For Oddworld Inhabitants, the PlayStation Plus deal has not been favourable (like it was for Psyonix when Rocket League was released…).

No one knows it better than Lorne Lanning. He is the co-founder and president of Oddworld Inhabitants, which developed the Oddworld games (with a few exceptions) and can therefore be described as the head of the series. Lanning spoke to Xbox Expansion Pass about how they got it wrong with Sony, as the PlayStation Plus deal allowed subscribers to add to their game library for free for a month (who would retain access as long as they renewed their subscription).

As the game’s development costs increased, Oddworld Inhabitants needed financial help. Sony offered an undisclosed sum in exchange for a month of PlayStation Plus for Oddworld: Soulstorm, which was then scheduled for release in January 2021, but at the time, there weren’t many PlayStation 5s in the hands of gamers. The developers expected a maximum of 100,000 sales at launch, but 50,000 seemed realistic, and the money from the deal was estimated to be more than the sales generated.

But soon after the agreement was signed, the pandemic hit. So the release had to be pushed back to April 2021, which also gave the PlayStation 5 an extra quarter of a year to gain more market traction. The result? Oddworld: Soulstorm became the PlayStation 5’s most downloaded game with nearly four million downloads, and a significant portion of that was during PlayStation Plus month. And that devastated the studio. Lanning didn’t say how this affected sales of later ports (Xbox One, Xbox Series), but it must have still impacted them on Microsoft’s consoles.

So Oddworld Inhabitants underestimated the interest in the game, as there is a considerable difference between 50-100k and 4 million. Let’s just add that not everyone who downloaded Oddworld: Soulstorm might have bought it, but it seems that the studio has been disappointed…

Source: PSL