There’s a lot to learn from this very situation that indie dev team Studio MDHR has achieved with its title Cuphead. Constantly accused of being canceled, which is currently available across PC and Xbox One, the 2D platformer has surpassed the 1 million unit mark and has gone platinum.
Why is this important? Well, Cuphead had to contend with a lot of big names that have previous establishments across the gaming medium without using shady schemes. Take for instance in the month of September starting on the 6th of said month, we had Destiny 2 release, with many well known titles after it like PES 2018, Divinity: Original Sin 2, NBA Live, Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite, NBA 2K18, Project Cars 2, Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition, FIFA 18, and Total War: Warhammer 2.
In addition to the above, following just a week later came the launch date of Forza Motorsport 7, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and The Evil Within 2.
I know it could be argued that some named titles suffered from controversial actions by their publishers and developers, but Studio MDHR had no clue that any of that stuff would go down, whilst it had to compete with other stuff like Star Wars Battlefront 2 hyped up beta.
Despite all of the above, keeping in mind that the whole game is hand-drawn with 24FPS animations (which is no joke), and only being on two platforms (namely PC via other services and Xbox One) the game still managed to deal with the devil and moved over 1 million units and then some during this congested time. The thing is, though, this all took place within two weeks time, as noted below by Studio MDHR:
“Hello friends! Cuphead has only been out for two weeks and we never could have dreamed of the reception we’ve received from our amazing fans! Today, we wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for your support and we’re excited to share that Cuphead has gone platinum with over 1 million units sold!
We have worked tirelessly over the past few years to deliver a game that remained true to our vision and we are both humbled and excited that so many people from around the world are playing Cuphead – it truly makes it all worth it.
From all of us at StudioMDHR, thanks again for your support!”
The team also cooked up this splash image to thank you, the players, who helped Cuphead achieve this milestone.
Guesstimating here, Steam Spy shows around 603,000 of those 1 million copies belong to PC gamers, so that leaves the other half to Xbox One users.
Lastly, let’s not forget a particular person who helped the game reach another level of exposure through an amusing playthrough. Can you guess who that might be? I’ll just leave this special thing below, while you can look for Cuphead on PC via Steam or GOG and Xbox One for $19.99.
