House Flipper 2 recouped the production budget in three days. Its starting box office is $4.3 million
The jack-of-all-trades simulator House Flipper 2, in which the player must repair abandoned houses and build new ones, turned out to be one of the most successful releases of December on Steam. The game of the Polish studio Frozen District beat off development in 72 hours.
According to Krzysztof Kostowski, CEO of PlayWay, which was responsible for the publication of the project, in the first three days of sales the game sold 131 thousand copies (4% of the refands).
The base price tag for the game was $40. However, of course, the game did not earn $5.2 million in the first three days. User spending on the game amounted to $4.3 million, of which the publisher expects $2.6 million to be credited to his account after deducting all commissions.
This is more than the development budget. According to Kostovsky's post on the social network X, the production of the second part of the simulator cost $ 2 million. About $330,000 more was spent on promoting the project.
House Flipper 2 = 72h
Sold 131k = 2,6mln $ on account planned
(4,3kk$ brutto)
Full costs = back
Refund 4%
WL outstanding 895k (850k on release)
WL sold 87k
Top3 : USA,DE,UK
10.12.2023 :
Costs 8mln_zł dev.+1,3 ads
added cost after report : marketing+support
Console Q1_24+ road map pic.twitter.com/3cCTxBQh8y— Krzysztof Kostowski (@kriswawa) December 17, 2023
The publisher also notes that the game was suitable for the release, which took place on December 14, with 850 thousand vishlist. 87 thousand of them were converted into purchases. After the first three days of sales, the number of vishlist was 890 thousand.
Gaming expert Simon Carless was the first to draw attention to Kostovsky's words on his blog. He also estimated that House Flipper 2 earned $9 million in total in December ($5.3 million after deducting the Steam share, as well as taking into account VAT and refands).
The game became the second highest-grossing novelty of December on Steam. Of the new products, only the Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader role-playing game from Owlcat Games studio earned more, as we wrote about yesterday. User spending on it amounted to $12 million.
After talking with the developers from the Frozen District, Carless notes the following:
- the concept of the game is viral, but it is almost not represented on the market (people like first-person games about repair and cleaning, while their range on Steam cannot be called wide);
- It was possible to say that the game would be successful already in June, when the demo version of House Flipper 2 turned out to be one of the most popular at the Next Fest (its online level then reached 2,800);
- the first part of House Flipper was well supported by the team (in five years, five paid DLCs were released to it, as well as many updates, events, and other things), which made it possible to keep a high level for a niche online game (at the level of 3-4 thousand people with peaks up to 10 thousand on sales). Good online has opened up opportunities for cross-promos. The in-game banner in House Flipper provided the team with several thousand vishlists.
Frozen District also shared with Carless the dynamics of the vishlist for House Flipper 2. According to the diagram below, the game received the largest number of them just when the sale of House Flipper began and the banner of the second part was added to the game. The second biggest boost came with the appearance of the demo version within the Next Fest.
The studio has achieved high sales, including despite the high price tag for the genre. As a rule, they do not ask for $40 for such games. Most of the new PlayWay releases cost twice as much.
Kuba Pacura, Frozen District business development manager, notes in an interview with a British analyst that they decided to raise the price tag for two reasons:
- significantly higher budget of the novelty relative to the first part;
- the huge replayability of the first part.
On the other hand, the team did not want to deviate from the policy of regional prices. The cost of the game in Poland was 99 zlotys (about $22.5, that is, 56% less than the base price). In China, it is even less — $19.
As a result, Poland is among the top 5 countries in terms of game sales (it accounts for 5% of copies sold), and sales of the game in China are growing.
