NPD chronicles 100K debut for Riddick's Assault on Dark Athena

by Ludwig Kietzmann { May 15th 2009 at 4:10PM }

Despite staying well outside the game media's chronicles of ridicule, Starbreeze's Vin Diesel star vehicle (note: not the one that's about him driving vehicles) failed to appear among the NPD group's list of top sellers for April. According to the NPD's Anita Frazier, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena sold 100,000 units across all platforms during its debut month. Oddly, the NPD data includes figures for March, even though the official North American release was on April 7th.

Since Starbreeze's previous effort, gothic comic adaptation The Darkness, broke into the top ten in June 2007, Riddick's performance may seem disappointing, especially in the face of positive word-of-mouth and a relatively quiet release month. Without a new tie-in film to generate buzz, the impetus fell on Atari's marketing -- and it seems to have failed to convince gamers that Vin Diesel still has some gas left in him.

Atari hadn't responded to our calls at the time of publishing, nor our suggestion to feed Vin a spicy burrito.

Tags: atari, chronicles-of-riddick, fps, npd, starbreeze

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ScottG13 @ May 15th 2009 4:14PM

Its too bad. It was a solid outing.

I actually enjoyed Wheelman quite a bit. Gameflied and beat it this past week. Dumb fun. Nothing wrong with that. Especially during the Spring Drought™.

golobulus @ May 15th 2009 4:21PM

i got nothing.

damnreds @ May 15th 2009 4:34PM

i like tacos y burritos

Ghen @ May 15th 2009 9:16PM

y churros y ben afleck.

tmacairjordan87 @ May 15th 2009 4:22PM

"Riddick's performance may seem disappointing"

Not if you compare it to Excitebots*. Then it seems like it did amazing!

*you guys had to have known I was going to get my fun out of that :P

Cody @ May 15th 2009 4:55PM

Did you just compare an arcade racer with a first person shooter?

tmacairjordan87 @ May 15th 2009 4:58PM

*whoosh*

That went right over your head huh Cody. If you still don't get it, read my whole comment and not the part that made your inner nintendo fanboy nerdrage.

Jason Statham (Aka Vegeta) @ May 15th 2009 5:16PM

I don't think you really need to be a nintendo fanboy to see how extremely lame that was.

Billop @ May 15th 2009 4:27PM

Shame, I cant understand why not many people are buying. Its my fave PS3 game of 2009. Yes even more so than the colourless Killzone 2 and the slightly boring Resident Evil 5.

jacob.buehler @ May 15th 2009 4:29PM

Resident Evil 5 was amazing, it has tons of replay and multiplayer value as well. Assault on Dark Athena was a great title too, probably just too hard for the new age of dur dee durr gamer crowd, but they didn't compromise in it's design for that, which I commend.

Moris @ May 15th 2009 5:06PM

*sigh* Oh RE... look at how much you've changed :( No longer a survival horror game. It is now an Action game no matter how you look at it :P

Levi @ May 15th 2009 9:29PM

I hear you on RE5. 4 was so much better. Moris, I liked the survival horror days of the series better myself. I agree with you, they are purely action games now. I had that argument with a friend, and he says the old games aren't as much survival horror as the new ones, because the old ones didn't scare him. Weakest argument ever. RE1 and RE2 are the definition of survival horror.

tenor77 @ May 15th 2009 4:29PM

Any wonder why Atari's in trouble?

inkwonkim2020 @ May 20th 2009 11:19AM

indeed...atari betta hope that ghostbusters game does well...but i dont think it will.

not relevent to the core gamer demo...

TheLionOfAzzalle @ May 15th 2009 4:32PM

It's a horrible game..that's why it's not selling. All the hype in the world can't save what was obviously gonna be a mediocre outing...

Crusty Magic @ May 15th 2009 4:35PM

Um...no?

It's because Atari as well as a lot of other companies seem to fail at marketing these lesser appreciated titles sometimes.

Levi @ May 15th 2009 9:30PM

Dude it was a great game. Too bad too many kids nowadays are far too caught up in console wars and graphics engines to check out the games that don't take 99% of the spotlight, because they miss out on great games like this. Double max security was an awesome part of the game. The whole game was awesome.

