Outlast Series Has Sold a Cool 15 Million Copies
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry, Red Barrels CEO Philippe Morin discussed how the Outlast series went from a small budget project and to a multi-million dollar franchise that has officially sold more than 15 million copies. It seems the Outlast games are proving all the critics who said horror games don’t sell wrong.
That’s right, in a new feature article from GamesIndustry, the CEO of Canadian developer Red Barrels talks about how the studio went from nobody to being one of the biggest names in the horror industry with the Outlast series. According to the article Phillip Morin and his Red Barrels team took an initial $1.4 million budget, small by industry standards, and turned it into the $64 million franchise. And the best part? This means the Outlast franchise has officially sold over 15 million copies!
Not only does this number prove the Outlast games are scary good, it also puts the series amongst the most popular new games from an independent studio over the last ten years. What makes it all the more impressive is that the Red Barrels studio started with $0 in its bank account when it launched the first Outlast game in 2013. It was literally do or die, and they proved the horror genre can really be just as bad ass as any other.
Originally Outlast, a first-person survival psychological horror game launched for PC in September of 2013, followed up by a PS4 and Xbox One release the following year. In 2015 it then came to both Mac and Linux and earlier this year it made its debut on the Nintendo Switch. With such a positive outpouring from fans worldwide, Outlast was cemented as one of the best and most important horror games of the current generation. In an obvious move, Red Barrels released Outlast 2, which released last year for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and made its way to the Switch less than two short months ago.
With the thrill of a couple successful games in the books and with a desire to do something different Red Barrels took a breather to figure out what their next move was. After the break the team came up with the idea that would be “a departure” from the gameplay experience from both Outlast titles, but one that still remains inside of the Outlast realm. As far as the title, it won’t be Outlast 3. This is what Morin had to say, “If you’d told me a year ago that the project we’re currently working on was going to be our next thing, I would have said, ‘Nah, I don’t think so’. It’s an internal struggle. On the one side you have to stay motivated as a developer, but at the same time we have to think about stuff as company owners.”
Are you suprised to see just how successful the horror series has been? Let us know in the comments below and keep it locked for updates from Red Barrels!