Topic: U.S. Sales of The Conduit Near 72k in June

[NWR_Lindy]

First-person shooter outperforms first-month sales of MadWorld and The House of the Dead: Overkill.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=19041

 The NPD Group recently released their U.S. sales data for June, and Edge reports that sales of The Conduit came in just shy of 72,000 copies during the period of June 23 to July 4.  Sega's first-person shooter entered the charts at number 25 overall.    

Edge also notes that U.K. sales numbers for the week ending July 11 list The Conduit as the highest new entry for the month to date, entering the charts at number 29 overall.    

The 12-day U.S. tally eclipses the first-month numbers of Sega's The House of the Dead: Overkill (45,000 copies sold in February) and MadWorld (66,000 copies sold in March), despite the fact that The Conduit released much later in the month than the other two titles.

[Jonnyboy117]

That's a good sign. I'm not a huge fan of the game, but I do hope it sells enough to warrant a sequel, as the potential for greatness is there.

[Stratos]

I'm very interested in how well it sells in July as well. If it is even on par with this number it should be OK. Hopefully it sells around 100k in July.

[BwrJim!]

What I want, is it to become the staple summer release.. or at least kick the trend in motion again.

[NWR_Lindy]

An interesting lesson in spin here.  Looking around the web, it's hard to find this story without a negative spin attached to it.  Every place I looked said "72,000 is terrible, hardcore games don't work on Wii".  I found that to be very interesting.  For example, Edge chose to phrase The Conduit's sales as being "under 72,000", which I thought was a curious choice of words since 72,000 is a completely arbitrary number.  72,000 can be considered a success or a failure depending on what you choose to hold it up against.

When placed against HOTD:O and MW, the other two Sega yardsticks (real yardsticks, not "Here's how we wish hardcore games would sell on the Wii" yardsticks), The Conduit has actually done quite well.  Its first-month sales are 60% more than HOTD and 10% more than MadWorld in roughly half the time on store shelves.

Is the glass half-full, or half-empty?  It's all in how you choose to spin numbers.

[Stratos]

An interesting lesson in spin here.  Looking around the web, it's hard to find this story without a negative spin attached to it.  Every place I looked said "72,000 is terrible, hardcore games don't work on Wii".  I found that to be very interesting.  For example, Edge chose to phrase The Conduit's sales as being "under 72,000", which I thought was a curious choice of words since 72,000 is a completely arbitrary number.  72,000 can be considered a success or a failure depending on what you choose to hold it up against.

When placed against HOTD:O and MW, the other two Sega yardsticks (real yardsticks, not "Here's how we wish hardcore games would sell on the Wii" yardsticks), The Conduit has actually done quite well.  Its first-month sales are 60% more than HOTD and 10% more than MadWorld in roughly half the time on store shelves.

Is the glass half-full, or half-empty?  It's all in how you choose to spin numbers.

Very interesting, Lindy. Are those other sites also failing to mention it is only 9-days worth of sales? If we use that as a standard, then Conduit cummulative sales are probably about double that number right now.

[Jonnyboy117]

When placed against HOTD:O and MW, the other two Sega yardsticks (real yardsticks, not "Here's how we wish hardcore games would sell on the Wii" yardsticks), The Conduit has actually done quite well.

You don't really know that. How well it is performing, from Sega and High Voltage's perspective, is relative to the development costs. If The Conduit was considerably more expensive to produce than those other games, it could still be a disappointment even with higher raw sales numbers. We don't have enough data to make any good conclusions at this point.

[GK]

That's a good sign. I'm not a huge fan of the game, but I do hope it sells enough to warrant a sequel, as the potential for greatness is there.

Yeah if not a sequel at the very least inspire other companies to try & one up The Conduit with their own quality Wii FPS titles.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

This game is an incredible success.  It's a "gamer's game" with a "gamer's game's marketing push" that managed to be released on Wii.

[DAaaMan64]

Unless its a complete bomb, there will be sequel or a spin-off. You don't just a create an engine on only one vision, big business men are smarter than that.

[Stratos]

I just signed up for Digg and this is the first thing I dug. But there was no icon option for whatever reason.

Unless its a complete bomb, there will be sequel or a spin-off. You don't just a create an engine on only one vision, big business men are smarter than that.

