Wednesday, August 4, 2010
by Chris Morris
August 3 10:00 A.M.
While 2010 has been a bad year for video game software sales in general, it’s been particularly tough for some high-profile releases.
Several titles that were expected to be big sellers -- or at least impressive ones -- have fallen flat, the victim of the economy, gamers’ continued interest with other titles or just plain old bad luck.
There’s still time to recover, of course -- the year’s only half over. But while these six titles may have mostly met critical expectations, they still failed to set the sales charts ablaze.
Alan Wake
This action/horror game is hardly a flop, but its sales are nowhere near what people were expecting given its five-year development cycle and the fact that it’s made by the team that created Max Payne. The problem? Red Dead Redemption, which was released the same day. Rockstar’s western epic sucked the oxygen out of the room when it came out, dominating gamers’ time and affection. Wake never had a chance.
(Metacritic score: 83)
Blur
A new title from the team behind the Project Gotham Racing franchise seemed to be a sure thing, but this racer has been stuck in neutral since its release. What’s the problem? It could be that Blur was caught in something of a racing game blast zone, hitting the market at roughly the same time as Sony's ModNation Racers and Disney's Split/Second.
(Metacritic score: 82)
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Even a tie-in with a major Hollywood release couldn’t help the latest installment of this long-running franchise top the sales charts. While the film went on to become the highest-grossing video game movie ever, the slow-selling game was a royal disappointment.
(Metacritic score: 73-77)
Green Day Rock Band
While there’s only one month’s worth of sales data available for this latest installment in the Rock Band series, the numbers indicate that the fan base of Billie Joe Armstrong & co. prefer to listen to the punk rock trio instead of playing their songs on plastic instruments. Not helping is the still-in-transition music game genre, which tanked last year due in part to a flood of Guitar Hero titles.
(Metacritic score: 75)
Split/Second
Another victim of the gridlock of racing games that hit in mid-May, this speeder from Disney summoned up comparisons to the much-beloved Burnout series. It did nearly twice as well as Blur, but never really achieved the breakout status so many people expected it to.
(Metacritic score: 82)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
Though it’s typically a strong seller for Electronic Arts, this year’s entry in the Tiger Woods franchise didn’t even crack the Top 10 during its launch month. Sales were just 32 percent of what last year’s version sold in its first month, in fact. (To be fair, that version was initially bundled with the Wii Motion Plus peripheral.) Some believe the tumble was due to the scandal surrounding the golfer’s personal life, but Tiger hasn’t exactly been burning things up on the green lately and the Wii software market is pretty slow as well. You make the call.
(Metacritic score: 79-85)
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