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Soma Turns A Profit After Selling Nearly Half A Million Copies
Six months ago, Frictional Games detailed that its psychological thriller Soma was nearing profitability, and that it had sold 250,000 copies. Now, a year since its launch, the developer has come forward to say that the horror title has finally turned a profit as it nears half a million copies sold.
In a recent blog post, Frictional Games explains that Soma was expensive for the team to make, and its concept was originally a hard sell. Differentiating it from Amnesia: Dark Descent, the developer's previous game, was a challenging and risky feat. "While we had the luxury of having already made a successful horror game, Soma was not an easy sell," says Frictional. "The game relies heavily on getting certain themes across to the player, and communicating this proved to be a hard task indeed."
Frictional Games also stresses that Soma was by far the team's most ambitious project to date, as well as the most costly. Soma took five years to make, and much of the developer's finances were spent towards outsourcing for voice acting, animations, and more. "Taken together with salaries and all other kinds of expenses, Soma cost quite a bit to make - well over 10 times what Amnesia: The Dark Descent cost us," says Frictional.
"We were also constantly worried about a backlash based on faulty expectations," continues Frictional. "Early on we realized that SOMA was never gonna be the scare-fest that Amnesia: TDD was."
You can read the team's full blog post here. Half a year ago, Frictional Games also revealed that it is working on two new titles.
[Source: Frictional Games]
Our Take
Getting a horror game to stand out can be a tough task, but Soma had really interesting themes surrounding existentialism, which I think is what made it so profound. Being thematically very different than Amnesia: Dark Descent, I can understand how it must have been a hard sell initially. As a fan of Soma, I'm happy to see it's finally turned a profit, and hopefully its success (even if profitability took a little longer than expected) will mean we see more titles like it.
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