Break-Out Sales Surprise of 2016 - Article

by Craig S , posted on 12 January 2017 / 9,552 Views

Break-out Sales Surprise is always one of the more enjoyable awards to decide upon each year. Many users on the site, including staff, like to follow our software sales estimates over the course of the year and often a handful of titles really break expectations and stand out in that respect.

This year the long list of titles for this award really divided into two categories: the first were titles that were expected to sell multiple millions, and duly did, but went above and beyond even the highest of estimates (e.g. Pokémon Sun & Moon and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End). The second were titles with much more modest ambitions that pleasantly surprised with their performances. We included both sets of games for voting and both the community and staff felt that it was the latter group of titles that really deserved to be the focal point of the award and so in future we will gear the longlist more towards such titles.

The Shortlist:

Ratchet & Clank

Minecraft WiiU

Farming Simulator 17

No Man's Sky

The Winner:

Farming Simulator 17

Farming Simulator has always pushed decent figures on PC, but this year not only did it perform really well on PC both at retail and digitally, it also started to really make its presence felt on consoles as well. With combined sell-through at over 1 million copies in its first month of release, Farming Simulator 17 is selling twice as fast as its predecessor and is on track to become the best-selling entry in series history. These milestones helped make it our Break-out Sales Surprise of 2016.