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Remedy Speaks Out Regarding Alan Wake's Long Development Time - News

by Nicholas Taylor , posted on 22 October 2010 / 5,330 Views

The somewhat recently released much anticipated psychological thriller Alan Wake for the Xbox 360 spent quite some time being hyped up. In fact, the time it took between the start of actual development and the game's release was a span of five long years.

Remedy MD Matias Myllyrinne said, when speaking to VG247, that they might have showed off the title a bit too early. The game was announced way back at E3 2005 for "next-gen consoles and PC", and the following year it was confirmed to be a console exclusive for Xbox 360, but still set to be released on the PC. In May of this year, it was finally released for Xbox 360, but the PC version was revealed back in February to have been canned.

“Yeah, could be that we shared with the world too early,” Myllyrinne said. “To be fair, we did not think it was going to take this long to get right, so when we announced we did not think folks would have to wait for so long.”

“The first Max Payne was a similar story too, but I think as long as you can live up to the vision you set to build people will still be excited and welcome the game when it is done.”

Despite this, he maintained that he's proud of what they accomplished during the five-year period. “I’m proud of the team and their desire to bring Alan Wake out,” he said.

“It has not always been easy and it has been a long road. Luckily we had more days of light than dark along the way.”

“On 20/20 hindsight many of us would do some things differently. That’s just the intrinsic nature of innovation and building something new for the first time.”

He went on to say that “However, what matters is the end result though – creating what you set out to do and being able to share with the world. With the game that shipped I feel we captured the essence of the experience we wanted to share with the world.”

“It lives up to the original vision.”


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15 Comments
cinetici (on 25 October 2010)

heruamon:
is there such a thing such a confirmed sequel despite de dlcs? I would fix my jtag xbox (which is not loading games and freezing through freestyle - dont know why) but would be worth a shot just for alan wake 2

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cinetici (on 25 October 2010)

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heruamon (on 24 October 2010)

Remedy is a small team, so eventhough it took a while...the game is probably doing just fine. I think I read somewhere that the number was arounf 43 employees...It probably cost about 15-20 million to develop the game...maybe $25. If the game sells 1 million copies...M$ and Remedy make a small profit, but more importantly, the next game won't take as long.

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Rawnchie14 (on 23 October 2010)

Despite the lack of sales of the first, I think Remedy is indeed fine. I imagine MS funded it a lot and took a loss in order to establish the franchise. Because honestly, this game was pretty damn sweet. I desire more of it, definitely.

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RVDondaPC (on 23 October 2010)

You guys are talking about profits and you don't even know what kind of deal they had with MS. It could have been completely funded by MS for all you know. They could have even taken a loss on the game but MS decided they liked the game and figured a sequel could be made for cheaper and sell more so they are willing to fund a second game.

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kain_kusanagi (on 23 October 2010)

Alan Wake is one of the best games I've played. Not just this year, but ever. The wait was worth it.

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AnveL (on 23 October 2010)

come on alan wake up or you will be late.. xD

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MonstaMack (on 23 October 2010)

MS and Remedy already green lighted their next project which is most likely Alan Wake 2. I'm sure they made a profit otherwise they wouldn't green light another project. They can't afford losses as a small company It's not like Namco or a big company where one game can be success and the others failures.

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Baalzamon (on 23 October 2010)

@Aj, I may be wrong, but I would say the average developer there isn't making $50,000 per year, but your point does still make sense.

On another note, however, if each game costs $10 to produce, and they sold 1 million units (I think its a little less), I'm not 100% sure if they sell to stores for full price or not, but lets just say they make $30 per copy sent to the store. That's ~$30 million coming in minus $12 million in wages still leaves $18 million left, which a lot would have went towards marketing and other costs. They probably didn't lose that terribly much money.

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Aj_habfan (on 23 October 2010)

Even if they only have 50 people on staff, an average salary of $50,000 per employee over 5 years is over $12M - Can't see how they are still alive.

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jon1138 (on 23 October 2010)

"5 years and you couldn't sell a million units...

Clearly not a profitable product."

there are less than 50 developers at Remedy. So it's a small team. And Remedy sold Max Payne IP to Take 2

So Alan Wake may not be as expensive as you think...

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Reasonable (on 23 October 2010)

They should have stuck with multi-platform for a start, going exclusive to 360 in particular with a fairly short SP title always struck me as strange. Also, Alan Wake was basically a US version of Japanese titles like Silent Hill, with a little less creeps and a little more gunplay, hardly that innovative.

Maybe the original, more sandbox design would have been more innovative, but as shipped it was a very nice, polished thriller but hardly innovative.

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Cooltown (on 23 October 2010)

5 years and you couldn't sell a million units...

Clearly not a profitable product.

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dahuman (on 23 October 2010)

the sad part is that if there was a PC dedicated version, it'd look more like those FMVs. Shame really.

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