Oh man. Asura's Wrath and Syndicate both BOMBED.

Asura's Wrath moved 36,000 copies in its first week of sales at the end of February, NPD tells Joystiq. Despite Syndicate's business-savvy nature, the big reboot came up approximately 2,000 copies short of matching the Capcom god destroyer, with 34,000 copies sold at retail in February.

Hardly surprising for me, I played both and found both to be utter rubbish. The only thing that does surprise me is that Asura's Wrath sold more than Syndicate

There wasn't much chance of Asura's Wrath doing well but Syndicate bombing is surprising considering it's, you know, a first person shooter of high quality.

I'm not surprised by Asura's Wrath's performance, but I am disappointed. That game is marvelous.

hmm that sucks I knew syndicate was bad when I was able to pick it up on the weekend of the week it came out used for less then half price. I really have enjoyed what Ive played of syndicate as well thats ashame guess I didnt help buying it used. Asuras wrath shouldnt have been a full priced game from the demo I played but I will definatly try to get this one on the cheap when I see it.

@MariachiMacabre said:

a first person shooter of high quality.

Not that it's an indication of quality, but Syndicate isn't universally praised given its Metacritic score.

I'm not surprised any of them bombed.

I still want Syndicate and Asura's Wrath. Who thinks Syndicate would have done significantly better if it was also available on Steam? Being banned in AUS might have something to do with that bombing as well.

I'm waiting for AW to go down in price. $60 for an 18 ep anime doesn't seem like a great value to me. Only thing keeping me from Syndicate is not wanting to deal with Origin. That and paying $60 for it.

@MariachiMacabre said:

a first person shooter of high quality.

Not that it's an indication of quality, but Syndicate isn't universally praised given its Metacritic score.

I'm not surprised any of them bombed.

How did Asura's Wrath outsell Syndicate? How on Earth did a mad Japanese QTE driven game sell more than a first person shooter? I'm not judging either game, because I didn't play either of them, but this just doesn't make any sense. Even if it's only a slight difference, it still seems crazy.

How did Asura's Wrath outsell Syndicate? How on Earth did a mad Japanese QTE driven game sell more than a first person shooter? I'm not judging either game, because I didn't play either of them, but this just doesn't make any sense. Even if it's only a slight difference, it still seems crazy.

Those are some really low numbers lol. Sucks. Syndicate looked fun, just no point in picking it up when I planned on putting 8 million hours into the mass effect games a week later

Well, at least we can get both games for cheap pretty soon.

Those are both numbers higher in one week than Shadows of the Damned and Child of Eden sold in a month. I could not care less.

However, I'm a bit surprised Syndicate didn't do better.

@MariachiMacabre said:

There wasn't much chance of Asura's Wrath doing well but Syndicate bombing is surprising considering it's, you know, a first person shooter of high quality.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. Not that I expected Syndicate to do well but only moving 34k? That's gotta be a blow for EA's ego.

Surprised? No, not at all.

For perspective, I Am Alive came out two days ago and last I checked there were 45k people on the leaderboards. Yes, it's $15, but reviews are very mixed and it's not something people see on the shelf when they walk into any number of retailers.

@MooseyMcMan said:

How did Asura's Wrath outsell Syndicate? How on Earth did a mad Japanese QTE driven game sell more than a first person shooter? I'm not judging either game, because I didn't play either of them, but this just doesn't make any sense. Even if it's only a slight difference, it still seems crazy.

There's probably a relatively sizable audience who will go buy whatever Anime related thing that comes out. They already have every Naruto and Dragon Ball game that's been released. Not Phil Fish though.

How do you know they bombed? each sold over 30 thousand copies in one month, since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success? 
 
It's not like every successful game out there sold in the millions.. Only a few titles or franchises manage to get such figures.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@MariachiMacabre said:

a first person shooter of high quality.

Not that it's an indication of quality, but Syndicate isn't universally praised given its Metacritic score.

I'm not surprised any of them bombed.

Yeah, 74 is such an atrocious score...by the standards of a bunch of businessmen in suits and people who give a shit about arbitrary numbers.

I don't understand all the hate for Syndicate. What I've played of the game has been excellent. I just haven't been playing it...or SSX for that matter...because the 1.2 patch is hitting at some point for The Old Republic and I want to get shit done on that before they drop the patch. After that patch hits and we clear content, I'll be right back on both of those games.

