Epic: Bulletstorm Didn't Make Any Profit

Despite the positive reviews, Bulletstorm "under-performed" on the charts and didn't even earn a profit for Epic.

Epic Games president Mike Capps claims that he doesn't regret Bulletstorm, the first-person shooter from Polish developer People Can Fly (Painkiller) released back in February 2011. Selling less than 300,000 units in its first month, the game didn't generate any revenue for Epic, but apparently that's just fine and dandy for the Gears of War developer.

EA said it "under-performed."

In speaking with Kotaku, Capp said that Epic could have taken the easy route by making the People Can Fly team churn out new Gears of War content after Epic purchased the studio in 2008. But Caps didn't want the new team to take the Gears route – he placed his bets on the new IP called Bulletstorm instead. "The studio has shipped AAA content," he said. "The next thing we do with People Can Fly will be great."

The fact that Bulletstorm wasn't a real moneymaker for Epic is surprising given the game's overall score. Metacritic reveals that the PC version has an 82-percent average, falling to the bottom of the list behind the PlayStation 3 version which has an 83-percent average and the Xbox 360 version which has an 84-percent average. Still, despite the positive reviews, the game tanked at the sales counter.

The Epic president will be giving a keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference Europe next month called "Size Doesn't Matter: How Epic Brings AAA Attitude to Every Game, from Gears of War 3 to Infinity Blade." The idea, according to Kotaku, is to "dispel myths people may have that Epic's games are high-quality due to infinite budgets or unlimited development times, neither of which the studio actually enjoys." There's speculation that Capps may talk about why the game performed poorly in retail despite its critical success.