Duke was such an icon for the industry and quite frankly, this may be the last time we see a major Duke Nukem release this generation."
While publishers often place a great emphasis on review scores and on Metacritic, the resulting sales are not always directly linked to scores. "A lot of mainstream gamers are oblivious to review scores," noted Divnich. "Mainstream gamers are not the type to visit outlets like IGN or Metacritic; instead it takes some time for a message to spread from industry mavens, those who are in the know, to those that are not. This is why we typically see highly anticipated games, which fail to deliver on quality, perform very well in its first week (as did Duke) but quickly fall off a sales cliff."
Strictly from a financial perspective, however, the real answer lies in how Take-Two paid for the Duke IP. The company got the IP from GT Interactive back around 2000 and didn't pay for the first few years of development. In 2005, the company was able to write off everything they spent on Duke from 1997 to 2005, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter explained on a recent Pach-Attack show on GameTrailers.
"They took their medicine and pain back in 2005. Since then, the only money they've spent is hiring Gearbox to finish the game. This was a stealth project – nobody knew Gearbox was on it until last year's PAX. My guess is they started working on it around June, so probably a year and around 100 guys [amounting to] $10 million. So Take-Two has a $10 million investment for income purposes, and Take-Two probably generated about $60 million in revenue. They have to pay the console manufacturers and stuff but they probably made $20 million or $30 million in profit on Duke," Pachter said.
That's certainly not bad at all for a game so thoroughly lambasted by reviewers. Pachter said the "game was so bad, it might have killed off the franchise."
It's worth noting that Take-Two has said it does have future plans for Duke, but those plans remain unclear at the moment. IndustryGamers asked Take-Two to comment on Duke's success, but they declined.
