Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
An investor note from massive financial services firm The Cowen Group indicates that the newest
entries in PlayStation’s God of War franchise and Microsoft’s Gears of War franchise may
have both underperformed significantly.
The Cowen Group’s investment note predicts that Gears of War: Judgment may have only
sold 425,000 copies in the United States, a far cry from the 2+ million Gears of War
3 sold in its first month back in 2011.
Likewise, God of War: Ascension is predicted to have sold only 360,000 copies, far short
of the 1.1 million copies God of War 3 sold when it launched in early 2010.
This is especially distressing news for Sony and Microsoft considering the enormous and
still growing install base of both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The Cowen Group concludes, quote: “Two historically strong franchises appear to have significantly
underperformed.”
These are merely sales predictions designed to help the Cowen Group’s investors. We’ll
have to wait for official numbers to come out this Thursday, when NPD is expected to
reveal American hardware and software sales for March, 2013.
But, if true, this goes to show how powerful true numbered sequels are. In both of these
cases, God of War and Gears of War opted to go with side stories instead of making the
proper fourth entry in the series.
It’s also interesting to note that, if these numbers are accurate, both of these games
were blown away by Tomb Raider, which we know has sold around 3.5 million copies so far.
Official NPD sales will be in this Thursday. Until then, stay tuned to IGN.