Digging in the charts

Yacht Club Games may have removed Shovel Knight's Nintendo exclusivity in recent months, but the game has still performed best on Nintendo consoles.

According to Nathan Vella, president and cofounder of Capy Games, 30 percent of sales have been on the 3DS, with 20 percent of total sales on Wii U. 14 percent came via Sony, and 4 percent on Xbox. The most successful single platform was Steam, with 32 percent of sales.

Vella - who gave the information during a Gaming Insiders event in San Francisco last week - states that this data proves that indies shouldn't ignore certain consoles when it comes to developing and publishing their games:

Shovel Knight broke the impression that indies don't sell so well on Nintendo, and Broken Age has a surprisingly huge following on Mac. All of these games are generating significant amounts of net revenue from a whole bunch of different platforms. If you were to remove a single platform, these developers would be leaving a significant chunk of money behind.

All of these games defied the belief there is a right platform or a wrong platform. Porting is really inexpensive, and you don't have to do it all at once.

Shovel Knight's connection with Nintendo has become even stronger of late, with the game getting its own amiibo figure.

[source venturebeat.com]