Soon 5 million with the Xbox version?
According to the latest news, Dispatch had sold 3 million copies, something which was probably not anticipated by the studio. Today, we learned that total sales are now at 4 million games soldand this before the release of the Xbox version which will arrive during the summer.
A great feat that almost never saw the light of day. Nick Herman and Michael Choung, co-creator and CEO of Adhoc Studio, have often spoken about the financial problems the team may have encountered during the development of Dispatch.
At the microphone of The Game Business, the subject came up again, and the two friends discussed the fact that finding financing at the start of the project was complicated, to the extent that the studio was then only made up of two directors and two screenwriters, with no developers on the horizon. In addition, the fact that the game was presented as a comedy was discouraging, supposedly because this genre did not sell well in the video game industry. Add to this the fact that the narrative game market was at half mast at the start of the 2020s, and you have investors reluctant to drop a few tickets.
It was therefore thanks to a meeting with the members of the Critical Role collective after the Game Awards 2024 that everything came together, even though Laura Bailey had already joined the project:
“ Without this show [les Game Awards]I don’t know if Dispatch would have survived. We could see that the situation could quickly deteriorate the following year, and we absolutely needed this renewed interest to reassure investors. It was crucial. »
Being funded by Critical Role proved to be a boon for the studio, given that it did not have a publisher to report to. A beautiful story that continues to be written today.