2015-10 Thursday 1st, New SOMA Trailer and Launch Statistics

[jens]

SOMA launched on September 22nd for PC and PS4 to the frightened delight of horror fans everywhere. Today, Frictional Games is releasing a new trailer highlighting some of the game's terrifying moments with reactions from the press.



In a new blog post, Frictional Games discusses some of the details of SOMA's launch, including sales and their opinion of the game's reception. Some highlights include:
- 92,000+ copies sold across all platforms after one week. Amnesia: The Dark Descent sold 30,000 in the first month.
- Their thoughts on comparing the horror-styles of SOMA and the Amnesia games.
- Possible decreases in piracy.

From Frictional Games, creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA is a sci-fi horror game that questions our concepts of identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human.

SOMA is available for $29.99 on PS4 via the PlayStation Store, and for PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) via digital distributors including Steam, GOG.com, and Humble Store.

[Potato]

Spoiler below!

Damn, that shot of Cthulhu face walking was pretty sweet. Sort of a shame how robo lobster lady was shown off so much though, she was a very unexpected (and unpleasant) surprise for me on my first playthrough.

Glad to hear the reception and sales for SOMA has been positive thus far, really deserving of it. Slightly disappointed to hear Pigs outdid SOMA, but it's nice to know it still did strongly.

[PathOS]

It's worth noting that Machine for Pigs was riding high on the success of The Dark Descent, from sharing the name of Amnesia to being given lots of promotion on youtube. And it was slightly cheaper at $20.

SOMA by comparison is a brand new IP, it may have been undercut a bit by A Machine For Pigs' lukewarm reception (even though it's been stated repeatedly it was a different developer, most consumers probably wouldn't see/get the difference), and hasn't been played up on Youtube that much by comparison. It's also a bit more expensive at $30

Clearly though releasing a console version was a good move as that buffeted the sales by a significant margin if the SteamSpy numbers of about 50K sold is accurate (taking in GOG and other version, then that would leave PS4 maybe around 20-30K sales)

I would also like to think that this game will have legs through good word of mouth. The reviews and such have certainly been overwhelmingly positive and most user reviews have been as well.

That said, I personally feel the value of the "Let's Play" Youtube personality audience is overstated. This audience to me seems more interested in watching games being played than actually buying and playing them themselves. And if you watch SOMA, I strongly believe that you won't get the same level of satisfaction than if you play/interact with it yourself.

[RMJ]

I wonder if 30$ was just to expensive. Maybe it should have been 25 or 20$. Not that im complaining. i got about 16 hours out of it. Thats in one playthrough.. Thats pretty damn good if you ask me.

But yeah i too hope the modding picks up.

You guys should considering doing some expansion and or DLC. The reason this started with back in the 90's. Was because a company is working best, fastest and most optimally with their tools right at the end near game complication. Then they move on to a new project and starts often times on a time engine need entirely new assets.

Now expansion stays on the same engine and uses some if not the majority of exisitancing assets with some modifications.

Expansion / dlc free or paid also make the base game sell again as do mods.

I definitely hope this game keeps selling for you guys. You deserve it 100%. In my book "while i love all your games" this was my favorite.

I would have liked there to be more complicated puzzles, gathering more items and combining them. Im a sucker for puzzles. Sadly they seem to have fallen to the roadside recently in many point n click games, like say Broken Age from Double fine, and for me that is such a shame.

[PathOS]

There's a lot of ways to keep interest, and I'm sure and hope that Frictional will be taking the initiative with certain aspects. It'd be great to hopefully play up the modding scene somehow and get people into creating the levels.

They have the HPL3 engine now so hopefully whatever plans they have will not require them to go back to the drawing board again and build up a new one from scratch. It would be nice if Frictional themselves can make some DLC/Expansions as well (and god knows I'd buy them all), though I would imagine after 5 years in the SOMAverse they may be a bit tired of it.

I think puzzle elements should definitely be reinforced, and it'd be nice if they could incorporate them somehow when dealing with the monsters, because I think there definitely needs to be some new game design when dealing with enemies, since I think now everyone has gotten tired of just sneaking/running by them.

[Filizitas]

that trailer :'] ive waited for! So much wow!

[RMJ]

There's a lot of ways to keep interest, and I'm sure and hope that Frictional will be taking the initiative with certain aspects. It'd be great to hopefully play up the modding scene somehow and get people into creating the levels.

They have the HPL3 engine now so hopefully whatever plans they have will not require them to go back to the drawing board again and build up a new one from scratch. It would be nice if Frictional themselves can make some DLC/Expansions as well (and god knows I'd buy them all), though I would imagine after 5 years in the SOMAverse they may be a bit tired of it.

I think puzzle elements should definitely be reinforced, and it'd be nice if they could incorporate them somehow when dealing with the monsters, because I think there definitely needs to be some new game design when dealing with enemies, since I think now everyone has gotten tired of just sneaking/running by them.

After working for something for like 5 years. They should just give them selves a break. Come back after a month or 2 off the job and see what they wanna do. Obviously they shouldn start working on it just yet. But yeah its up to them. But we did get 3 penumbra games and 2 Amnesia even though they didn make the second one.

And for me SOMA is their best overall IP yet. It would be silly not to do something more with it.

[grrrz]

wow I never saw this underwater monster playing the game (I just ran like hell).
the trailer feels a bit too much like gloating though, even if the review are deserved.

[Kreekakon]

Please do not dig up old threads which are over two years old.

-Locked