It looks like the Saints Row reboot ended up costing its parent company over $100 million, according to one source.
A fan account dedicated to covering Deep Silver Volition's parent company Embracer Group has been going through the Swedish entertainment conglomerate's latest financial report. The factoid around Saints Row was flagged by the user alongside what was officially presented, which is that the company's PC and console segment is still feeling the sting of under-performing releases from earlier in the financial year.
Aside from saying the cost is a "well-known fact behind the scenes", they also point to publicly available financial data that shows the "value of completed games in the July-September quarter" being SEK 1671 million (roughly $ 160 million). The Saints Row reboot was one of few notable releases for the period, so the user believes "it's not that bold a statement".
As we previously reported, Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors acknowledged the poor reception to the Saints Row reboot following a rocky launch. At the time, he hoped ongoing bug fixes and content updates would turn the game's financial future into a rosier one.
"I think I stated before the release that we were confident in the financial profile of the investment," Wingefors said in a Q&A session at Embracer Group's annual general meeting. "Obviously, personally I had hoped for a greater reception of the game. It's been a very polarized view. There are a lot of things that could be said in detail around it. But on one hand I'm happy to see a lot of gamers and fans happy. At the same time, I'm a bit sad to see lots of fans not happy. It's difficult."
"I think we need to wait for the quarterly report in November to have more details around this. We are still fairly early in our release window, and still collecting data. There's a lot of bug fixing, and there is more content coming."
In our Saints Row review, we call the game "a new era that's still somewhat stuck in the past".
