Focus Home Interactive concluded their 2018-2019 financial year on a very positive note. After hitting multiple milestones, including their record-breaking Q3 showing, the Paris-based video game publisher beat their guidance revenue for the fiscal year by 20 percent. This is mostly possible due to the positive reception and strong sales of two of their titles, Vampyr and Farming Simulator 19.
Setting the tone of their financial year was Vampyr: an open-world vampire role-playing game made in cooperation with Life is Strange developer DONTNOD Entertainment. Along with its multiple “Best of” awards from E3 2017 during its initial preview, the RPG has recently reached the milestone of one million copies sold back in April of 2019. Another moneymaker for the publisher is Farming Simulator 19, which was developed by Giants Software. The best-selling simulation franchise has reportedly sold over 2 million copies as July 2019.
Aside from the two aforementioned titles, Focus Home Interactive’s grasp on the mid-tier market for video games is cemented with titles such as multiplayer first-person shooter Insurgency: Sandstorm, off-road driving simulation Mudrunner, and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2, a real-time strategy game adapted from the tabletop game based on the Warhammer 40,000 Universe.
Of course, I’ve had the pleasure of playing through some of Focus Home Interactive’s titles this year. If those are of any note, then we can expect continued success. World War Z, the co-op zombie shooter in the same vein as Left 4 Dead, has sold over two million copies within just two weeks of its release on April 16. Likewise, A Plague Tale: Innocence also achieved commercial success, but its real win came from the very positive reception it received from multiple gaming outlets, including yours truly here at Player.One.
The publisher's upcoming slate for the rest of the year is not looking too shabby either, with two games already on my personal to-play list. Spiders’ GreedFall, a fantasy RPG set in a magical world with a real-life 18th-century aesthetic arrives on September 10. The highly anticipated sequel to Deck13’s sci-fi Souls-like The Surge 2 will also be released on September 24, and judging from the latest gameplay walkthrough, I have pretty high hopes for it.
