The video game sales rundown
It’s the worst nightmare of the games journalist: Everything is out already. There’s nothing left to overhype!
I guess now the only thing left to do is see which game is winning in sales. Or you could play them, but where’s the fun in that? Let’s go to the charts.
Gears of War 2 came out swinging at the beginning of the month, and is working on cracking 2 million copies sold. That was enough to put it into the top ten for the year in only a couple of weeks.
As if to say “Pssh, that’s nothing,” Blizzard announced that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft sold 2.8 million in 24 hours
And as if to say “Pssh, THAT’S nothing,” Nintendo continued destroying everyone else with titles with Wii games that aren’t even new for the holiday season. Wii Sports is up to 638k for the month, 7.5 million for the year and over 16 million for its lifetime, easily dominating the yearly chart for the second time in a row. That’s crazy! The game comes with the system!
For the year, the much-hyped Grand Theft Auto IV takes second place if you count its PS3 and Xbox 360 incarnations together. Second place is Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers Brawl, followed by Mario Kart Wii, then Wii Play and Wii Fit. I mean, damn. That’s some market domination right there.
Gasting my gimleted eye over the rest of the charts, I see Guitar Hero: World Tour is doing all right for itself, but it has a ways to go before it catches up to the install base of the various Rock Bands.
Fallout 3 is coming along, but I wonder how many of its sales were through Steam, and thus possibly not reported on the charts.
Valkyria Chronicles opened to relatively piddly sales in the U.S., though it was bolstered by its previously strong sales in Japan. That’s too bad. Valkyria Chronicles is an underdog that I wanted to see break big.
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