Quantum Break sells badly on Steam

Quantum Break hasn’t really had the best time since its release on April 5th of this year. Remedy Entertainment’s latest game was received with mixed opinions from the general public and sales figures were a result of this divisive reception, with the game barely scraping a #7 on the american NPD results for April and failing to reach 200,000 units sold on the United States in its first two months. Microsoft originally pushed for a Windows 10 and Xbox One release, but since sales from the Windows 10 version were quite underwhelming, Remedy released the Steam version of Quantum Break on September 29th with the lowered price of $40, in hopes of better sales figures. Unfortunately, this has not been the case, according to Steamspy, the Steam port of Quantum Break has (Up to October 10th) 54,000 owners, which, for a game that had a big marketing budget and a TV show to go accompany it, doesn’t spell good news.

Reasons for the lackluster numbers are plentiful, the biggest being that Quantum Break can run awful on even the best and most expensive computers, with the game struggling to hit 60 frames per second due to poor optimization and the fact that it’s a badly made port. Aside from this, $40 is quite a lot to ask on Steam if your game hasn’t been critically acclaimed and especially if the average playthrough lasts around 10 hours, because there are dozens of beloved indie classics that cost half as much and offer ten times the content.

Microsoft has gone out of its way to assure that Quantum Break sold well, with head of Xbox Marketing Aaron Greenberg stating that “We were really pleased with how Quantum Break did. But just like every movie, not every game needs a sequel”, a suspicious affirmation when you consider that the game he’s referring to ends on a cliffhanger, so if it really was a success, why hasn’t a continuation been greenlit yet?