We’re excited to share some amazing news! A major milestone! Our quest to a million copies sold is complete! In December 2015, Shovel Knight surpassed one million copies sold total, and as of this February, Shovel Knight passed a million copies sold only digitally! Thank you everyone for your unending support. We couldn’t be happier that Shovel Knight is still loved and played years after its release. To celebrate it crossing a million, we’ll be discounting Shovel Knight at 33% off for a week at various times this month on every store it’s released on (Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, Sony PS4, Sony PS3, PlayStation Vita, Steam, GOG, Humble Store, and Amazon Fire TV) . If you haven’t picked it up, now’s the time! We’re also launching some new PS4, PS Vita, and Nintendo 3DS themes to join in the celebration! It’s like a whole new suit of armor for your system.
We hope to share a little bit of what we’ve learned over the past couple years of both making a game like Shovel Knight and maintaining it after release. As we’ve done in the past, below you’ll find a breakdown of Shovel Knights sales. Hopefully players and developers alike can find something to learn from this info!
(For the historians, all info on this page is as of April 1st, 2016.)
All Game Sales
Shovel Knight has sold 1.2 million units total! 200,000 of those units are physical retail sales. We’re still in a bit of shock here! Previously, a successful game in our portfolio would barely break 50k copies sold. Want to know the platform breakdown? Here’s a graph!
totalSales
Before you save the graph above for your next platform vs platform discussion, there’s a few key items that are worth keeping in mind:
Our Sony and Microsoft versions did not come out until April 2015, 9 months after our initial release on PC and Nintendo systems. The Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Sony PS4 are also naturally higher in sales as they received full retail releases in October 2015. Every platform except Sony’s systems have gone on sale during some major holidays, but none of them have ever been sold for more than a 33% discount. Keeping our game at full price has been a major part of our strategy as we believe players will be more invested in the game and therefore hopefully, enjoy it more if it isn’t bought at a bargain bin price. Although Amazon Fire TV does not have enough sales to appear on the graph, it’s a bit tricky to measure because Shovel Knight was packed in with 50,000 consoles, and those sales are not accounted for in the graph. The Amazon Fire TV also released in September of 2015 – which is rather late when compared to everything else and a tall order to catch up to. Also of note, we have still not released the game in Asian territories. We plan to release in Japan in June on Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii U.
Some interesting facts about our sales trends:
In general, the game sales are still very strong. In November 2015 we actually sold more units digitally on Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Steam in North America (our initial release platforms) than we did in the same month the previous year, November 2014.
Contrarily to the previous point, March 2016 was our worst sales month since our initial release. Oh no!
The first 6 months of sales on all Sony platforms are equivalent to the total first 6 months on just the Nintendo Wii U. On Nintendo 3DS we sold about 50% more than Sony. Alternatively, Microsoft is 50% of Sony.
We typically average 25k-35k units a month.
Steam is our best seller, but it’s also benefited the most from discounted sales. In an average month, Nintendo 3DS almost sells twice as much as Steam.
Retail Sales
Our big push last year was getting Shovel Knight at retail with the game and the amiibo figure. We’ve learned a lot of crazy things about retail: how small the margins are, how long and arduous the process is of creating and shipping discs/carts, how difficult and finicky retailers can be to work with, and much, much more. Although it was a huge pain, at the end of the day, we think our game benefits from being available at retail. Hopefully, it is bringing more kids, families, and an all around wider audience to our game that otherwise wouldn’t have considered it. So far at retail, we’ve sold more than 200,000 units:
physicalSold
A few items to note here. Tracking data for physical sales is extremely hard and not nearly as accurate as digital sales. In Europe, we get very little information due to all the distributors and retailers involved. In North America, we only get information for Target, Best Buy, Amazon, Gamestop, Toys R US, Wal-Mart, and Canadian retailers. Here’s even more detail with a breakdown of our North American sales per store:
retailBreakdown
Note, not all the stores carry all platforms of the game. For example, Target sells only Nintendo Wii U and Nintendo 3DS versions in stores. Also, some stores have an advantage due to time sold. Toys”R”Us started selling Shovel Knight late in December, and unlike most the other stores, did not have pre-orders available.
Some facts we noticed here:
In 2015, each month we typically sold twice as much at retail when compared to digital. Into 2016, the platforms now sell about 1:1.
It appears that retail sales did not cannibalize digital sales at all. The sales data looks more like we’re selling on a new platform rather than a percentage of people moving away from digital. It’s possible this could change over the course of the year though.
Interestingly, the retail release did not help the digital release! When we launch on another system we normally see a small boost on the currently existing platforms, but that wasn’t the case with retail.
We’ve currently sold through about 70% of our retail stock.
Retailers requested the most PS4 stock, but Wii U has been our best seller!
Note, for a $24.99 copy of the retail game, we receive a 3-4 dollars less than our digital release, which sells for $14.99. Also, we still haven’t actually been paid for retail product due to the long tail of not knowing if all the units will sell.
Being a retail publisher of the game also comes with additional costs. We had to take out a very expensive insurance policy, get the game rated at retail in every territory (much more expensive than digital), create packaged versions for every language, system, and rating, and much more.
Region Breakdown
One area we still have a lot of room for improvement in is reaching more regions. We’re still heavily bought in North America vs Europe. Typically about 63-77% of our games are bought in North America depending on the platform. PC is the low end of that spectrum where Wii U is on the higher end. Keep in mind Shovel Knight is still only available in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and French. So we definitely have room to grow, and hope to continue introducing new languages as the ongoing game updates begin to finalize. Here’s the breakdown by region for Steam:
steamSalesByRegion
Steam User Stats!
Here are some fun game stats based on our Steam users:
Our most unlocked achievement is First Purchase, which 85% of people have done. We’re not sure how much Goatician makes from each Meal Ticket sold, but we wish him well in his entrepreneurial pursuits.
32% of people have gotten the Victory Achievement, meaning they completed the game as Shovel Knight. 2% of players have gone on to complete New Game +.
5% of our Steam PC players were determined to be playing on Mac, with 1% determined to be on Linux.
345,000 people have Shovel Knight in their Steam wishlist. 102,000 people have removed Shovel Knight from their wishlist and 131,000 people have picked up Shovel Knight after having it on their wishlist!
Median playtime is 5 hours and 23 minutes. Average playtime is 8 hours and 3 minutes.
timeplayed2016
