The Banner Saga 2 may have under-performed sales-wise, but developer Stoic is more concerned with the bigger picture — and capping off its RPG trilogy with The Banner Saga 3.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Studio Founder John Watson touched base on the franchise’s future and crowdfunding options, before conceding that TBS 3 is “probably gonna cost around $2 million to make.” Watson is also cautious about adhering to a crowdfunding model so early on in development.
“Is taking investor money gonna make the game sell? Is it gonna make it $1 million more profitable? No. It’ll make it a little bit better; we could spend some of that money maybe doing some more animations, maybe we increase the quality level a little bit. The quality has to reach a certain bar for people to accept it as a sequel, because we set that bar for ourselves. But beyond that it won’t really affect the profitability. It would be a vanity thing. We just want to make it better.”
Late last year, The Banner Saga 2 was featured on Xbox’s Games With Gold series, and while Watson notes that Microsoft and Stoic had previously agreed terms, sales of the sequel had a knock-on effect on the original.
“Those things help, and then the launch of The Banner Saga 2 drove sales of Banner Saga. If you look at The Banner Saga as a franchise – all the platforms and both the games – it’s generating about the same revenue… It’s like building a wedge. Banner Saga 3 might sell a third of what Banner Saga 2 did, but it should lift up the other games. That’s what we’re betting on.”
Last we reported on The Banner Saga 3, it was revealed that developer Stoic is targeting a simultaneous launch across all platforms — a first for the series — though there’s currently no mention of when that’ll be. It is coming, though, with Watson hinting that the dev team owe it to both the fans and the franchise itself to craft a third instalment.
“We have to do it,” Watson says. “We set out to make this trilogy. We can’t leave the story unfinished.”
[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]
