The Lord of the Rings: Gollum managed to enter UK’s boxed game sales figures from last week, which coincided with its release. Despite the fact that Gollum received negative reviews, it seems that a decent number of people decided to try the title after all.
To say that The Lord of the Rings: Gollum had a bad launch is an understatement: the game faced a disastrous reception after its release. Gollum is the worst-rated game AAA of 2023 at the moment, receiving abysmal scores from almost all gaming media outlets. On Metacritic, the game currently has a critic score of 35 and an even lower user score of 1.2. Most of the common complaints are regarding stealth being slow and repetitive, boring puzzles, several bugs, and unimpressive graphics. Despite such a weak critical reception, however, some people are still willing to give Gollum a chance.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum appeared as sixth among the most sold games in the United Kingdom in the week ending on May 27. It’s behind much more popular games such as the new Zelda, FIFA 23, Hogwarts Legacy, Mario Kart 8: Deluxe, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. According to the announcement, 70% of the sales were on PS5, and only 20% were on Xbox. However, it should be noted that these numbers come solely from physical sales in the United Kingdom, and the Xbox Series S does not use physical media, which may have impacted sales figures.
This game represented the release of a new game set in a beloved property, and the Gollum developers even had to apologize for the state they launched the game in, so it’s not surprising that the sales are not as high as they could have been. However, due to the LotR name and future patches fixing some of the current bugs, perhaps the sales will pick up once more eventually.
Despite the disastrous launch, Daedelic is currently working on another game set in the Lord of the Rings universe. Recently, it was divulged that the company received €2 million from the German government to create a second game set in the Middle-Earth universe. At the moment, not much is known about the title, but there are indications that it may be focused on wizards. The upcoming game is under work using the codename “It’s Magic,” and it does not have an intended release date yet.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. A Switch version is in development.
Source: Games Industry.biz