Maddening: NPD data shows weak Dead Space, Mirror's Edge sales

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Dec 16th 2008 at 3:50PM }

It's a tough road that EA has chosen, one illustrated by the above graph from Gamasutra's recent analysis of November's North American sales results. Reliable and storied football franchise? Selling millions. New IPs and ambitious sequels? Not so much. Though Spore is a notable exception with upward of 2 million copies sold and the Valve-developed Left 4 Dead saw respectable sales on console (both are new IPs), EA's fresh ventures in Mirror's Edge and Dead Space were not rewarded by consumers nearly as much they were by reviewers.

Still, does it smack of having "failed miserably," as Gamasutra so bluntly notes? Or did these unknown quantities simply get lost in holiday shelves packed with highly anticipated, highly praised and highly recognizable properties? Highly likely. If EA's smart, it'll follow the Burnout Paradise (which, excluding PSN sales, racked up a surprisingly low 600,000 copies across two platforms) route and re-release those titles in a less deadly period.

Tags: Burnout-Paradise, Dead-Space, EA, Madden, Mirrors-Edge, NPD, Sales

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

xFenixKnightx @ Dec 16th 2008 3:54PM

People need to go out and buy Dead Space! It's fricken AWESOME, damnit!

Psycho300x @ Dec 16th 2008 4:18PM

Yeah, Seriously....DO IT. You dont know what you are missing.

Obie @ Dec 16th 2008 4:22PM

Agreed! I loved the game, highly recommended to anyone that enjoys survival horror.

nightmare452 @ Dec 16th 2008 4:25PM

Agreed. Dead Space was my GOTY and I have played and bought about 50 games this holidays alone (think every good game this past 6 months) and Dead Space was the best of em all, no offense to all other but I was super impressed.

tmacairjordan87 @ Dec 16th 2008 4:30PM

Is it really THAT good? I was not impressed at all by the demo they recently put out.

xFenixKnightx @ Dec 16th 2008 4:34PM

Agreed Nightmare. Top 3 Fav games this year were MGS4, GOW2, and Dead Space. It's just beautifully executed. The game should win awards for sound design alone.

xFenixKnightx @ Dec 16th 2008 4:47PM

Tmac

The demo is does NOT do the game justice, at all. Don't know WTF EA was thinking there. It's a must play game. That is all.

Cash @ Dec 16th 2008 4:49PM

Yes it is *that* good, and I'm shocked that the sales figures are this low.

Yeah that asteroid busting level is complete shit and I wish to god they'd release a patch fixing or totally eliminating it, but the rest of the game is just as deep and involving as Bioshock.

On a side note, these numbers don't track sales of used games do they? EB lists this game as one of their hottest items whenever I go in there, so it's gotta be selling in some manner.

kaneda @ Dec 16th 2008 4:53PM

To all you Madden fucks out there, do yourself a favor. Buy Dead Space instead and beat it. When you are finished, you can go trade it for Madden which will be $5 used by then.

kaneda @ Dec 16th 2008 4:58PM

Cash makes an excellent point. Mirror's Edge and Dead Space are both games that suffer from poor replayability among the core demographic. I think I do support developers in figuring out some way to reasonable get revenue from resales. This would be unprecedented, but there is a big difference between game sales and movie sales.

Movies are already much cheaper and benefit from wide audiences in theaters. Games have a major handicap. I think the alternative is that devs keep opting for this Madden type shit, rereleasing the same game over and over with marginal updates. I'd seriously like to see the development costs for Madden vs Dead Space. I have no doubt that Madden is more profitable, but it is not a greater achievement.

mattrob24 @ Dec 16th 2008 4:59PM

I'm playing through Dead Space on the PS3 for the second time with...

MINOR SPOILER WARNING!!!!
.
.
.
my level 6 Military Suit.

Dead Space is pretty awesome. It's my second favorite game this year, after Gears of War 2.

Duke @ Dec 16th 2008 5:02PM

This is all pretty shocking. Dead Space was just a great game all around. I had a lot of fun with it and plan on playing though it again a few times. People really should be grabbing it.

Cash @ Dec 16th 2008 5:22PM

343 Guilty Fart @ Dec 16th 2008 5:30PM

Hey, I plan on getting Dead Space as soon as I'm done with the other bajillion games first.

mismajor99 @ Dec 16th 2008 6:57PM

I'd have to disagree...Dead Space is boring as hell, only kept me on the edge of my seat for about the first 5 hours, then it felt like more of a chore. Luckily, I sold it for a little less then what I paid for it. Doom 3 was far better for it's time, as Dead Space took much from that book, and Event Horizon...and then came up with an uninspiring story.

Even still. I DON'T think games should be graded on how well they sell, that's ridiculous. Some of the best games have been the most obscure, like the Fallout series or Planescape Torment, which sold millions over time, and not immediately right away. Of course, Dead Space is no where near these games in epicness, but it's not awful either.

