Acclaim Entertainment Inc, the Glen Cove, New York games publisher that lost $221m and was on the verge of bankruptcy last year, says that the heralded Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is doing very well, but hasn’t quite conquered the world – or the company’s financial problems – just yet. The hot new game has enjoyed strong initial sales, but has only been on the market for about two weeks. A spokesperson for Acclaim said sales numbers for Turok are still being compiled and the MSNBC report claiming the game is already on target to sell 700,000 copies and will likely sell a million is exaggerated and possibly based on something as vague as pre-pre-orders. According to the company, 700,000 would more likely be the total of units sold over the lifetime of the product. However, with the success of Turok, this month’s private placement of shares worth $50m and rearranged banking relationships to more effectively manage its debt, Acclaim is poised to head back toward the success of just two years ago, when it turned a profit of nearly $45m on revenue of $566.7m. Admittedly crippled in the past by counting on its large stock of outdated 16-bit games amid rising sales of PCs, Acclaim has revamped its focus and will produce about 20-30 titles this year, depending upon development schedules, rather than roughly 75. Of these, four-to-six will be for the Nintendo 64 system, six-to-eight for PCs and the balance for Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. Acclaim sees this strategy returning it to profitability by the first quarter of 1998, not the fourth quarter of this year as analysts predict.
