Dahku calls it quits with game development

Dahku Creations has decided to move on with video game development. Soon Shine, released in North America last month, will be the studio’s final game.

Dahku’s decision ultimately comes down to a lack of revenue. Chubbins and Soon Shine were both described as successes on the Wii U eShop, but not enough copies were sold in the end.

As written in Dahku’s blog yesterday:

Non-disclosure agreements prevent us from talking details, but even before we signed on as developers we’d heard that Nintendo offers newcomers a chance to work with their equipment free of charge for a time. We hoped that Chubbins would be successful enough in that window of opportunity that we could then move on to bigger and better Wii U exclusive games.

By contrast, Chubbins on Wii U was a success. We managed to stand out, get great community coverage, and the sales have been infinitely better than they were on iOS. Sadly, it still wasn’t enough. Nowhere near it, in fact. Having put all that effort into learning the Wii U ropes and gaining valuable insight into the market, we realized the window of opportunity would still be open just long enough that we could try to put that knowledge to use on an experiment of sorts.

As stated, it was an experiment. We hoped it would succeed where Chubbins hadn’t, and allow us to keep going. Having seen some of the other piddly games that were making waves on Miiverse and reporting great success, we figured we couldn’t go wrong with Soon Shine. As it turns out we were way off the mark.

By contrast, Soon Shine on Wii U was a success. Again we got great community coverage, reviews were generally more positive than they were for Chubbins, and the sales have been infinitely better than they were on iOS. And in fact, Soon Shine sold as many Wii U copies in four days as Chubbins did Wii U copies in four weeks. Of course that isn’t saying much, and sadly, it still isn’t enough. Nowhere near it, in fact.

So that’s it. The window of opportunity has closed. Our dev equipment has been returned to Nintendo. If our games turn out to be sleeper hits, or if we eventually have money to burn from some other source of income, maybe we’ll be back to take another stab at game development someday. For now, this chapter comes to an end.

You can find more from Dahku on the official blog here.