Hollow Knight: Silksong is continuing to break records with its sudden but meteoric recent release. Silksong crashed Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and other purchasing platforms when it dropped on September 4th, making it difficult for some to access the game. Despite this hurdle, Silksong still managed to attract an enthusiastic player base and high concurrent player counts.
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On Monday, Alinea Analytics reported that Hollow Knight: Silksong reached a new milestone, topped five million players in just three days. This is an astounding pace compared to the first game, which took two years to sell 2.8 million copies. This month, the original Hollow Knight passed 15 million copies, meaning Silksong seems set to have a truly astronomical trajectory as more players get to experience it.
An Incredible Pace Helped By An Incredible Price
Hollow Knight: Silksong’s incredible release has caused a stir among indie developers because of the quality offered, combined with an exceptionally low price. The game launched at only $20, an accessible cost that has no doubt helped it sell copies compared to a typical full-price game. However, this launch price is comparable to the original Hollow Knight, which was released for $15 in 2017. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, $15 in 2017 has nearly the same buying power as $20 today, making them essentially the same price for consumers. The game’s low price cannot be a satisfactory explanation for its success when comparing its performance to that of its predecessor. So just what explains Silksong’s early success?
Alinea Analytics asserted in their reporting that Silksong was the “single biggest indie launch” they had ever tracked over three days. It’s possible that the hype for the game, built up over nearly seven years of mystery, resulted in a front-loading of many purchases when the game was finally released. For a long time, the release date for Silksong was a closely guarded secret, only to be suddenly revealed a couple of weeks before the game actually launched. It’s hard to discount that this strategy may be part of the aggressive early adoption seen for the game, as people couldn’t plan much for the release and had to quickly climb aboard the hype train as it pulled into its final station, lest they miss out.
Silksong broke the rules for what a big game release should be, and it may be this sort of outside-the-box style thinking that allowed it to succeed in the way it did. Silksong’s release has been compared to titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 by a growing contingent of disgruntled game consumers as a rebellion against traditional studio thinking. They see it as a passion project made by a smaller team that resonates with audiences in a particular way, allowing it to be justly rewarded. Some gamers view these types of projects as a duty to support, thinking that doing so helps push back against the big studio fatigue that affects audiences of major releases.
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