New game releases disappoint in the US
Halo: Reach, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Metroid: Other M stumble in first month
New software releases in September have not met expectations in the US, according to Cowan & Company's Doug Creutz.
Microsoft's Halo: Reach sold 3.3 million units during the month, below Cowan's 3.75 million estimate, while Activision's Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, only managed "a fairly dreadful" 86,000 units in its first five days.
He also singled out Nintendo's Metroid: Other M as missing expectations, in the first month that The NPD Group stopped releasing detailed data on individual sales.
Released in August, EA's Madden NFL 11 slowed down in its second month on the market, with unit sales down 11 per cent, with Creutz adding "we continue to expect cumulatively flat year-on-year performance for the franchise through December."
There were "few major surprises at the publishers" during September, said Cowan & Company - including PC software, Activision Blizzard sales were down 41 per cent, EA down 42 per cent, Take-Two down 170 per cent and THQ down 25 per cent compared to the same month last year.
While October is expected to be a stronger month, Creutz lowered full calendar year expectations to be down 5 per cent on 2009.
So what if Halo: Reach released...it's the same as all the others (my opinion only)
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 60$ for a new set list of songs? What did they expect?
Innovation sells not recycling titles and diluting the IP. The only region that can release with good numbers the same title is Japan...
Uhh, almost forgot, you can create on the same IP several titles but innovate them, bring something new...release a game in 2-3 even 4 years! Not on a year
to year basis.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Razvan-Andrei Safta on 15th October 2010 11:35am
PS: while posting my comment i did not take in to consideration sport franchise titles like FIFA, MADDEN etc
Wait, what?! Unless I'm reading this very wrong (and it is Friday!), this means their sales were over 100% down on this time last year - which surely isn't possible...?!
Anyway, I would be interested to see how Halo: Reach's sales compared to Halo 3's over the same period. Also what's interesting is how these continued months of decline tie-in with NPD data no longer being freely available. I wonder how much of that was down to publishers' requests.
3.3 million sales for Halo Reach... what a monstrous failure
Bioshock is a good game but on the xbox...not PC
PS: i would love to see STALKER on the 360
But then I am not part of the industry, so maybe I am only talking from my perspective and not from the publisher's perspective here.