Despite it’s sheer technical ambition, Crimson Desert has failed to take off like many players thought it would, based on all the trailers and gameplay videos. Apparently, the game has also suffered a 29% plunge in share value after the worldwide review scores have surfaced and according to those, Crimson Desert shines as a fully sandboxed open world experience but falls hard when it comes to inconsistent storytelling and several underdeveloped elements in it’s gameplay. And on review aggregator Metacritic, Crimson Desert is currently holding a Metascore of 78 based on a total of 85 critic reviews so far, however that score is sure to fluctuate further as more reviews arrive online in the coming days.
As a result, the stock price for Korean developer Pearl Abyss got cut by 29.88% which ended up taking $13 off the earlier value of a share.
‘“Apparently not good enough for investors,” said Dr Serkan Toto, CEO of Japan games industry consultancy firm Kantan Games, in a social media post reflecting on Crimson Desert’s review scores.
According to the Seoul Economic Daily, the expected Metascore of Crimson Desert was in the mid-to-high 80s, so “the lower-than-anticipated result appears to have weighed on the stock.” And the same report also states that Crimson Desert had been in development for seven years with total development costs reaching approx. $133 million, which is certainly disheartening to say the least.
However, despite the less than stellar Metacritic rating, Crimson Desert is still on it’s way to become a surefire hit, thanks to the game’s nearly 400,000 pre-launch sold units on Steam (from studies done by Alinea Analytics on the game). So the game could easily recover with time, as the initial launch is projected to be really strong with a high number of wishlists and pre-order sales. But after that, it remains to be seen whether Crimson Desert can sustain it’s momentum in the long run, which will decide it’s overall sales units and commercial revenue.
