Dead Island - Sold Over 5 million Copies

Via Gamebanshee comes a press release from Deep Silver announcing that Dead Island has sold (as in sold through) more than 5 million copies. A snip from the press release:

Deep Silver today announced they have achieved a major milestone in worldwide sales for the zombie action game Dead Island. Since its release in September of 2011, Dead Island has sold-through over five million copies worldwide and still maintains an exceptional strong sales rate in all channels. This achievement includes sales from both retail and digital versions.

More information.

Good but how many of of those were from cheap sales? Ubisoft just announced also that Assassins Creed 3 sold 12 million in the first month. Now that is good.

Well whatever just don't design the campaign to play like a co-op as the story makes no sense when you play solo. If they do make the others ai companions.

I believe that. I got it for $6.75 on steam.

Same here. I did enjoy it. It was a great $7 purchase despite some poor design decisions.

I got this as a gift in '11, and for not being an rpg at all, it was a lot of fun.



-Carn

I only played Dead Island for around 9-10 hours before growing bored. There was so much potential with the setting and story, but I felt it was poorly executed. Repetitive sidequests, overzealous respawning, and a silly crafting system destroyed the immersion for me.

I think the setting and concept was enough for me to see it through to the end solo, though it was certainly lengthy and tested my patience for repetition at times.
I doubt I'd play it again unless it was in multiplayer with friends and with extra content. Overall it was ok, but it can be improved upon mechanic wise, definitely.

I didn't expect it to be such a success. I can only attribute that to the zombie craze going on and excessive marketing.

The game was ok - and I really liked the setting (actually, I was amazed at how well the powerful contrast worked), but ultimately it was too much action and too little tension. Also, it had sort of an amateur feel to it.

Bought it new in 2011 for about $40 US, played about 200 hours so far.

Wish I could think of a better full game and main story ARPG Coop game in the last 5 or 10 years, maybe someone will make suggestions. This is probably one of the first decent coop games in years and it's RPGish. At least they are moving in the correct direction and five million sales says Coop RPG CAN be profitable. That's the real point for any of us who care about Coop RPGs.

Sure many aspects were weak sauce, like the story taken from the book and the voice budget obviously wasn't big. And natch since it's Techland, they made the game for consoles, with dialog for 15 year olds. But now they know how profitable a PC focused game can be. Not to mention the quests felt like a better fit to overall story and atmosphere of the game world (obviously not the crappy cutscenes with the 4 protagonists) than many Bethesda quests.

PC gamers started modded it immediately and we got rid of the fog and the 50 fov (that made you feel like you were in a box), so we could see the beautiful island vistas in the first week. Iirc there was a modding tool for those that don't like to edit files within the first month or two.

Personally I salute their success for purely selfish reasons, since this probably means more RPGish Coop games in my lifetime.

Played it for about 1.5 hours … until my wife found out I was playing. Dammit, had to uninstall it… Now please tell me why Dead Space 1, 2 and 3 is ok - but this game isn't. I need justification !

Originally Posted by fabrulana
Played it for about 1.5 hours … until my wife found out I was playing. Dammit, had to uninstall it… Now please tell me why Dead Space 1, 2 and 3 is ok - but this game isn't. I need justification !

Sounds like your wife simply has better taste in games than you.

Originally Posted by fabrulana
Played it for about 1.5 hours … until my wife found out I was playing. Dammit, had to uninstall it… Now please tell me why Dead Space 1, 2 and 3 is ok - but this game isn't. I need justification !

Couldn't tell ya, I couldn't find much fun in any of them.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Sounds like your wife simply has better taste in games than you.

Would be a good deduction except she likes hidden object games …

This game has really plummeted in price, I saw it for 15 bucks today at Best Buy. I couldnt justify the purchase tho, since I already have it on Steam and havent played it…

Bummed the general consensus amongst the rpg brotherhood is less than favorable. This many people dissing it cannot be all wrong.

