Journey, the BAFTA award-winning adventure title from ThatGameCompany, cost millions of dollars to develop.
That’s according co-founder Jenova Chen, who revealed that the studio was near bankruptcy when the game launched in March of last year.
Journey became an instant hit upon its release, becoming the fastest-selling game on PlayStation Network. Even so, Chen observed that the game’s sales are unlikely to have returned a profit.
"When the game makes money, the money first goes back to pay back the money they’ve invested. So, that’s going to take a while – Journey cost multiple millions of dollars to make. Once that money is recouped, then we will get royalties," Chen told Joystiq.
"But for almost a year, we are not going to be relying on the money from Journey to keep the company going."
ThatGameCompany, upon releasing Journey, secured a $5.6 million deal from Benchmark Company, a venture capital company.
"We were at a spot where, if we couldn’t figure out the next game, or find the next deal, then at the end of Journey we’d run out of money," he added.
"When we switched to a venture capital, we raised the money because we pitched the project; we sold them on the vision. They believe it, they want to support us to make that happen. So, creatively I’ve never gotten any input from the venture capital. It’s actually very similar, we are always ourselves, and no one is really messing around with us. With Sony, it was the same thing.”
Read our review of Journey here.