PC claims 40% of Shovel Knight sales

Successfully Kickstarted indie platformer Shovel Knight has seen PC purchases account for 40 per cent of its month one sales.

After a prolonged period of trying to furiously balance the books – which included five months where the development team were left unpaid – the game sold 75,000 copies in its first four weeks, excluding the 15,684 copies handed out to backers. This was far better than the team’s 30k-60k estimate.

Of that 37 per cent of total sales were on Steam, two per cent via Humble Bundle and one per cent through GOG. 3DS sales accounted for 33 per cent of the total and Wii U 27 per cent.

Throughout week one 38 per cent of sales were on PC, 35 per cent on 3DS and 27 per cent on Wii U.

Interestingly upon the successful completion of its $312k Kickstarter campaign, 64 per cent of backers opted for a PC code, 21 per cent 3DS and 15 per cent Wii U.

Surprisingly, Nintendo backers only provided around a third of the total support,” developer Yacht Club Games said. We would have expected this number to be much higher given how focused (at least inwardly) our campaign was around Nintendo platforms.

We think due to the PC nature of Kickstarter, we saw a higher amount of sales on Nintendo’s platform when the game actually got released. Nintendo users are more inclined to buy the game day one rather than through a preorder on Kickstarter.

Overall, we’re extremely happy with the sales. We don’t have sales data on many other digital games to offer a comparison, but we do know it’s doing very well for our company – meaning the six of us! This means we can keep our current course and continue making the stretch goal content without fear of disbanding or seeking additional funding. It means we can continue living our dreams producing awesome games for our incredible fans (and soon-to-be fans).”