Yacht Club Games has revealed the Shovel Knight sales figures today. Aside from being a pretty excellent game, Shovel Knight is a hit, with over two million copies sold.
It took only 18-months since release for Shovel Knight to cross the one million mark and only another eight months to reach two million.
A lot has happened from the release of Shovel Knight until now and Yacht Club Games is keen to celebrate it all.
Let’s dive in.
Shovel Knight Sales
In the two and a bit years since Shovel Knight was released, Yacht Club Games also;
- Released the Shovel Knight amiibo
- Launched the Specter of Torment campaign
- Launched Shovel Knight on Switch
- Brought Battletoads to PC
- Made co-op playable on all platforms
- Created an art book
- Wrote four Shovel Knight books
- Published Gunvolt
- Body-swapped Shovel Knight’s campaign
- Released Vita physical copies of Shovel Knight
- Localised the game to Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian
- Changed the name to Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, increased the price and split the games into separate standalone releases.
All of the above are huge achievements and should be applauded in and of themselves. They’re also all part of the reason why Shovel Knight has sold so well and continues to do so.
To celebrate the sales crossing over two million, Shovel Knight will be 20% off on all platforms for a week from today. This includes Switch, Wii U, 3DS, PS4, PS3, Vita, Xbox One, Steam, GOG, and Humble Store.
The next and final instalment, Shovel Knight: King of Cards, will be added free to all copies of Shovel Knight.
Shovel Knight Sales Breakdown
If you’re into stats, Yacht Club Games has written up an extensive breakdown of Shovel Knight sales. This includes by region, by platform and more.
Interestingly, Windows PC and 3DS are the best selling platforms, with PC only just edging out the 3DS. These two combined, account for nearly 50% of all copies sold.
The third best selling platform though is Switch, which is simply astounding. The Switch version accounts for over 17% of all copies sold and has only been available for a year. That’s less than half the amount of time the game has been available for.
Not only that, the Switch version was also the fastest selling. Before the Switch version was released, the PC version held the record at 70,000 units sold in one month.
The Switch version shattered that record in its first month on sale, logging 110,000 copies sold.
Digging for success
In 2017, Shovel Knight sales were 125,000 units stronger than they were in 2016 and 60% of those were from the Switch. In September 2017, Shovel Knight sales on Nintendo platforms alone crossed over 1 million.
However, despite the strong sales and growth, Yacht Club Games is surprisingly frank when it comes to the money generated by Shovel Knight.
2017 was a good year for unit sales due to Switch and Specter of Torment’s release, but it was also our best year yet in terms of revenue. We earned more than double the revenue of 2016
When it comes to the expansions, Yacht Club Games has had mixed success.
The developer spent a million dollars developing Plague of Shadows and made exactly zero dollars on the investment. When it came time to develop Specter of Torment, Yacht Club Games used the same formula for calculating costs and spent 1.5 million dollars.
The difference though was that Specter of Torment was a free update and was sold separately. The expansion did make money, however, it didn’t make a profit.
The full post on Shovel Knight sales is a fascinating read so head on over and check it out.
Or take a look at the infographic below.
