With the 770,000 estimated games sold and the average cost of $29.99 that brought my estimate of Spec Ops: The Line’s cost to $23.1 million. Based on that information, along with the knowledge that the sales were lower-than-anticipated from the beginning, and that sales later increased based on the lower price point and because of awards it won, I averaged the numbers to match the current cost of the game ($29.99) when calculating total game sales. Since December 2012, the highest price point for Spec Ops has been $29.99, and it has seen multiple sales, bringing it down to as low as $7.99 only 6 months after its launch.īy comparison, Call of Duty: Black Ops, released in November of 2010, is still sitting at $39.99, which is higher than Spec Ops currently is (sources: Steamgamesales, Future Shop, Best Buy, GameStop and Steam). The occasional sale dipped it down to as low as $35 within 2 months of its release.
Within seven months after its release, Spec Ops saw a price drop down from a typical $60 price.
So, to try and figure it out, I had a look at the sales of video game units, multipled that by the price point of the game and compared it to the estimated cost to produce the game, which I based on a VGChartz estimates of PC sales at 140,000 units, Xbox 360 at 290,000 units and PS3 at 340,000 (for an approximate total of 770,000 units sold, which falls short of the target of at least 1 million units sold for most Triple A games). The only information they made available was posted in this Take-Two Interactive blog article, which only says that Spec Ops: The Line’s sales were “lower than anticipated,” and it was left out of their further fiscal quarter reports. It was difficult to find the precise number of sales for Spec Ops: The Line because Take-Two Interactive(the owner of Rockstar Games and the publisher, 2K Games) has not informed the public about it. provides a definition, saying that it typically means that the game has a higher budget, but for the most part, it is mostly based on how much “polish” the game has, and how it is marketed). The financial Failure of Spec Ops: The Line is potentially a pretty hefty one, considering the design of the game very much follows that of a Triple A (which, incidentally, is a term that doesn’t really have a concrete definition - not even on Wikipedia. The game had a very strong narrative, told through story and gameplay, which taught players to think more critically of video games as a whole, instead of just taking them at face value. It was a great game by design with a poor financial outcome.
Be sure to check back to for the full review of the game soon.Spec Ops: The Line, published by 2K Games and created by Yager Development, is a recent AAA ( Triple A) game, released on June 26, 2012.
Spec Ops: The Line is due to be released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC on June 26th, 2012 in North America, followed a couple of days later, on June 29th, 2012, in Europe. See the new Developer Diary 1 video below:
A series of important moral choices will also be included in the game – often involving civillians caught up in the fighting – which will allow the player to become more emotionally involved in the title. The video goes “Behind the Line” on the new third-person shooter, and the team discuss how the game is set in a city englufed in sand – which gives them the opportunity to experiment with interesting battlegrounds and set-pieces, where players will need to be constantly on their toes about where they are standing.
The team at Yager Development who have been working on Spec Ops: The Line have released their first Developer Diary as well as the launch trailer, for the game which is due out later this week in Europe.