Sniper: Ghost Warrior sells a million

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 16 February, 2011

City Interactive delighted.

2/10 first-person shooter Sniper: Ghost Warrior has sold over a million copies around the world, Polish developer City Interactive has announced.

It achieved the milestone within seven months of the game's official launch on PC and Xbox 360.

By way of comparison, Ninja Theory's excellent flop Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, which won an 8/10 from Eurogamer, only sold 460,000 copies.

"A lot of hard work and dedication by the entire City Interactive team went into the development of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, so we are understandably pleased about the worldwide success of the game," said Marek Tymiński, CEO of City Interactive.

"This success is the perfect backdrop to reveal details about some of the fantastic games that we currently have in our development pipeline, including the sequel to Sniper: Ghost Warrior and a couple of unannounced projects."

Lat month Eurogamer broke the news that a multiplatform sequel was in development.

City Interactive has been working on it since early 2010, and has licensed Crytek's CryEngine3 game engine – used to build upcoming shooter Crysis 2 - to help.

The first game is due out on PS3 early this year.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (35) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Mkwone #1 1 year ago

    Sounds like the Producers- Making more money out of a flop than a good game.

  • beastmaster #2 1 year ago

    Any shit sells these days if it has the right words in it.

  • Quint2020 #3 1 year ago

    Fair play to them, a friend of mine who's really in to the more realistic shooters bought and really liked this, I always like to see smaller developers do well, especially when they're from countries like Poland with a reasonably small industry presence.

    They probably built this game on an incredibly small budget so hopefully the sequel will see them with more time and money to craft a really great experience.

    EDIT: Also enough of the "waaah waah waah, Enslaved sold fuck aaall!" already.
    Edited by Quint2020 at 16/02/11 @ 12:44

  • DreadedWalrus #4 1 year ago

    What beastmaster said. I think it made a lot of sales (and got a lot of pre-release attention) based on the promise of a sniping-oriented game. I remember when the demo came out, how many people in the RPS thread about it were saying they'd lost a sale based on how bad it was.

    It might have sold a million, but I wonder how many it would have sold if it had actually been any good.

  • Fab4 #5 1 year ago

    "Any shit sells these days if it has the right words in it. "

    Indeed, their next game will probably be called Recon: Phantom Assassins ;)

  • StolenGlory #6 1 year ago

    A million?

    Those poor, deluded souls. But then, if CoD continues to shift millions, I shouldn't really be too surprised by this.

  • kangarootoo #7 1 year ago

    I feel torn on this one. I like to see indie devs do well, but I also like to see crap games sell badly (as sales is really all that drives quality in our business).

    I guess what can be said is that the dev now has an obligation to show they can improve on their work. The quality of the game didn't justify sales like this, so they are getting a second shot at the target.

    If their sequel is good, then all is well in the end. If their sequel is also rubbish, but still sells well on wave of modern military shooter love, I'll be peeved.

  • mingster #8 1 year ago

    Make it Ninja Cyborg: Phantom Assasins and i will pre order it.

  • kinky_mong #9 1 year ago

    Apples sell more than oranges! More at 11!

  • carlitoswagon #10 1 year ago

    Proof that there's no such thing as bad press.

    I think they released a massive patch to clear up a few buggy issues on release. Must have worked.

  • xentar #11 1 year ago

    anyone thought about the possibility of people liking sniper only game even it is not top notch by hardcore gamers standard?

    Its the same as bashing Killzone 3 for inlcluding sniper mission and mechs and mounted gun segments making it too CoD-like... bullshit. it is what people enjoy

  • Skith666 #12 1 year ago

    Sniper = 1,000,000+
    Enslaved = 460,000+

    I don't understand the world anymore...

  • kangarootoo #13 1 year ago

    @xentar

    I love sniper games.

    This is a bad one. Much worse than Sniper Elite, which had its fair share of issues.

    If we are saying this game sold well despite its countless issues because it was the only choice out there for sniper game fans, well that may be true, but its still a shame.

  • Haloboy #14 1 year ago

    A million!? WHAT. THE. FUCK....

