According to an investor evaluation report from Zeus Capital, Planet Coaster 2 hasn’t lived as much as expectations in relation to income and reception from the playerbase, and it would not seem like anybody’s too shocked.
Despite promoting over 400,000 items inside two months of launch and incomes over £10 million, “money flows are nonetheless unfavorable,” an excerpt from the report says (by way of Reddit). “This is significantly higher” than Warhammer [Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin] “that was impaired,” however even nonetheless [Planet Coaster 2] “has had comparatively poor opinions on platforms equivalent to Steam (60% optimistic) and PlayStation (3.69/5). Frontier will likely be engaged on free updates and fixes to enhance participant sentiment which possible comes on the expense of growing and releasing PDLC in H2 2025.”
Planet Coaster 2 ‘money move nonetheless unfavorable’ from r/pcgaming
Analysts anticipate a “decrease income maintain price” than a few of Frontier’s earlier releases, pushed by combined opinions, the existence of console releases, and the truth that it was placed on sale only a month after launch, and the decrease that price goes, “the better the significance of the success of [Jurassic World Evolution 3], which is licenced-IP and subsequently decrease gross margin than own-IP video games.”
The hope is that the income introduced in by Jurassic World Evolution 3 will ultimately offset the lack of income incurred from Planet Coaster 2. It additionally seems that income estimates for older video games like Planet Coaster and Elite Dangerous have been elevated, because the hope is that gamers will stick with it spending cash on older video games.
The report additionally mentions that Frontier’s gross sales and advertising and marketing bills have been lowered, because the second half of 2025 “is predicted to see a decrease proportion of growth spend being capitalised due to the time spent on updates and fixes to Planet Coaster 2.”
Despite having some impressively highly effective creation instruments in Planet Coast 2, many gamers appeared lower than proud of the shortage of content material obtainable at launch. “Many customizable choices that existed in Planet Coaster are actually lacking, together with a lot of themes,” one unfavorable Steam evaluate says. “The factor that bothers me most is how a lot of the obtainable surroundings may be very theme-specific. Many Viking items, for instance, have textures which might be troublesome to make use of in different themes. In distinction, the unique themes in Planet Coaster felt extra generic or multi-purpose.”
All of that is to say some gamers actually aren’t shocked that Planet Coaster 2 was one thing of a monetary flop. “It did not appear completely different sufficient from Planet Coaster, in my view,” one other participant says. “Water parks, for instance, was an enlargement for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (which was additionally from Frontier).”
It looks like Frontier must take care of an identical scenario to what Paradox confronted after the disappointing launch of Cities: Skylines 2. After a bunch of complaints from gamers, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen mentioned that there can be no paid DLCs, beneath all of the efficiency points had been fastened. Over a yr later, after updates, patches, and a few new content material (a few of which was refunded) the devs are nonetheless working to regain the belief that was misplaced amid the messy launch. Planet Coaster 2 will most likely take an identical quantity of labor if the devs need to push its Steam evaluate ranking up from 60% which is combined and in direction of one thing a bit extra optimistic.