Except for those damn annoying creatures in the caves.

db @ May 15th 2009 4:35PM

This game needs to be marketed as a heterosexual couple game. Women love Diesel's voice and would endure you playing it for hours and ultimately realize in-game fantasies from which you will reap the benefits.

Levi @ May 15th 2009 9:31PM

Fuck... EVEN I love Vin Diesel's voice... And if you look at my avatar, I'm clearly a young male wearing a cape.

kentuckyfried @ May 16th 2009 6:59AM

LOL

As much as people like to hate on him and his acting, I liked his role in Iron Giant.

j.howlett @ May 15th 2009 4:45PM

i haven't gotten the game yet because i wasn't too good at the first time around. i plan to get it later on, maybe even with wheelman, when it's cheaper and i'm not enjoying something else. oh and the trophies are ridiculous.

Petebot330 @ May 15th 2009 5:30PM

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I saw ZERO commercials for this game. OK, maybe one, but I'm not sure. Perhaps word of mouth will help this game out?

Is the darkness any good? It kind of looked like a second-tier FPS with a gimmick to me.

Billop @ May 15th 2009 5:54PM

The Darkness is very good. Very immersive, it stays in first person, even when you kiss your girlfriend (that was amazing at the time as most games went to 3rd person). It does go to 3rd person when you talk to people but other than that its immersive. The ending was...meh though, they set it up for a sequel that never happened

Levi @ May 15th 2009 9:33PM

I remember when no games had commercials. Still, now that games ARE getting commercials, I feel like there aren't enough. I've seen Killzone 2 and Wheelman recently... that's about it. Maybe they could have thrown a "Check out Vin's other game, Riddick" at the end of the Wheelman commercial.

Vcize @ May 15th 2009 11:33PM

The Darkness was awesome.

And that cutscene at the end of chapter 1 was probably the best and most heart-wrenching I've ever seen in a game.

Robert @ May 16th 2009 10:12AM

Wow Levi - how old are you? Games have had commercials as long as I can remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om84Zc4-KcQ

aaron @ May 17th 2009 3:40AM

I saw plenty of commercials for Riddick...all during male-oriented shows on basic cable including Sci-Fi Channel.

BUGz @ May 15th 2009 8:17PM

in America we tend to avoid Muscular Men, it's not good for our self esteem since we are lazy and love playing video game's all day.

Levi @ May 15th 2009 9:35PM

I never played Escape from Butcher Bay when it came out a few years ago, cause I never had an XBox, so I was super pumped about this game. I loved it. I put it down after finishing Escape and haven't started dark Athena yet. I've heard too many things about Dark Athena that say it's not as good as Escape, so I'm hesitant to ruin the experience.

kentuckyfried @ May 16th 2009 7:03AM

^ same with me. In fact, were it not for ps3fanboy (or as it ign?), I wouldn't have picked up Dark Athena. I had no idea that Butcher's Bay, which I had heard so many great things about in the past 2 years, was also included on the disk. When I found out, I was really excited to run out and finally have a chance to play it...

...except that maybe I was tired or something, but I didn't find the first 10 minutes very engaging. I haven't given up on it, I just need to get back to it after my first run-thru of Resistance 2's/GTA4's SP campaign(s). What did you like about Butcher's Bay the most?

Robert @ May 16th 2009 10:20AM

I don't understand all of the negative reviews about Dark Athena. I never played Butcher Bay on the Xbox so I was super excited about this release as well. I just played right through both and I thought that Dark Athena was the superior experience and it seemed like a sequel to me (as opposed to an expansion pack like most reviews seem to indicate).

SuicideNinja @ May 16th 2009 12:17PM

I really like the parts of Butcher Bay I played, but by the time I got to it the 360 was already out. I'm really interested in playing this remake and sequel, but I know I don't have enough time for it.

I guess the upside is that if it's not selling well, it will go down in price faster. I'm done playing fully price and then not end up playing it until it costs $20. LOL

t_m @ May 17th 2009 3:58AM

I don't remember it having good word of mouth. I remember it having pretty terrible word of mouth and pretty poor reviews. The basic consensus seemed to be "Butcher Bay is good, if you haven't played it. the rest sucks".
Plus wasn't there a DRM debacle too?

given that you can pick up butcher bay much cheaper, and it still looks pretty good, I can believe this didn't sell that great.