Shadow of the Eternals has earned almost $120,000 in crowdfunding in three days, but the developer's goal is to bring in $1.5 million. That's slow progress — maybe too slow to be successful.
The crowdfunding campaign for the spiritual success to Eternal Darkness began on Monday and only raised $50,000 that day, as we pointed out early this week. Precursor Games has a lot of ground to cover. At this rate, it won't raise enough per day to meet its target goal on June 7 — less than one month away.
Of course, it's possible that Shadow of the Eternals will gain steam, but successful campaigns with a goal in the millions usually raise money more quickly. And the higher the asking price, the harder it is to fulfill. Eternal Darkness has a strong fanbase, but it may not have widespread enough appeal. Some members of the gaming community are also wary of Precursor, which consists of former Silicon Knights developers.
Precursor is planning to release Shadow of the Eternals as a 12-episode series to start on Wii U and PC. Additional platforms might help push interest significantly, especially since many gamers consider Nintendo's latest console dead in the water, but Precursor is saving those as possible stretch goals.
The studio may need to make that move earlier than planned if the campaign is still looking desperate later on. Extra platforms are what rocketed République, which struggled with its funding on Kickstarter last May, to the finish line. The developers had previously planned an iOS-only release before relenting and promising PC and Mac versions as well.
Precursor may need to employ a similar strategy for Shadow of the Eternals to survive.
