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Darwina+ studio closed due to lack of sales

XBLA release Darwina+ sold so badly that developer Introversion was forced to close its office, and almost the company the studio has told.

Mark Morris the Managning Director revealed in a blog post last week that "within an hour" of the game going live in spring the studio knew the game wasn't going to succeed.

The game which is an updated version of a 2005 PC release with multiplayer added, took longer to develop than planned and didn't make enough money for the studio to be sustained, even after good reviews.
The fact the game was released the same week as Bioshock 2 can't have helped the sales.

"It took us about two weeks to really accept [it wasn't selling] and the awful realisation that we didn't have enough to continue with the office or the staff," wrote Morris. "We had a bunch of creditors knocking at the door, but worse than all of that we were absolutely shattered. "

After running out of money the company closed its doors, sold the furniture, and laid off staff, Morris and programmer Chris Delay planned to raise cash by updating PC release DEFCON so Valve would run a promotion.

"The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year's operating capital in the bank," said Morris. "This was good, but paled in comparison to the fact that we were working together as a team again. Just like the old days. Just me Chris, TJ and Johnny - laptops, bedrooms and plans for global domination."

Plans are to release a PSN version of DEFCON and upcoming PC release Subversion. Morris is open to the idea of a XBLA release, but don't expect that anytime soon.