Alan Wake 2 Is Remedy’s Fastest-Selling Title at 1.3 Million Units

Mary Kenney, associate narrative director at Insomniac Games, has discussed the current online discussion surrounding narrative development and consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc.

In a rare move, Remedy Entertainment has lowered the minimum PC system requirements for Alan Wake 2. The unexpected change arrived as part of the game's latest patch that Alan Wake 2 players can download as of March 6.

New Alan Wake 2 PC system requirements were shared online today by Remedy Entertainment as a new patch optimizing rendering for older GPUs went live.

Alan Wake 2 is a game that fans waited years to see released into the marketplace. It’s also a game that Remedy Entertainment was partial to seeing created. However, after going through a few other projects, the studio managed to get a sequel into the marketplace. If you’re a fan of the first game, then chances are you already played through the sequel. But if your PC was holding you back from enjoying this game, we have good news. 

Alan Wake 2's hefty system requirements shocked many PC gamers when they were announced last year. The requirements noted that you needed at least an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or an AMD Radeon RX 6600 GPU to run the game at 1080p / 30 frames per second (FPS), with no support for older GPUs such as Nvidia's GTX 10-series. Roughly four months after its release, Remedy has released a new patch that lowers the minimum PC system requirements and allows older PC gaming rigs to run the game.

Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2 has received an update, and while it doesn’t add the long-awaited Photo Mode (coming in Spring), it does adjust the minimum PC requirements. Or the GPU requirements, at least.

When it launched last October, Alan Wake 2 was noted as a superb follow-up to its cult Xbox 360 predecessor. Visually, it was something to behold. However, being quite a graphically demanding game meant people with older hardware were left out—until now.

Ahead of launching, Alan Wake 2 made the news because it required graphics cards with hardware support for DirectX 12 Ultimate's Mesh Shaders feature. That left unsupported GPUs like NVIDIA's GTX 1000 series and AMD's RX 5000 Series in the dust.

Alan Wake 2 is a wild ride in nearly every sense of the word, and to match the game's oddball energy, composer Petri Alanko used some, err, unconventional 'toys' to bring the nightmarish soundtrack to life. 

Today, Remedy announced the acquisition of the full rights to the Control franchise from publisher 505 Games for €17 million, which is basically what the publisher had paid for the development of Control 2 and codename Condor to date. 505 Games will remain the publisher of the original Control through a transition period that will end on December 31, 2024.

After 13 long years, Remedy’s Alan Wake finally received a sequel, and it has been a success, managing to sell a million units by December 2023.

Speedrunners usually skip anything in games that can shave valuable seconds off their runs - from cutscenes to entire levels - but one record chaser sacrificed precious time to perform Alan Wake 2's now-iconic musical number.