Since it’s debut back in 2014, the survival horror title, Outlast and all its additions (as well as the sequel) have managed to bring in 15 million total copies sold. This has also landed the company about $64 million in revenue from the sales according to GamesIndustry. It’s a pretty insane number considering the survival horror genre seems to get a lot less attention due to the niche appeal.
Because of the success, it seems like Red Barrels won’t be abandoning the genre any time soon. GameIndustry also revealed that the next game will be set in the same universe but will play differently than the first two Outlast titles, which places more emphasis on the ‘hide and seek’ gameplay.
‘If you’d told me a year ago that the project we’re currently working on was going to be our next thing, I would have said, ‘Nah, I don’t think so’. It’s an internal struggle. On the one side you have to stay motivated as a developer, but at the same time, we have to think about stuff as company owners.
That’s why it took us several months to find the sweet-spot between doing something that’s going to please the fans and something that we’re driven by personally. In big studios, they can say, ‘If you’re burnt out we can always give the IP to a different team’. But that’s not the case here.
We’re prototyping, and the way I want to approach this is to get a prototype that we’re really happy about, and then figure out the best way to get it done. Are we going to need the same kind of budget? Can it be lower? Right now, I don’t know.
All I know is that I always make sure we have options on the table: plan A, B, C and D. When you get to the river, you decide which bridge you want to cross. I always tell the team that, since the studio is owned by developers, our interests as developers is as important as our interests as shareholders. We don’t want to change that.’
Outlast 2 launched in late March for Nintendo Switch.
