Estimates Show 50% Dropoff Week to Week
Meant to celebrate much of Sonic fandom with its numerous extras and fan art features, there may not be much to celebrate with Sonic and the Black Knight when it comes to sales figures.
But that’s only if preliminary estimates from VGChartz.com hold and are correct. The site has been criticized for how it tallies sales figures, and in particular how it does so independent from NPD Group, which does not release actual sales numbers outside of top sellers or consoles.
The website shows that, in North America, sales for the game’s first week topped 32,522 units. That’s not bad, all things considered–the same website shows critically acclaimed MadWorld only sold 57,553 units its launch week, and SBK actually outsold House of the Dead: Overkill when comparing launch week data for the two.
But it’s second week sales that may be of concern. VGChartz shows a considerable dropoff in North American sales to just 16,247 copies sold, a drop of fifty percent. Despite such a fall, that number is still a better figure than some of Sega’s other top-ticket fare on the market right now. But if the pattern holds, SBK may have big problems living up to the sales standard of the first title in the Sonic Storybook series, Sonic and the Secret Rings.
SatSR sold more than 50,000 copies its first week of sale in North America according to VGChartz, and saw much less of a drop off as time went forward early in 2007. That sense of consistency pared with strong sales in Europe helped the title to sell more than two million copies.
TSSZ News will keep tabs of the charts–with the caution that the numbers may not be spot-on–and keep you informed of any key milestones reached.
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This game is selling poor for good reason. With it’s mediocre to awful reviews mixed in with shallow gameplay and swords, there is no reason to buy this game.
I don’t care how many little fan references they threw in there, Sonic games are made by there gameplay. Sonic gameplay is not sword waggle, so this can hardly be considered a Sonic game outside of the fact Sonic is in it. Hope you learn from this Sega.
Let’s hope that after Unleashed and this game they got the “Creativity” out of them and they can just make a normal game now.
^ The game is not selling so well, because it got next to no advertisement. SATSR sold quite well for its time because it was released at a time when there was hardly any Wii games being released for Wii consoles which weren’t badly done shovelware. Additionally, I’m sure Sega also won’t to focus and invest in their other titles such as MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill, so that they can make a profit compared to SATBK which ‘because its Sonic’ will make profit anyway.
Its always about business strategy not about how good or bad reviews scores are, when most people don’t look at review scores in the first place.
While advertising would have helped, I don’t think it would have had any drastic effect on this outcome. Face it guys, the game’s just not that great.
I’m intrigued to see what Sonic Team does to save face, now. Hurm.
^There are plenty of critically acclaimed games that have sold poorly due to a lack of advertising compared to other titles. Zaki and Wiki which was critically acclaimed sold pretty badly compared to say Mario Party 8 which was critically panned. Advertisement plays a much larger role than review scores because it what gets the game out to the general public (and by general public I mean those outside of the online gaming community who don’t look at game reviews and who make up a much larger fraction of video game sales in the first place). And like I said above Sega also have Madworld and House of Dead:Overkill to focus on because there not as guaranteed to make a profit as Sonic is.
Alternate headline: “‘Black Knight’ sales failing worse than rate of IE8 downloads”
Big deal
@PJMan and Nomad: You guys make it sound as if it’s a full-blown fact that Black Knight is a bad game. ¬_¬ Maybe it really is that bad for you guys. Like I give too much of a shit, anyway…
I agree with Darl here. Black Knight was pretty much ignored in favor of HotD and Madworld and had very little media promotion. Hell, I saw more adverts for freakin’ Zack and Wiki than I had with Black Knight.
Hang about… How do sales “tank” like that? Is it a record of how many people sent the game back to the stores or something?
I don’t care. I still want to buy it along with Chronicles.
Hey, Okami-san!!
I’m sure it’s just because there are so many other games people want to buy so SBK comes in the background.
Am I supposed to be surprised
Obviously, sales aren’t as high as Sonic games used to get, especially since Sonic games on the Wii are terrible. After Sonic and the Shitty Rings and the terrible version of Sonic Unleashed, nobody other than dumb little kids are willing to put up with more garbage from Sonic Team.
But Sonic and the black knight was good! And SU was good too. And I’ve heard the SatSR were good too.
This is because of one reason. RETARDED FAN-BOYS AND GIRLS WHO JUDGED THE GAME FROM THE COVER OF NINTENDO POWER!!!!!!
Steve:
H-have you ever played sonic next gen, if not please do before you make anymore claims on how SATSR is shitty.
Crysore:
I know 06 is trash, but I was referring to Sonic games on the Wii, which in theory, should sell well.
@sonic for the win: You get kudos for mentioning girls in that statement
okay okay I wont rant don’t panic
hmm, well, looking at the big picture… BK hasn’t failed. It obviously hasn’t been a massive success, and it didn’t stir up the community the same way Unleashed did. but it’s still selling and it’s still picked up a fair few good scores. So saying it’s a piece of trah I feel is a bit of a casual ‘push off’ comment (soz not in a mood for words 0.o)
As for advertising I’ve seen a fair few tv adverts for it, not as many as SU (which was the first time I had ever seen a tv advert for a sonic game, not including M&S). But I dunno thats just Australia, my ‘a lot’ may be your ‘not much’ so no clue there.
That’s too bad. This is actually one of the better Sonic spin-offs.
I’m pretty sure it’ll slowly start selling like how Secret Rings did. I want to buy this, Overkill, and Madworld for $20.
2 reasons it hasn’t sold as much-
Advertising compared to any of the Sonic games released have been little to none(I saw an ad on the back of NP, that’s it).
Released by and within a packed month, with Resident Evil, Pokemon, Street Fighter, KillZone, MadWorld all coming out in Feb and March.
Personally, I’m waiting for a price drop to about 30, since Secret Rings dropped so quick. I can wait, since I have a buttload of games to play.
It doesn’t really matter how many this game sells right now, Sonic titles are as ‘evergreen’ as any Mario game.