While subscribers to the service can now access free games with PlayStation Plus in April 2022, Lorne Lanningauthor of the Oddworld series, discusses the negative impact generated by the agreement reached with Sony for the distribution of Oddworld: Soulstorm.
In the course of a recent interview, the Game Director has in particular revealed some background relating to the debut of Abe’s latest adventure. As many will remember, Oddworld: Soulstorm was offered for free on PS5 with PS Plus at launch. The latter, Lanning says, was originally slated for January 2021a few months after the debut of PlayStation 5. As a result, the Oddworld Inhabitants team had estimated, at launch, rather low sales for the next-gen version of the title. Specifically, the value was around between 50,000 and 100,000 copies from Oddworld: Soulstorm.
Based on these forecasts, says Lanning, the software house – which was facing increasing costs for the realization of the game – decided to enter into an agreement with Sony for the distribution of the title within the program. PlayStation Plus in the month of release. However, due to the pandemicthe Day One of Oddworld: Soulstorm was moved to April 2021by which time many more PlayStation 5s were in circulation. The result, Lanning recalls, was a total of 4 million free downloads for Oddword: Soulstorm through Sony subscription. A result that the author did not exist in defining “devastating” for the development team.
