Sales Breakdown for '06

    There's an interesting articleover at Next-Gen covering the sales rankings for the top 100 games in North America. Everyone loves lists but this was actually kind of surprising (at least to me). Most notable was Prey's position on the list. Even more interesting was some of the top sellers. I knew movie tie in games did well but I didn't think it was on this scale. There's a few other games I wouldn't expect to see on the list, like Black, which I assumed had just slipped under everyones radar.

    Not sure how often information is openly available like this, I see the odd NDP sales breakdown on news sites but this one gives a good sense of what a year for the industry is like, at least to those of us in the dark

    If you're too lazy to read the article here's the direct link for Top 100 List.

    Cool list. I just gave it a quick eye couse im at work. Ill look clooser when i get home. Allthough i have one thing against this. Its only North America, i have followed the Swedish lists but what i really want is a world list. That would be neat. Thx for the link!

    Because they're from 2006 plus its only in North America

    650k for Blood Money, not too bad I guess. Was the best selling game in the UK for a couple of weeks after its release, so I guess it overall sold quite well. Last number I heard was 1.6m and that was quite a while ago.

    I'm thinking these figures are just as inaccurate as usual sales reports, which are largely pretty inaccurate as they only factor in sales during a certain (launch) period, ignore certain distribution methods, regions, or completely discount certain publishers as they don't release their sales data (I believe at least Valve falls into this category).

    Still, they give a good general idea of how well a game is doing in the general sense. Just don't rely on these numbers for any kind of solid evidence of a game selling better than another.

    Quote from skdr

    Where's HL2 EP1? I remember they announced that it sold very well.

    Valve is a privately held company I believe, so they aren't obligated to reveal stuff like that. Plus these are probably all sales from retail and do not contain any copies sold from digital distribution.

    There's also a big difference between sell-in and sell-out figures. Sell-in are the number of copies ordered by retailers, and sell-out are the actual customer sales. Many companies announce sell-in figures to boost themselves up, but in reality they may be sent back half the retailers stock

    Congrats evert, phill and everyone at grin GRAW is one of the top selling games. (but they are counting both pc and xbox versions together, aren't they completely different games ?)

    Quote from FrieChamp

    6. Gears of WarXbox 360 Exclusive

    1.8 million

    Didn't they just announce that it sold like 3 million copies or from when are these numbers?

    This list only lists the sales figures from 2006. So anything after 2006 is not taken into account there...

    Quote from kleinluka

    This list only lists the sales figures from 2006. So anything after 2006 is not taken into account there...

    I think that the sales only include North America is the big factor here, but anyway - thanks everyone for the heads up!

    Quote from skdr

    Where's HL2 EP1? I remember they announced that it sold very well.

    At the beginning of the article, it says they're not considering expansion packs and other non "full price" titles. The Burger King games would definitely be on there but they're not for the same reason.

    Guess I should comment since NPD data is my business...

    This data is not exact from NPD's estimates, but rather "grossly" rounded. I doubt NPD would allow them to show any more detail than they did. Thus, you see them saying Madden sold 6.5 million units across all platforms in North America...

    I have access to all NPD data (though I cannot really share too much here) but that 6.5 million units for Madden seems higher than the real number. 6.5 million may be the sell-in number at retail, but NPD's sell-through number for full year 2006 is definitely lower than that.

    THQ's Cars, the list's #2 title, was reported to be 2.6 million units accross all platforms. Disregarding the Cars PC sku, this seems in line with NPD's actual numbers, especially since the PC sku was considered a budget title, though it did sell a nice amount by itself (thank you Pixar license stength).

    So take these numbers with a grain of salt and realize many of them are "not exactly accurate". NPD's numbers in general are pretty accurate, especially for console games. PC games get a little more wacky because the % of digital downloads is growing, especially for Steam releases products. Nevertheless, the PC numbers are still fairly good, at least for the retail component.

    As for this list, consider it a good indication of the order of magnitude and rank order of sales.

    Quote from Fletch

    Top PS3 game: Resistence - #80Top Wii game: Zelda - #11

    Suck. It. Sony.

    Nah, actually Night Round Fight 3 is on #10 and it is also for the PS3...

    Quote from Sindwiller

    Nah, actually Night Round Fight 3 is on #10 and it is also for the PS3...

    I'm referring to exclusive/primary system titles, otherwise Madden wins every time. Also, Resistence was the #1 seller for PS3 last year (excluding Madden), so Fight Night isn't even relevant in terms of comparative sales numbers.

    There is a family guy game, and it sucks? hows that possible? lol

    They didn't even tried to make it decent:

    [Blocked Image: http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/5237/familyguyyb3.jpg]

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