Weekly Analysis - Uncharted 2 sells 830,000 as Wii tops DS
by Brett Walton, posted on 22 October 2009 / 12,843 Views
Brett Walton
22nd October 2009
The big game this week was undoubtedly Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. After posting some of the strongest reviews of the year (9.2 on VGChartz) a lot was expected of the title and it did not disappoint. With week one sales of over 830,000 units it becomes the 5th fastest-selling PS3 title to date, after Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 5 (which had a far stronger start in Japan) and FIFA 10 (estimating 90,000 sales for the Americas and Japanese launches as well as the 795,000 launch in Europe and other regions).
Moving on to hardware, all formats saw small decreases this week with the exception of Wii and PS3. PS3 hardware was up 19% on the release of Uncharted 2 while Wii saw a 4% increase as the effect of the price cut and start of the holiday season begins to kick in. Expect hardware sales to level off and begin to slowly rise over the next 5 weeks before things really start to get interesting as the holiday boosts begin to be felt.
Year-on-year trends are really starting to look far more healthy than a couple of months ago, the various price cuts and new model launches have helped to offset the declines we have been seeing earlier in the year. That said, while DS and Wii are only down a little on 2008, PS3 is actually the only format to see an increase over 2008 levels this week. With a stronger holiday lineup in 2009 vs 2008, I certainly expect Wii and DS to get close to their holiday sales last year, PS3 to be up around 30% and Xbox360 down about 20%. PSP and PS2 are really beginning to slow down now – PSP Go should help to reinvigorate PSP sales in Japan to some extent although as with America and Europe I don’t see it having much of a sustained boost to PSP hardware sales and so I expect both formats to be down over 40% over the holidays.
Brutal Legend sold over 200,000 units this week (PS3 and Xbox360) – solid sales but slightly below expectations, while Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games launched well below the level set by 2007’s Summer Games title, but will undoubtedly see strong sales through the holidays and well into 2010. Whether it can exceed the 11.5 million sales of the original title remains to be seen though.
The biggest release next week is PES 2010 in Europe, the 2009 version sold 950,000 across PS2, PS3 and Xbox360 in the first week and although reviews have not been strong for PES 2010 it has a good shot at clearing one million copies in week one. Borderlands, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 and Bakugan: Battle Brawlers should all see strong starts as well.
As always, the full data will be posted on VGChartz in the next few hours so be sure to check the charts out:
Worldwide
Americas
Japan
Others
