UPDATE: It seems like former Days Gone game director Jeff Ross may not have the best of sources for his numbers. Revealed in a recent live stream with former God of War director David Jaffe, Ross revealed he was basing his facts on now-defunct trophy tracking site Gamestat.
“Where I got my data from, I had access to a lot of telemetry, and I could see stuff and when we were at 5 million copies – when we were announced at 5 million copies – the telemetry data was at 5.8 [million]. There are basically resells or shared discs,” Ross explained. “I was actually using an external website – I think they’re offline now – but they were using trophy data and it lined up with our internal telemetry data so for me, it’s like, ‘good enough.'”
Ross also did not have access to official numbers on Sony’s side, and therein lies the conundrum. Even though trophies can track game progress, it does not mean a new sale, as players can get used copies of the game to play and earn trophies as well. Days Gone was also a PlayStation Plus title at some point, which meant no sales were actually made during that period. Ross stands by his previous statements, however.
He also clarified that the “local studio management” he was referring to was Bend Studio’s upper management, and not necessarily those at PlayStation or Sony.
Original Story: It should have been a day of celebration, after all, one of Sony‘s biggest titles, Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Tsushima had sold over 8 million copies. Unfortunately, that kind of goodwill had seemingly not been accorded to other studios that developed for the PlayStation ecosystem, with the game director of Bend Studio‘s Days Gone lamenting the different treatment compare to Ghost of Tsushima.
Taking to Twitter, Jeff Ross, who is no longer with the studio, shared that Days Gone had already sold more than 8 million copies on the PS4 alone when he left in December 2020. In the time passed since, it has sold even more, with over 1 million copies sold on Steam as well.
However, unlike the general fanfare that has surrounded Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone and its team was not given the same love, with local studio management always seeing it as “a big disappointment. The mixed press coverage did not help, especially when there were plenty of bugs to contend with at launch.
Ross then added that Sony management was more confident in other titles like Death Stranding, but for a smaller team making a big open-world game, the journey was always going to be tough and full of learning.
The need to put out products close to perfection and the optics after seem to play a huge role in determining if games and studios are worth celebrating, and in this case, Sony has certainly made its stance clear. While we continue to hope for a sequel to Days Gone, those plans have already been shot down, even with the apparent success of the new IP, and Bend is working on something else entirely.
Jake is a full-time trophy hunter and achievement gatherer on consoles, and part-time Steam Sale victim. He has a thing for Batman and awesome statues, and running out of space for both. Send help.
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