I think people were itching for a new IP this fall is a sea of sequels, and the hype train kept a comin'. I'm all about new IP's then rehashed sequels, but there are so many better games then Dead Space, it's hard to recommend for 60 with very little replay value at all, especially in a terrible economy where people are losing their jobs and can only afford half the games this year then last.

hunter2223 @ Dec 16th 2008 3:56PM

dooms us to a never ending cycle of yearly minor football updates.

The3rdNuisance @ Dec 16th 2008 4:02PM

Whats bad about a constant stream of minor updates to a football game? Sure, it should be about $40 tops, but aside from that, theres no real issue with it, and a good reason to do it since, as the sales figures have shown, it is a good game.

If you don't like it, fine, don't buy it. Just don't complain. Last football game I got was NFL Blitz 2003.

silverwolf761 @ Dec 16th 2008 4:08PM

"as the sales figures have shown, it is a good game."

Or... People like football and thanks to EA they have very little choice now

Vcize @ Dec 16th 2008 4:09PM

Actually, this year was the first in a while that the changes to Madden were pretty major, and worth the price of admission.

Shagittarius @ Dec 16th 2008 4:10PM

Sales doesn't really indicate "good".

Vcize @ Dec 16th 2008 4:11PM

"Or... People like football and thanks to EA they have very little choice now"

Actually, you can blaim the NFL for that, not EA. The NFL put their exclusive license up for bid, EA was just the highest bidder. If EA didn't have the exclusive license, someone else would. Either way, there'd still only be one game with the NFL license every year.

The3rdNuisance @ Dec 16th 2008 4:16PM

"Or... People like football and thanks to EA they have very little choice now"

Alot of people like the show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader" don't see that selling like hotcakes. There are more than one choice for Football games, Madden is just the licensed choice. (Blitz The League, and All Star Football)

Shagittarius @ Dec 16th 2008 4:20PM

The3rdNuisance has just recieved "Shagi's stupedest Postur of the day" award.

silverwolf761 @ Dec 16th 2008 4:28PM

Yes, there is more than one choice out there for football games, but the NFL is the highest level you can get, so why would you settle for anything else?

The 2k series lagged behind Madden in sales, but did respectable, and did better every year if I remember correctly. Now THAT was an alternative. Blitz and the others really aren't anymore, and if they vanished, I bet there would be very few people who would notice.

silverwolf761 @ Dec 16th 2008 4:33PM

"but the NFL is the highest level you can get, so why would you settle for anything else?"

*sigh* that was a really terrible way of putting it, and I meant to change it.... Too late now though.

What I mean is, they are actual teams and players at the pinnacle of professional football. Why would you want to play as anything else. You either have completely fictional teams/players in Blitz (who would care?), or, if I remember correctly, classic players and teams in the other one (whose name escapes me at the moment), which would be good for nostalgia's sake, but that's hardly the reason why people would want to keep playing

Erik Stroud @ Dec 16th 2008 4:55PM

I wish they would stop that too, and instead do 2 or 3 year cycles. A better way would be release a $10 to $15 DLC with the new rosters in those 2 years, then release the next iteration. I think then EA could actually sell the games that are truly good. (ie: Dead Space and Mirror's Edge)

kaneda @ Dec 16th 2008 5:02PM

Well, I would consider a happy medium where Madden continues to be a profitable IP so long as EA continues to invest that revenue in new and exciting, though less profitable, IPs.

Madden is the equivalent of a summer blockbuster, which funds the smaller indy flicks that win the academy awards.

Envoy @ Dec 16th 2008 3:56PM

Then you sh*t head complain that EA doesn't make good game and complain that they recycle. The reason so is because you a**holes are the one buying the recycled crap.

/rage

Haggard @ Dec 16th 2008 4:04PM

No, we who complain about EA's (usual) lack of originality or interesting titles are the ones who buy them when they come out.

Sadly, people like us probably only number a few thousand, even across the world.

copa @ Dec 16th 2008 4:11PM

As eloquent as your point is, I don't think it's spot on.

That green bar looks very long, but keep in mind that this is a nearly 20-year-old franchise, and annual sales have been DECLINING for the past few years. Simply putting all of its eggs into the EA Sports basket is not a strategy for long-term sales growth.

So why is it that new titles Mirror's Edge and Dead Space faltered, while new title Left 4 Dead (which had a fraction of the Mirror's Edge marketing budget) knocked it out of the park? One explanation is that we are all "sh*t head a**holes". The other explanation is that Left 4 Dead was a much better game.

The good news is that there is enough promise and potential in both Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, that a carefully crafted sequel to either of these titles could in fact be a sales blockbuster.

Joeshie @ Dec 16th 2008 4:45PM

I'm not sure how much advertising was spent on Mirror's Edge, but I do know that Valve plunked down a good $10 million for the L4D advertising campaign.

kaneda @ Dec 16th 2008 5:06PM

"That green bar looks very long, but keep in mind that this is a nearly 20-year-old franchise"

Not to mention that it is one of the only truly multiplatform games, spanning to even the Wii, DS, PC, and modern toaster over.

