F1 Manager 2022 Sells Over 600,000 units, Fell Below Expectations - Sales

by William D'Angelo , posted on 10 January 2023 / 3,302 Views

Frontier Developments in its latest earnings report for the six month period ending November 30, 2022 announced F1 Manager 2022 has sold over 600,000 units since its release.

The sales for the game "fell materially below original expectations." Frontier Developments suggests the reason for this is "due in part to increased player price sensitivity related to worsening economic conditions."

The game has Metacritic ratings between 74 and 80 across all platforms and player engagement at release were strong and " broadly in-line with original expectations."

"F1 Manager 2022 remains a good first game in an important new annual franchise for Frontier," added Frontier Developments. "We have already learned a lot from our first F1 Manager launch, and we will build the F1 Manager franchise over the coming years."

The board for Frontier Developments due to the lower than expected sales has lowered its revenue projections for fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2024.

F1 Manager 2022 released for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on August 25, 2022.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

14 Comments

Ka-pi96 (on 10 January 2023)

What exactly were they expecting? 600k for a brand new management game is pretty good!

I believe Football Manager is usually around 1.5m a year, and that's a series with 20+ years of history and based on a much more popular sport. Expecting similar numbers for this would be completely unrealistic.

Kakadu18 Ka-pi96 (on 10 January 2023)

It had shorter legs than they expected after a good launch.

Ka-pi96 Kakadu18 (on 10 January 2023)

Didn't it release mid-season? Don't get why F1 games always release when the season is half done, they should release near the start.

But also annual release type games rarely have good legs unless they get discounted heavily. It quite quickly gets to a point where it's not worth buying it anymore since the next one will be along soon.

Kakadu18 Ka-pi96 (on 10 January 2023)

Fifa always has good legs.

Ka-pi96 Kakadu18 (on 11 January 2023)

"unless they get discounted heavily"
It's typically 50% off in time for xmas sales, less than 3 months after release. I think I've seen it get up to 90% off in summer sales before. It has those legs due to massive discounts.

2zosteven (on 10 January 2023)

what did they promise shareholders? this is a great number for this game.

Machina (on 10 January 2023)

600k in 3 months for a game like this doesn't sound bad. Presumably costs will be lower for subsequent entries and their expectations lower, otherwise this 'important new annual franchise for Frontier' won't be around for long...

SecondWar Machina (on 10 January 2023)

Don't iterative instalments typically sell less though for a variety of reasons. It is a pretty niche title so it unlikely to see major sales growth, nor is it the type of game to be able to sustain annual releases.

JEMC (on 10 January 2023)

The sales are good for a game of this genre, but the F1 license is probably expensive, and the reason Frontier expected/hoped for higher sales.

Also, the fact that they stopped updating the game with new contest only three months after release to work on the next installment wasn't well received by its community. That probably affected the legs of the game, and we'll see if it also damages the sales of those future games.

Ka-pi96 JEMC (on 11 January 2023)

It's only a licence for management games, so I imagine it's a fair bit cheaper than the licence for standard racing games.

JEMC Ka-pi96 (on 11 January 2023)

I'm not sure if the genre of the game matters when it comes to the cost of the license. Maybe Frontier managed to get it for less than usual because of its "niche" genre, but we're talking about the F1, they're as greedy as FIFA.

Ka-pi96 JEMC (on 12 January 2023)

I expect it does, they surely take into account the vastly different demand for games of that genre when pricing the licence. Especially since it's extra money on top of the existing licence for racing games.

Probably the same for the Football Manager games, they have a tonne of licences, I bet they pay less than EA for them though due to the different genre, and because most of them are separate so the licence holders can get two payments out of it instead of just one.

JEMC Ka-pi96 (on 12 January 2023)

Well, I think worse of them than you do.

DonFerrari (on 10 January 2023)

That is on the realm of niche games nowadays, back in the gen 6 or so it would be a groundbreaking success for a new IP. Hope they can manage to improve and sell more for the next titles, probably put the game on GwG/GP and PS+ so they can get enough people to try it and want to buy the next one since it is a yearly franchise.