Have you ever heard of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars ? Neither had I until I read a recent Wall Street Journal profile on Psyonix, the company behind the enormously successful Rocket League. SARPBC (you can’t expect me to type that out every time, can you?) was the spiritual predecessor to Rocket League, but despite having a name that practically rolls off the tongue, the game didn’t do too well. Nobody knew about it, and no one bought it. Even after Psyonix reduced the price, the game still didn’t catch on.
Psyonix did random contracting work for some big AAA games to pay the bills while it continued work on another special project, a game that most of us have heard of: Rocket League. Rocket League’s success is attributed to the fact that people were able to get their hands on the game early on when it was offered as a free, PlayStation Plus downloadable title. Word of mouth took over from there, and now we’re talking about a game that has raked in nearly $50 million from sales on the PC and PlayStation 4. I’ve said before that I can’t wait to play this game, and I plan on picking it up as soon as it goes on sale. I’m happy for Psyonix, and I hope the success of Rocket League leads to more exciting projects in the future, possibly with bigger marketing budgets.
Source: Wall Street Journal