They are already creating two other games using the same engine. Gladiator and Grinder. Also all their WiiWare games used this engine. Quantum3 is their staple like Crytec or Epic have their engines.

[Termin8Anakin]

I think this is great news!
I bought the game (as well as MadWorld) purely to support Sega and HVS.
I wouldn't mind trying out Gyrostarr on WiiWare, and I'm certainly interested in The Grinder. Not so much that Gladiators game though.

[Stratos]

I think this is great news!
I bought the game (as well as MadWorld) purely to support Sega and HVS.
I wouldn't mind trying out Gyrostarr on WiiWare, and I'm certainly interested in The Grinder. Not so much that Gladiators game though.

Both Gyrostarr and their Hot Rod Rally game are 'fun, but limited' from what I hear. I plan to get them eventually, but there are other WW/VC games I'd rather have more right now. Though it makes me wonder what other VC games HVS has planned for the service. I hope they learned from their early ones and have improved their methods.

[DAaaMan64]

I haven't played the Hot Rod game, but I love love Gyrostarr. It takes about 20 levels out of 50 before the challenge picks up, but its a sweet right. Plus 4 player support.

[NWR_Lindy]

You don't really know that. How well it is performing, from Sega and High Voltage's perspective, is relative to the development costs. If The Conduit was considerably more expensive to produce than those other games, it could still be a disappointment even with higher raw sales numbers. We don't have enough data to make any good conclusions at this point.

That's exactly my point.  We don't really have anything to go on as to whether or not 72,000 is good or bad.  The only comparative data point we do have - The Conduit's first-month sales vs. HOTD and MW - indicates that 72,000 is a positive number.  The negative spin surrounding this story is taken out of thin air.

[ejamer]

But we have lots of numbers to compare it against!  You could use the sales from RE5... or maybe Halo 3...  obviously The Conduit is a failure when you see that it hasn't already reached a million copies sold!
 

All the online number crunching and analysis done by fanboys ends up being pretty meaningless.  Of course, that won't stop me from giving my 2 cents.

I think that initial sales are decent - maybe better than expected - when compared to most other new IPs that come from small studios and recieve reviews filled with harsh criticsm and low scores.

So far, the reported sales numbers for The Conduit look similar to CoD:World at War... and that Wii title went on to sell well over a million copies. The Conduit might not reach those numbers over the long run, but (to be considered a "success") it might not need to.

In another comparison that might be interesting -- if not entirely useful or relevant -- The Conduit sold better than the original Killzone when that title was released on the uber-popular PS2.  Maybe it's fair to say that new IPs with some rough edges won't always top the charts?

[NWR_Lindy]

Interesting you should bring up Killzone.  If you want to see how tough it is out there for original IPs, look at the PS3.  They've relied on original IPs for the first three years of the system's life and it's killed them, regardless of the quality of the games.

[D_Average]

I wonder how Animales De La Muerte would have sold.  Pity we'll never know.....

[kraken613]

Did they ever come out and say its dead?

Its still listed on their site.

[Stratos]

I wonder how Animales De La Muerte would have sold.  Pity we'll never know.....

I'm pretty sure it's not dead unless you know something we don't. It was merely changed from WW to retail and tabled until Conduit was finished. I'm still half hoping Nintendo raises the WW limit so that they could release it on there.

[Ymeegod]

The Conduit had alot of HYPE going for it so I expected alot more sales just with the pre-orders.  Or course it did come out in June but if you compare that to Prototype which sold 400K on a system with 1/2 the userbase you'll have to wonder why?  The only answer is the genre isn't popular on a WII system.

 

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Cuz the genre has been handled poorly on the system.  It's practically not there.  Yet.

[Stogi]

I'm not sure if someone has said this or not, but since it came out in late June doesn't that bode well for the future?

[Stratos]

I'm not sure if someone has said this or not, but since it came out in late June doesn't that bode well for the future?

I think you are right, Stogi. Sales will at the very least double from this number in the next month. I'm hoping it breaks 200k, honestly.

[vudu]

Interesting you should bring up Killzone.  If you want to see how tough it is out there for original IPs, look at the PS3.  They've relied on original IPs for the first three years of the system's life and it's killed them, regardless of the quality of the games.

This article is relevant to Lindy's comments.