The Hits And Misses Of Rockstar

Feature

One of the biggest development studios on the face of the Earth are Rockstar. Many of their games are engrained into gaming culture, while others are not so much. We delve into their past.

February 17th, 2012 by Mark Barley

While Rockstar certainly has built its reputation with heavy hitting titles such as the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the Max Payne franchise and more recently the critical success of Red Dead Redemption�it hasn�t all been lollipops and puppy dogs for titles wearing the �R� insignia.
Let�s look at the flops:

Bully (2006)

A game where you are tasked with over-taking the local school yards one at a time to create your adolescent empire. The game focuses on the �open-world� style of gameplay allowing you to only access limited areas around the school yard at first but then eventually opening up the map to the entire town of �Bullworth�.

Bully isn�t a bad game at all, far from it actually, it�s just not up to the standards of those similar �open-world� titles that came before it (GTA). It was reported by Take-Two Interactive that the game had sold over 1.5 million copies as of March 2008. Now, don�t get me wrong, 1.5 million copies sold is an impressive number but this is Rockstar we�re talking about, not some shanty-town cross city developer. To put that number into perspective, the original Grand Theft Auto title for the Nintendo Game Boy/PlayStation 1 sold one million (1M) copies in its first year, 1999. Bully was enough of a cult success that Rockstar is currently exploring a sequel to the game but nothing is imminent.

Manhunt 1 & 2 (franchise 2003-2007)

When you talk about Rockstar Games you�re, in large part, discussing their successes as there aren�t a whole lot of �misses� to talk about. It proves true with the Manhunt franchise of video games developed by Rockstar North (amongst others). The games center on your character trying to escape a �Saw-like� situation. It�s either get out or die with these games. The Manhunt titles created such a mass frenzy in the media for their extreme graphic violence that the titles were then outlawed in several different countries. While the titles were somewhat well received by video game critics, the media portraying the games as �sadistic� and �overwhelmingly grim� may have been the main reason the games, as of March 2008, have only sold 1.5 million copies. Not exactly the numbers Rockstar was imagining when the games were green lit by Take-Two.

Beaterator (2009)

Beaterator is a game released in 2009 for the Sony PSP featuring remixes of popular songs composed by hip hop artist Timbaland. The main feature of the game is the ability to �remix� songs yourself using an Adobe Flash based program also developed by Rockstar. Beaterator charted an unknown territory for Rockstar as it was the first title of its kind.

The game was released in the hey-day where music titles were all the rage and Rockstar was looking to capitalize on that movement. Beaterator was only the second Rockstar title to have been released with an �E� for �Everyone� ESRB rating. The game was such a failure, to Rockstar standards; it only sold 95,000 copies worldwide to date. Yes, it was for a handheld title which means that sales will generally be lower�however, a Rockstar produced title should have sold more than that.