Outriders - The game not enough people know about.

Survey 411...

US Only

18-54 M/F

N = 240

March 1, 2021

Outriders, coming April 1, 2021, is a new entrant into the very challenging looter shooter category that we've been tracking since it was announced in 2019. We did an analysis (here) of the go-to-market campaign a few weeks back and we wanted to follow-up with some sales estimates as well.

Outriders initially caught our eye for a couple of reasons, first, the game was officially announced at E3 in 2019. The announce placement in E3 was a very "old school" decision and it was done at a time when virtual events vs location-based events were at a tipping point. This made it a good case study for how a traditional, location-based announce would fare moving forward in an industry that had clearly become a virtual-focused world. Second, the looter-shooter category still requires a good dose of in-game story to keep players engaged. Doing this well is a real challenge from a creative and cost perspective so we're always on the look out for looter shooters that we think may have a chance on this front.

Overall, our concerns about the rollout look like they're playing out. Awareness for Outriders is quite dismal for a game that was announced more than 18 months ago. We held off on running our February survey until the end of the month when the Outriders demo was released to give it it's best shot, but only approximately 2.2M US gamers appear to be aware of Outriders, which is a difficult starting point for a game with a $59.99 price tag. We place current US launch sales estimates at 460K-759K units across all platforms. From a gross sales perspective that's $28M-$45M and a net gross for Square Enix and People Can Fly of $19M-$32M.

Fortunately, there is still room for improvement. We're still a month from release so more marketing for the game may be coming. As of the survey date, we estimate that the actual opportunity is approximately 840K-960K units. There aren't any marquee games launching in Outrider window so any extra effort on behalf of Square/People to push more players on the intent side should result in a positive outcome.

---