Deus Ex Mankind Divided Ditched by SE Despite Fairly Strong Numbers
It’s fair to say the Deus Ex franchise is a massive name in the video gaming industry. A seminal PC game back in the early 2000s, then wonderfully rebooted by Eidos Montreal back in 2011, it’s a name that has been synonymous with quality first-person RPGs for many years. The most recent entry in the series, however, didn’t quite reach the same dizzying heights as its predecessors. It felt restricted in scope and unfinished, with a narrative that teed up an interesting premise without truly delivering a satisfying conclusion. Rumors swirled that publishing decisions had shackled the studio’s original vision, which made the later report that the franchise had been put on ice all the more upsetting.
When Valve’s Steam data leaked, it was one of the first numbers we were interested in shedding some light on, expecting confirmation of its dire performance. Strangely, though, it doesn’t seem to have done too badly at all. With 1,155,405 players on PC alone, we’re wondering just how many sales Square Enix needed to see before declaring the title not worth an immediate follow-up. Surely, Deus Ex Mankind Divided has sold well north of two million copies with console sales included —which doesn’t seem like a dead loss to us.
Does this suggest that rumors of poor resource allocation, specifically over-spending on the game’s marketing budget with elaborate live-action trailers led to an unrealistically high number of copies sold to make bank? We’ll likely never know, but it does seem as though Deus Ex Mankind Divided didn’t actually record low numbers in comparison to many other other single-player games. Here’s some other games listed for comparison:
- Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain – 1,750,593
- Dishonored 2 – 1,127,089
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – 1,155,405
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut – 1,358,070
- Assassin’s Creed Origins – 1,030,581
- Resident Evil 5/ Biohazard 5 – 1,005,089
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – 952,284
