Presumably Suda51 doesn’t. Nor does Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Or at least they don’t if June’s NPD numbers are anything to go by.
As it turns out, Child of Eden seems to have tanked pretty hard. It’s currently only available on Xbox 360 with an impending PlayStation 3 release sure to give it a slight sales boost at worst, but even on a single format charting at number 83 on the back of 34,000 units shifted is worrying. Some of you may remember that our iron fisted general and supreme commander of the good ship Tap was quite pleased with Child of Eden, but his voice is a lonely whisper amongst this months retail wasteland. Such numbers also beg the question of just what the hell 15 million Kinect owners are actually doing. I mean for crying out loud, how much mileage are you people getting from Kinect Adventures?
Worse still however is Shadows of the Damned. For those who haven’t heard of it, which is pretty much everybody thanks to EA’s marketing budget of £nothing, Shadows of the Damned is a third person shooter from the minds of Suda51 and Shinji Mikami. Proving that having Resident Evil 4, Vanquish, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Killer 7 and No More Heroes on your collective CV means nothing without proper publisher support, Shadows of the Damned limped to a desperately poor 24,000 sales in June across both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. True story; I know one person who owns Shadows of the Damned. He rather likes it, but without his impressions I genuinely would never have know of its existence.
Time to re-assess this silly flat $60 price point?
In other notable sales news, a 3DS game sold some copies. Unsurprisingly that game was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, selling around 280,000 game storage-disc-things and becoming the first 3DS game to chart inside the top ten. I’m currently playing through the game for the very first time and have to say I think it’s rather excellent. At least us 3DS owners appreciate a good game when one does arrive. Not like you Kinect owners with your Joy Rides and your Kinectimals.
Email the author of this post at matc@tap-repeatedly.com
I’m not sure how much this singular batch of sales figures speaks to whether or not the $60 price point is to blame (though it’s probably unwise), but certainly I think this demonstrates that consumers are not as taken by gimmicks as the gaming industry wants to think.
I mean, the big things on the market lately have been the Kinect and the 3DS, both essentially gimmick hardware, and despite a lot of people buying into each initially I think it’s clear that there just isn’t a lot to draw them back in after the initial gee-whiz period.
Right now there’s just not enough oomph to some of these titles to compare with well-advertized, traditional-style gaming offerings like LA Noire and inFAMOUS 2.
Geez, 34,000 and 24,000 respectively? That’s beyond horrendous.