Far too often these days we hear about games under-performing as the battle for gamers money is as difficult as ever in today’s environment. So when a game exceeds expectations, it is an exciting thing to talk about, especially when its a game you enjoy so much. Mafia: The Old Country is definitely one of those games, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick offered up the good news during an interview yesterday with The Game Business.
While the interview was mostly about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI which was delayed into next November, Zelnick did offer up his first comments about the success of the Mafia prequel as he confirmed that Mafia: The Old Country exceeded expectations adding “What we suspected was confirmed,” he said. “Which is just… if you give consumers a great narrative experience that’s a lot of fun, somewhat contained, and at a fair price, then you can have the perfect result.”
While Zelnick didn’t provide any specifics in terms of sales figures, it is still nice to hear that the game exceeded expectations. Industry analysts had said the game sold around 800k units in its first week, so it seems safe to assume the game is over the million sold mark.
Take-Two was aggressive with Mafia: The Old Countr’s price point as well as it sold at a $50 price point rather than the typical $60-70 we see with many other AAA titles and it has appeared to pay off, proving there is a market out there for narrative driven games.
This bodes well for fans of the series such as myself that we will see more Mafia games. A voice actor had mentioned that more is in the works, though nothing has been confirmed by developer Hangar 13 or publisher 2K. But the fact that Zelnick is praising the game as a success would seem to suggest that is very likely.
We enjoyed Hangar 13’s first attempt at bringing the mob story back to where it all began in Sicily giving it an 8 in our review saying “Although the gameplay isn’t going to win any awards, Mafia: The Old Country still delivers what people love about the franchise. It’s a great crime story featuring a new protagonist that holds up with the others in the series and is a nice story-driven experience overall.”
If a new Mafia game does indeed get green-lit it will be interesting to see where they take it as they have a few options. Do they continue The Old Country storyline or go back to a mainline game? Hopefully we find out in the next couple of years!
