Break-out Sales Surprise of 2017 - Article
by Craig S , posted on 09 January 2018 / 8,701 Views
It's a testament to the current strength of the gaming marketplace that this year's four shortlisted titles for Break-out Sales Surprise of 2017 cover three different platforms (one of which is brand new), two firm platform exclusives, and four different genres (including the often anaemic console strategy genre), and they amount to an absolutely enormous combined sales total well in excess of 30 million units.
The Shortlist:
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Nier: Automata
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Horizon Zero Dawn
The Winner (Winner, Chicken Dinner):
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Could it really have gone to anything else? PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds seemingly came out of nowhere, at least for most gamers, and yet it was master of all it surveyed in 2017. From dominating the Steam player stats charts, to shifting over 27 million copies on the platform according to estimates from SteamSpy, and already clearing several million on Xbox One in less than a month, PlayerUknown's Battlegrounds is setting records left, right, and centre. It's not just been the sales surprise of 2017, it's a front-runner for sales surprise of the generation so far.
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No matter if you love or hate it PUBG was the only choice to win in this category, It wasn't expected to do anything and has become the highest selling game in PC history within only 9 months.
Well deserved. The game came out of no where and it has smashed records on Steam and thats not easy to do when your competing with games like DOTA2.
More patches please and i might jump on the band wagon
Weird choices. Is Mario + Rabbids on the list because it underperformed sales wise? Counts that as a surprise? Horizon is a game by one of the major Sony studios. Great sales for sure but I don't see a surprise either. Nier did a bit over a million. Again where is the surprise? Why not add Cuphead which did 2m in 3 months. Hell ARMS is a bigger surprise than most of the games here.
Played a few games, had some fun with friends. Definitely a breakout game in sales for sure.
Horizon should not be on this list.
Did anyone expect it to bomb.
I think we all knew it would sell millions.
Speaking as a big Sony guy, for some reason everybody underplays the potential sales of PS4 exclusives. Not in a negative way, people just don't seem to think they'll perform as well as they tend to.
Even if what you say is true.
There are still Plenty of better items to put on this list.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands,
Middle-earth: Shadow of War,
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe,
Assasin's Creed: 2017,
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice,
Divinity: Original Sin 2,
Hollow Knight,
Cuphead (eh),
All of these, deserve to be on this list.
Most of them, more than H:ZD
I was mostly agreeing with you, keep in mind. My comment was more talking about the "why" of Sony titles ending up performing beyond what people expect, which is probably how we get a AAA PS exclusive pushing 4m being a "surprise."
That said, I guess one could argue that because it's Guerilla, maybe there were doubts about Horizon (I certainly had some!). Most of what you listed has an argument to be above it, I agree - except that MK8D's sales are absolutely not surprising or a breakout, though. Mario Kart, without exception, sells like crack! Even on the backs of Wii U double dippers alone it would easily break 2m in 2017, and that's ignoring all the Switch owners that didn't have a Wii U.
MK8D is only surprising for a port.
And only in that vacuum.
Horizon looked great, and had a huge marketing push, and is a very marketable product.
Even if the game was borderline trash, it probably would have sold over 4 million LT.
Since the game is apparently good - great it may reach 10m+ LT.
It may be hard to remember but pre-launch almost no one expected HZD to sell this well. In the thread I link at the end, out of the 19 people I count giving predictions, only 3 people said at least 6m units, so 85% greatly underestimated, and in reality it will end up a fair bit higher than 6m.
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=226075&page=10
Just because its popular doesn’t mean its good
Thank the lords its actually a good game.
Rocky, you need to chill out a bit. The game was made popular with a combo of word of mouth, Twitch and general sites talking about the game. more than 30m people care about the game, which says something. Beforehand, hardly anyone cared, so Bluehole did something right to gain 30m people's attention.
Why are Horizon and Mario on this list? HZD was a AAA game developed by a massive studio. And Mario is just Mario, a well established Nintendo mascot and gaming character that has been selling games for decades. Strange choices.
Persona 5 or Nier Automata in my opinion.
