According to statements made by CEO Strauss Zelnick of Take-Two Interactive, Borderlands 4 has not performed to the expected standards internally. In a recent interview, Zelnick said that while they regarded the new game as “good” critically, sales performance was “a little softer than we would have liked” and indeed not at par with the expectations reserved internally for the latest looter-shooter.
At first brush, the initial sales receipts for Borderlands 4 look impressive, as they have crossed 2.5 million in sales less than two weeks after launch. But it needs to be placed within the context of the evolving commercial stature of the series. The last mainline entry, Borderlands 3, set a staggering standard for sales, moving more than 5 million copies during its first five days alone. For Borderlands 4 merely to have half that number over a longer period suggests a substantial deceleration in sales velocity, something that Zelnick and Take-Two are clearly very anxious to reverse.
One thing Zelnick mentioned that made this turnout dissatisfactory was that the particular game did have technical issues on PC. Almost immediately after its launch, PC users confronted excessive and severe performance issues, even with regards to systems that overshot the recommended hardware specifications. Technical flaws, combined with pre-launch controversies around the game’s End-User License Agreement, and poorly received responses on social media from Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, appear to have kept many away from becoming buyers and thus possibly prompting a higher return rate.
Despite the tepid start, Zelnick kept a long-term optimistic perspective regarding the title, assuring that the “patches and optimizations that are going to be made by Gearbox Software in due course are going to fix some of these primary PC issues,” adding that, in the view of the publisher, “in the fullness of time, it’s going to do great.” The eventual release of Borderlands 4 for the delayed Switch 2 console-inaccessible to take advantage of the early sales window-represents yet another avenue for the game to increase greatly its overall commercial performance before it achieves the brighter-starred expectations originally laid out by Take-Two.
