Mario Wynands discusses extending the life of your IP

Mario Wynands, Managing Director of Sidhe Interactive, has posted an article up on GameDaily’s “My Turn” section of their website discussing methods they went about to extend the life of their original PSP title GripShift.

Mario talks about the difficulty releasing a game in the retail market, with the pressure to do well in the first 6 weeks or suffer a loss of shelf space, where bad timing can mean the undeserved relegation to the bottom shelf, or even to the store room.

While the game received modest sales, and surpassed their financial expectations, something didn’t seem quite right about the figures, given that the game received a “smattering” of great reviews and good community feedback, it seemed there was “untapped potential” there. Rather than go back to retail with a port to another platform, which was going to be a hard sell given the PSP sales, they found that eliminating the retailers was the key and ported it straight to the PSN and XBLA. Doing this allowed an improved version to be delivered direct to consumers which grew to deliver meaningful revenue streams, making a sequel and future PSN and XBLA titles a promising prospect.

Mario also mentions that a lot of their success had to do with fostering a good community:

…adding tutorials to the website, releasing new free levels, running small competitions, uploading level solutions to YouTube, and sending signed schwag to the most vocal of our supporters. The activity had an impact, keeping GripShift sales ticking along, even surpassing ongoing sales of some "bigger" titles. More importantly we were building a dedicated fanbase for the game that felt appreciated and supported, and awareness of the title amongst those who didn't have a PSP.