Atooi on Dementium Remastered, Mutant Mudds SC sales, Chicken Wiggle/Treasurenauts status, Switch interest

Coming from Atooi's Jools Watsham...

Sales of Dementium Remastered ended up being only OK. Not great. Not terrible. Well, maybe a little terrible. We had hoped to sell a lot more units, but I think the fact that it was largely considered a port of an old game didn't capture people's attention like a new game would have. It is a game that I am very proud of, though. We poured a lot of work into the game to enhance the experience for new and returning players and took advantage of the increased power the 3DS offers over the DS to good effect.

We managed to pull off a simultaneous March 2016 release of Mutant Mudds Super Challenge on 3DS and Wii U in North America and Europe, which was a very tricky thing to accomplish. Matthew pulled off an impressive feat with this and deserves much credit for making it possible. The overall exposure the game received due to the simultaneous release was great, and the game scored very well with reviewers. But, we made new mistakes that ultimately contributed to the games' less-than-stellar sales.

Sadly, the low sales of Mutant Mudds Super Challenge were the catalyst for Renegade Kid's closure. Soon after the games' release, when the sales numbers were in, Gregg and I discussed the future of Renegade Kid. We had both been spread extremely thin in terms of our work load for the past few years, and the extra effort we were putting in wasn't paying off in terms of sales. We were hoping that either Dementium Remastered or Mutant Mudds Super Challenge would bring in some much-needed money to propel us to doing new titles in the future. ATV Renegades was a nice opportunity to bring one of our titles to consoles, but financially it relied heavily on receiving monies from sales on the back-end.

Treasurenauts was a bit more complicated… I had started the development of Chicken Wiggle for Atooi. The intention was to develop a very small and quick title to release and hopefully bring in a little cash while I finish up Treasurenauts with Nighthawk. But, as usual, the scope of Chicken Wiggle blew up and inadvertently required more time to complete the game. The good news is that Chicken Wiggle is nearly completed and it is pretty darn great. I'll be dedicating 100% of my efforts towards Treasurenauts after the Christmas break, when we submit Chicken Wiggle to Nintendo for their approval. Nighthawk have been very patient and gracious partners, which I am extremely appreciative and thankful for.

I can't talk about 2016 without mentioning the Nintendo Switch, can I? No way! The reveal trailer that Nintendo released on October 20th was awesome! I was very impressed with the 3-minute trailer that showed off a cool-looking home console / handheld hybrid platform, as well as a handful of great-looking new games. Even though my current focus with Atooi is the 3DS, rest assured that we will embark on Switch development in the near future and will have something exciting to reveal in 2017.