I still dont get how people can keep fucking up zombie games, it's really not a difficult formula. Everyone wants to play 'Dawn of the Dead', so make the damn game already. Endless tide/huge rotting open world of undead, traditional shambling undead living dead, that try and eat you not beat you to death. They die w/ a shot to the skull only, or outright annihilation of course. Realistic weapons, but lots of firepower - People generally dont want to run around hacking at fucking zombies with melee weapons. Youve got to occasionally, but mostly gunning the things down. Struggle for food, fuel, shelter, ammo/weapons amongst tribes of survivors as well as the undead. Someone just make that goddamn game already, everyone would buy it and you'd be a legend

Dead Island was a gigantic success for Deep Silver / Koch Media. It gave a huge boost to their international business. Suddenly companies like Valve actually listened when they requested to put their mid tier stuff on Steam.
Last week Koch took over the Metro publishing rights (IP is licensed I guess) and the Saints Row franchise including the studio and the upcoming SR4. The company boss personally flew over to the studio to assure everyone that all 160 or so jobs are secure and nobody would be let go.

All this was probably being paid for with money Dead Island made.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I only played Dead Island for around 9-10 hours before growing bored. There was so much potential with the setting and story, but I felt it was poorly executed. Repetitive sidequests, overzealous respawning, and a silly crafting system destroyed the immersion for me.

Exactly this.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
This game has really plummeted in price, I saw it for 15 bucks today at Best Buy. I couldnt justify the purchase tho, since I already have it on Steam and havent played it…

Bummed the general consensus amongst the rpg brotherhood is less than favorable. This many people dissing it cannot be all wrong.

I still dont get how people can keep fucking up zombie games, it's really not a difficult formula. Everyone wants to play 'Dawn of the Dead', so make the damn game already. Endless tide/huge rotting open world of undead, traditional shambling undead living dead, that try and eat you not beat you to death. They die w/ a shot to the skull only, or outright annihilation of course. Realistic weapons, but lots of firepower - People generally dont want to run around hacking at fucking zombies with melee weapons. Youve got to occasionally, but mostly gunning the things down. Struggle for food, fuel, shelter, ammo/weapons amongst tribes of survivors as well as the undead. Someone just make that goddamn game already, everyone would buy it and you'd be a legend

You have just described Dead Island and DayZ! Nothing wrong with melee in my view if done right, which was done well in Dead Island. In fact is it more difficult than ranged shooting because of the localised damage, dismemberment animations .. etc.

I played Dead Island for about 20 hours and really was taken by surprise by how well it was made and the variety and amount of quests and side quests. My main gripes with it is the transition between single and multiplayer view during cut scences (because of lean towards co-op).

The other major gripe that made me quit the game after 20 hours was that my quest log suddenly got messed up and lost my main quests from the log. Tried loading previous saves but it did not work and so did not want to go over the whole thing again. Otherwise, well made and excuted game.

Originally Posted by Gorath
Dead Island was a gigantic success for Deep Silver / Koch Media. It gave a huge boost to their international business. Suddenly companies like Valve actually listened when they requested to put their mid tier stuff on Steam.
Last week Koch took over the Metro publishing rights (IP is licensed I guess) and the Saints Row franchise including the studio and the upcoming SR4. The company boss personally flew over to the studio to assure everyone that all 160 or so jobs are secure and nobody would be let go.

All this was probably being paid for with money Dead Island made.

It's pretty sad a very average game was a gigantic success.

Originally Posted by rune_74
It's pretty sad a very average game was a gigantic success.

Sure, but isn't the majority of the most successfull games rather average? Is Dead Island really less fun than many of these yearly AAA iterations?

I enjoyed the game. I didn't expect much and I can handle bugs, which is the secret to enjoy any game more. But still, if one have a few friends the game is excellent for COOP. It must be considered that there aren't that many COOP games like this, except for Borderlands. Did it have flaws? Plenty! But it also had a lot of good stuff and that's what matters in the end.