South Park: The Stick of Truth was ace according to Fraser’s South Park: The Stick of Truth review: the most vital translation of Stone and Parker’s humour to the medium yet, and the most unusual RPG Obsidian had ever made.
We were happily surprised, and so were Ubisoft: South Park sold well, thanks in part to its placement on Steam and other digital distribution platforms. In fact, 25% of The Stick of Truth’s sales were digital – an “all-time high” for Ubisoft.
Ubisoft mentioned the “positive impact of stronger than expected South Park digital distribution” in their call to investors yesterday – apparently to ease the financial pain of Watch Dogs’ delay.
The publishers now aim for digital distribution to account for around 25% of their total sales in 2015.
“This will be driven by digital distribution for our much stronger line-up for core gamers, and by the fact PC, PS4 and Xbox One players are purchasing their games more and more through that medium,” they said.
Asked if South Park and other digitally-distributed games had sold especially well in particular regions, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told shareholders that Europe is “more biased towards PC”.
“So when a game is very much PC, Europe is having a bigger [impact] and therefore Europe might have a bigger amount of digital downloads,” he explained.
Hmm! Did you buy Stick of Truth on Steam, or in a box covered in age-rating stickers?