Johnny Neat @ Dec 17th 2008 9:22AM

Sadly EA milks decent games and insists on pumping out trash to the point that people fear taking a chance on them and thus Dead Space and Mirror's Edge got burned by money worried consumers this go round. I know I'm tired of EA's corporate practices and uninspired rehashing tactics and almost missed out on playing Dead Space but I played it off of a pal and I now recommend it to anyone because it is a solid game. Sooo much better in fact than the over hyped BioShock in my opinion. I killed the game through and through and have no need to spend the $30 to get it now. Sad because it should have been in my library over the weak Ubisoft Far Cry 2 which was a chance I took and lost on.

Fernando Rocker @ Dec 16th 2008 3:57PM

Dead Space is very good, and I hope Dante's Inferno is as good as Dead Space.

I think that the low sales of Dead Space and Mirror's Edge is because the lack of a multiplayer competitive mode, which seems to be very a very important feature with the 360 hardcore crowd. I did buy Dead Space, but again, I prefer the single player portion of the games and I rarely play online.

Haggard @ Dec 16th 2008 4:11PM

I agree, I tend to buy games that provide a great single-player experience or a great multiplayer experience. If a game tries to do both, it usually fails at multiplayer, and I'll spend all my time playing stuff by Valve instead.

The3rdNuisance @ Dec 16th 2008 4:11PM

Eh, thats probably not really the reason it didn't do so hot.

As much as I absolutely hate to say it, they should of waited a while to release Dead Space for the PC, or release it completely unannounced a while from now. I know 10 kids (High schoolers) that have played it, and only 2 that have bought it or even rented it. If piracy for the game remained near that level for folks my age or in college was consistent, the "loss" of sales for that game would be obscenely high.

Mirror's Edge, I'm not so sure about. Only personal reason I can see it not doing too good is because of people like me, who rented it, and told everyone they knew not to get it because the game is frustrating for no good reason.

Haggard @ Dec 16th 2008 4:16PM

Someone should make a game in which you explore a dystopian future in which piracy killed originality in gaming, and everyone is forced to play Madden and other 'safe bets' for publishers.

As you explore and learn what happened, there is a small box inset of Peter Molyneaux and Cliff Blezinski giving blowjobs for pennies, with intermittent flashing captions proclaiming "YOU DID THIS"

Spartacus @ Dec 16th 2008 6:07PM

I'm with Fernando here, I rarely play online (though I do have a Gold account) and prefer solid single player games. However, a lack of multiplayer does kill a games sales figures.

Games without a strong multiplayer mode often get traded or sold after they've been beaten as the replay value is fairly minimal (WRPG's being one of the exceptions).

So, if a studio wants to have strong sales of new IP's, they should curb reselling by offering a game that has strong replay value and/or multiplayer modes.

Both Dead Space and Mirror's Edge lacked in this department, while the latter simply wasn't even that great of a game.

Zach @ Dec 16th 2008 4:00PM

hmm... I hate sports games and hate losing to my roommate at racing games. But I have both dead space and Mirrors edge. I'm actually running time trials right now :P Looks like I'm in the minority

Bigfoot @ Dec 16th 2008 4:00PM

I guess they should have called it Dead Space Madden 09 to increase sales.

:(

FeaturePreacher @ Dec 16th 2008 4:00PM

Well maybe this means that Mirror's Edge 2 will give the protagonist the ability to throw an opponent while they're dazed from a hit, use an opponent as a human shield, use handguns and sub-machine guns while retaining the agility that existed without guns, and have an online multiplayer.

Haggard @ Dec 16th 2008 4:05PM

IT'S THE COLE TRAIN BABY!

Roto13 @ Dec 16th 2008 5:19PM

I don't think Mirror's Edge 2 will focus on guns any more than Mirror's Edge 1 (that kind of misses the point of the game, tbh) but I'm sure it'll improve the combat and other stuff.

See, this is why I bought Mirror's Edge (or, rather, had someone buy it for me for Christmas since I haven't been able to find it anywhere around here xP). I want there to be a Mirror's Edge 2, because I think Mirror's Edge 2 would probably be amazing. New ideas don't always come out perfectly right away. A lot of the time, they need some tweaking before they're ready to be awesome. Portal probably wouldn't have turned out so great if Narbacular Drop hadn't come first.

baby sea tuna @ Dec 16th 2008 4:03PM

Shh, don't tell EA but (time trials aside) Mirror's Edge was kind of bad.

soviet chick @ Dec 16th 2008 4:13PM

Hey, EA... I really, really, really, really, really, really loved Mirror's Edge, and I hope those whispers of it being a mostly bad game haven't dampened your spirit too much. My personal GOTY don'cha know (I know right? You'll probably be even more disappointed when I say my runner up was Prince of Persia!).

Your former hater,
El - XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

John (XBL: mrmobado) @ Dec 16th 2008 4:03PM

I would have bought Dead Space if a friend hadn't given it to me. Mirrors Edge is a rent for me, at least.

But I do wish developers would start realizing that I play games all year round, not just around November. I still don't understand why more games aren't coming out in late spring/early summer?

Capcom made a smart move, in my opinion, planning to release RE5 in March. Do you know of any other games coming out in March? Didn't think so.