Days Gone Director Says It Outsold Ghost of Tsushima, But Was Treated Like a 'Disappointment' By Management [Update]

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Update 1/7 10 am PT: Jeff Ross followed up his Tweet thread by appearing on Twisted Metal director David Jaffe's livestream to explain how the 8 million sales figure for Days Gone might not be entirely accurate, or at the very least, official.

As reported by PushSquare, Ross says the source of the sales numbers was from a Trophy data tracking site called Gamestat. During the conversation, Ross revealed that when he was at Bend Studios and saw Days Gone sold 5 million copies, the Trophy data was at 5.8 million. And since he no longer has access to Sony's official figures since leaving the company, Ross based the 8 million sales figures from trophy trackers and the "telemetry data."

"I think [Gamestat] still has the data archived," Ross said according to GameInformer. "Based off the 8 million mark, it matched our telemetry and so I'm like, 'good enough.' So maybe it was 7.7 [million]-ish, maybe it was 8.2 [million]-ish, I don't know."

So while Ross has previously found trophy data to be ballpark figures for sales, they are not wholly accurate compared to Sony's official 8 million sales announcement for Ghost of Tsushima.

Original Story: Days Gone director Jeff Ross says that the game outsold Ghost of Tsushima, but that it was still treated like a disappointment by studio management.

This week, Ghost of Tsushima developer Sucker Punch announced on Twitter that, since its launch in July 2020, the game has now officially sold over 8 million copies. That accomplishment comes just months after the release of the game's Director's Cut.

While that's great news for the team at Sucker Punch and Sony, the milestone sparked Days Gone director Jeff Ross to speak out about his own contrasting experiences on a PlayStation exclusive. In a quote tweet about Ghost of Tsushima's success, Ross claimed that Days Gone had actually outsold the Samurai action-adventure title, but was made to feel like a disappointment by management at Bend Studio.

"At the time I left Sony, Days Gone had been out for a year and a half (and a month), and sold over 8 million copies," explained Ross. "It's since gone on to sell more, and then a million+ on Steam. Local studio management always made us feel like it was a big disappointment."

Despite the fact that the wider Sony organisation has never outwardly stated that it believes Days Gone was a "disappointment", it's pretty certain that fans won't be seeing a sequel anytime soon. Last year, it was revealed that Days Gone studio Sony Bend is working on an "exciting new IP" that builds on top of the "deep open-world systems that they developed with Days Gone" after earlier reports had suggested that a pitched sequel to the game had been rejected.

Part of Sony's reluctance to sanction a sequel to Days Gone could be down to its mixed reception at launch. Despite selling well across PlayStation consoles and its subsequent Steam release, the game launched with a number of bugs and received varied review scores from critics at the time. IGN weighed in with our own thoughts on Days Gone when it was released, awarding it a 6.5/10 and stating that while the game was "fun in small bursts," its "repetition, bland world, and meandering story make for an unremarkable ride."

However, in a reply to another Twitter user, Ross made clear that, while Sony does prize high review scores, "the grief we got was about the sales, not the scores." Ross' complaints seem squarely aimed at Bend Studio management, made clear in another reply when a user said there may now be better management in place, to which the director simply replied, "Nope".

For more news from Sony's world of exclusive titles, make sure to check out this piece detailing what fans should expect from PlayStation in 2022.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

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