The NPD results for October were released yesterday, and while the news about
NBA 2K11's successful launch was the
big story, some other sports games disappointed. To be more specific,
NHL 11,
EA Sports MMA and
Tony Hawk: Shred all struggled during the month of October, according to analyst firm Cowan and Company.
In an article
published by GamesIndustry.biz, Cowan and Company points out that
Tony Hawk: Shred sold just 3,000 units during its first month at retail. Yikes.
The
Tony Hawk franchise has struggled for a couple years now, so it's no surprise that
Shred did poorly at retail, but 3,000 copies is frighteningly low. Robomodo, the developer of the last two peripheral-based
Tony Hawk games recently underwent
staff cuts and is off the
Tony Hawk series, so it will be interesting to see how Activision tries to breathe life back into a once-dominant sports franchise.
EA Sports MMA sold 45,000 copies, which may explain why I have trouble finding anyone to play online that is anywhere close to my skill level. As has been said before, this is not entirely surprising news given the lack of a "true" license backing the title. It will be interesting to see how much of a tail there is to the
EA MMA sales because word of mouth has been strong here at
OS and on
Metacritic. Perhaps we may see a TV-style situation where a critical darling gets a second chance.
Finally, what I found to be the most interesting part of this sales analysis is that Cowan and Company places some of the lack of industry software growth on the shoulders of
NHL 11.
This seems strange to me because
NHL 11 actually was in the NPD's
top five for September 2010, and that was after it did not even break into the
top 10 during September 2009.
Source - Tony Hawk: Shred flops with only 3000 units sold in US (GamesIndsutry.biz) via Joystiq