5th Cell's Jeremiah Slaczka on Drawn to Life Sales, Upcoming 5th Cell Titles

Oct. 3 4:38 PM by Alicia Ashby

A lot of folks are under the impression that Drawn to Life: Spongebob Squarepants Edition is a direct result of the original Drawn to Life not selling so well. According to 5th Cell's own Creative Director, Jeremiah Slaczka, this is not the case.

"I just wanted to let you know that Drawn to Life sold amazingly well... around 1 million units," Slaczka said. "So don't think DTL did bad. It's the best-selling DS-exclusive original IP title from a Western third-party publisher." Apparently THQ simply wanted to do something new with their highly-profitable Spongebob IP and planned the Drawn to Life edition independently of the original's sales performance.

"To THQ's credit, most publishers we pitched Drawn to Life to weren't nearly as interested. New, original third party games didn't have much of a track record of selling back when we pitched in 2006." Slaczka went on to describe how most publishers who saw the idea turned it down, or wanted to attach the concept to some other IP without letting 5th Cell tell their original story at all.

Likewise, THQ allowed 5th Cell to pitch Lock's Quest when the studio made it clear they weren't interested in working on any licensed titles. With Lock's Quest on store shelves now, 5th Cell is currently at work on three upcoming titles, one a sequel to a previous 5th Cell effort on DS, an original IP title for DS, and a console title that's still in very early production stages. Here's hoping that console turns out to be Wii, huh?