The NDP Group has released the retail (ie, non-digital, bricks and mortar only) retail figures for game sales so far this year. If there's one thing to be taken away from the list of top ten selling games, it's that releasing the third game in a series is one way to make a fucktonne of money.
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Diablo III, Blizzard Entertainment
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Activision
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Mass Effect 3, EA
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda
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Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, Activision
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Battlefield 3, EA
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Max Payne 3, Rockstar Games
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Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Ubisoft
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Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Sega
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Saint's Row: The Third, THQ
It's great to see a PC only title take out the number one slot, though a little less exciting that it's the deeply flawed Diablo III. Then again, the amount of pre-order hype the game garnered would be responsible for a lot of those sales. Then again (again), I wonder how many of those sales might be from botters...
Otherwise, it's threes pretty much all round, with six out of ten being the third installments of popular franchises; seven, if you count Assassins Creed, but I just don't know how to count them. Interestingly, the bulk of those titles aren't even 2012 releases - only Diablo III, Mass Effect 3 and Max Payne 3 came out this year.
The NDP Group also released stats that retail sales have dropped by 19 per cent. All you need to do is look back at the GAME shutdowns, to know that retail game stores are struggling, but given the impact of everything from digital distribution to easy access to mobile games via phone and tablet, it's plain that folks are probably buying more games than ever before.
It's just not going into storefronts.