  • markypants #15 1 year ago

    In my opinion, the reason this did so well is the box art looks like a COD game and as much as we like to think that us 'games' fans make up the majority of the buying public, we aren't. The casual gaming market stick to what they know and like and that seems to be shooting people in the face. Sad... But true.

  • nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #16 1 year ago

    So, twice as many people would rather pretend to shoot other people in the head than run around a post-Apocalyptic landscape as a man-monkey? Sounds about right to me...

    I also can't really complain as I didn't buy Enslaved... went for Castlevania instead.

  • kinky_mong #17 1 year ago

    @nick_f: You made the right choice there.

  • AidyD #18 1 year ago

    As bad as Sniper: Ghost Warrior is - Its no use putting Enslaved up on the pedestal - It was meh. Especially the robot bad guys.. Felt like I was playing a 10 year old PS1 crash bandicoot rip-off where the usp was robots.

    Climbing/platforming was laughably simple, character was typical steroid junkie with matching personality and the jaggies were abhorrent on PS3.

  • iHAZaCHEEZ3burger #19 1 year ago

    Theres alot of stupid people in the world.

  • dingo75 #20 1 year ago

    2 reasons why I bought it:

    1. I always loved sniping in games.

    2. The game was less than 20 EUR pre-ordered from zavvi.com

    The price point definately helped in pre-ordering this as I'm willing to take chances at that price point in general.
    I got Dungeons for the same price which is probably ok for that amount.
    I have "Lucius" pre-ordered for that price as well as it sounds pretty interesting and I'm willing to take a chance.

    Oh and I have also bought Enslaved but waited until it dropped to 22 EUR.

  • Daeltaja #21 1 year ago

    Well its Namco Bandai's own fault for not including a Ak47 in Monkeys arsenal.

  • SteveHolt #22 1 year ago

    Put zombies in the sequel for an extra 1M sales without increasing development costs. And they'll get better reviews, as no one will complain about the shitty AI and broken stealth this time - zombies aren't supposed to be smart, and there's no point in hiding since they can smell you.
    Edited by SteveHolt at 16/02/11 @ 14:06

  • DiamondIce #23 1 year ago

    And Mirror's Edge 2 has been scrapped. Where is gaming going?

  • mattigan #24 1 year ago

    Seems there were a lot of disapointed people out there maybe expecting this to be a whole game of the 'Ghillies in the Mist' level of MW.

  • PepsiMax #25 1 year ago

    So how bad is this game? Cos on the box it looks good! I nearly bought this on a whim then decided to read the EG review first!

    The idea still appeals though

  • arcam #26 1 year ago

    Why is no one else (that I know of) making sniper games?

    There are clearly millions of people crying out for a good single-player sniping experience.Even before Ghost Warrior, surely anyone could tell that from looking at FPS games for the last few years?

    Apparently no-one except City Interactive wants to make one, so I say well done for giving the people what they want, publishing it themselves and selling a ton of copies.

  • azix2 #27 1 year ago

    FPS.... the kids love their FPSes

  • CelticTerry #28 1 year ago

    Great, they should rellaunch the "They Sold a Million" compilation game to celebrate this.

  • Branoic #29 1 year ago

    This news makes Baby Jesus cry.

  • Gammerz #30 1 year ago

    A Polish game that wasn't polished!

  • ExplodingClown #31 1 year ago

    If unmitigated wank like those 'Terrorist Takedown' games can reach their third instalment then this is depressingly unsurprising. Stick a picture of a jarhead on the cover and you can sell a cereal box full of tramp's vomit.

  • beatwolf #32 1 year ago

    Sniper = 1,000,000+
    Enslaved = 460,000+

    I don't understand the world anymore...

    oh wait, I never have. People are retarded.

  • frazzl #33 1 year ago

    Oh wait, there are people with different opinions than mine...fuck this world is retarded ; ).

  • dutzan #34 1 year ago

    Couple this with the fact that some Epic talking head said something about no shooter pie left. Granted, this isn't exactly like CoD, but if this sold so much...
    Edited by dutzan at 17/02/11 @ 04:27

  • Demiath #35 1 year ago

    Four Chords That Made a Million, indeed...