I find May’s sales figures for Alan Wake, Blur and Split/Second in the US very concerning.

You may very well say “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” but looking at the numbers presented by sales tracking group NPD, one can’t help but feel a little irked. Three seemingly triple-A games all failing to scrape together over 150 000 units sold each, and less than 300 000 sales between them… that’s concerning.

The fact that each game released in the same month doesn’t help. The fact that two of these games (Blur and Split/Second) were pitched to the mass market as ‘similar’ helps even less. And the fact that all three games were up against a titan of a title in the form of Red Dead Redemption, all jostling for gamers’ hard-earned cash within 7 days of one another… well, that’s just plain hard luck.

Add to the mix a list of other anticipated titles released during the month of May, including Lost Planet 2, UFC Undisputed 2010, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sand and Super Mario Galaxy 2, and you’ve got one of the busiest release months (if not the busiest month) ever witnessed outside of a holiday period.

What do the numbers say?

Alan Wake, releasing on May 18th in the US, sold 145 000 units for the month. Split/Second, also releasing on May 18th in the US, sold 86 000 units. Red Dead Redemption, also releasing on May 18th in the region, sold over 1.5 million units.

Blur, releasing at the tail end of May, on the 25th, was given only five days to record sales, so it ended up with 31 000 units sold for the month.

And these games aren’t hated either (well, especially not Red Dead Redemption, but we’re not talking about that right now). If you absolutely have to look at Metacritic, you can see that Split/Second has an average score of 82, Blur also has a score of 82 and Alan Wake an average of 83 (which is criminal, but anyways…).

This very site, El33tonline, enjoyed all three games to varying degrees, so it’s not down to the quality of the games, but rather a crowded release month and an unfortunate pairing of ‘similar’ titles.

Is it more complicated than that? Even if the games were garbage, but released in a quiet month, I’m quite convinced that clever marketing and hype would have pushed the titles’ sales to at least a few hundred thousand apiece.

As it stands, however, the respective publishers and developers are going to need to pick up sales in the coming months with extra support and downloadable content – a strategy Alan Wake developers Remedy committed to before the release of its game.

So while the reason behind these titles’ poor sales may seem logical, it doesn’t make them any less concerning.

You can read El33tonline’s review of Alan Wake, Blur and Split/Second to see what we thought of these titles.

Source: MCV