Syndicate just got no push it seemed to me. It was in dev, and then it was out.

Would be interested to see how well it would have done if they released it on Steam instead of pouting in the corner like they have been.

Asura's Wrath does look crazy awesome but any developer asking me to spend £40 on a 6 hour game can throw in a free blowjob too, thanks.

Well Syndicate did get a lot of preview flack simply for being an FPS-reboot ... that plus no "number" after the title plus it being sci-fi and not modern military AND people are probably still playing all those long ass RPGs ... it's understandable but that number is really damn low.

Guess I'm part of the problem since I was gonna wait for the inevitable price drop even though I really anticipated the game.

@jakob187 said:

Yeah, 74 is such an atrocious score...by the standards of a bunch of businessmen in suits and people who give a shit about arbitrary numbers.

And the fact is that, outside of enthusiasts, those MC scores are looked at and are considered important by a lot of potential buyers.

@AhmadMetallic said:

How do you know they bombed? each sold over 30 thousand copies in one month, since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success? It's not like every successful game out there sold in the millions.. Only a few titles or franchises manage to get such figures.

I am gonna second.. well i guess more like 10th at this pooint.

But i am not surpriced, The content seemd fine but way too little of it.

Sucks about Syndicate, and even more for Starbreeze. Silver lining is it'll be $20 on Origin within a couple months.

Maybe another thing is I don't want new games right now. SR3, Skyim, BF3, both Witchers from steam sale. Perhaps people are not recovered from the craziness of the end of last year.

What a shame. I think both games looks a lot of fun, but nothing I want to spend $60+ full price for though.

If EA even put a little advertisement into Syndicate I am sure this would be a whole different case. I will admit though that even though what I have heard of both games, I just can't see myself getting them when there would be a game like Mass Effect 3 next to it for the same price. At a lower price I will probably purchase them.

@AhmadMetallic said:

How do you know they bombed? each sold over 30 thousand copies in one month, since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success? It's not like every successful game out there sold in the millions.. Only a few titles or franchises manage to get such figures.

Putting out a game costs millions of dollars. True they don't need to sell a zillion copies in 24 hours to be profitable, but i doubt at less then 50 thousand units sold in a week has impressed the publishers by any stretch and they are probably quite concerned.

These are only retail sales though (and I guess only US sales), while Origin certainly doesn't help Syndicate, they pretty much only marketed it at digital distributors like Origin and Gamer's Gate, so I'd guess it did better there.
Though looking at Gamer's Gate's "Hot Games" and "Most Popular Games" it doesn't look too good, it is on the first page for "Hot Games" (what the metric for that is I don't know though), just above Q.U.B.E., and below Unity of Command - for "Most Popular Games" (which does seem to be based on sales, but probably is "total sales" rather than "weekly sales" or anything like that) it doesn't show up until page 9, and is listed after Homefront, Duke Nukem Forever, Farming Simulator 2011 and lots of indie games.
 
By the way, Joystiq's numbers doesn't match the numbers at http://www.vgchartz.com/game/69688/syndicate/ - combining the PS3 and 360 US numbers there yields around 43k copies, globally 90k, and that's PS3/360 only, not PC retail and no digital copies.

@crusader8463 said:

Would be interested to see how well it would have done if they released it on Steam instead of pouting in the corner like they have been.

People in large numbers are using Origin. It might not seem like it as Valve's fans are a vocal minority, that for whatever reason invest a lot of time posting the same message over and over again. Make no mistake Origin is doing good sales.

@FluxWaveZ: Syndicate IMO has some of the best co-op gameplay of this generation. I played it on PC, but it really would've been even better on a console.

How do you know they bombed? each sold over 30 thousand copies in one month, since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success?  It's not like every successful game out there sold in the millions.. Only a few titles or franchises manage to get such figures.

How do you know they bombed? each sold over 30 thousand copies in one month, since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success?  It's not like every successful game out there sold in the millions.. Only a few titles or franchises manage to get such figures.

Don't diss Valve and you will have sales. Steam moves games. Ea is digging its own grave.

Wow, that's pretty ridiculous that some reviewer game Syndicate a 20....scores that low are reserved for terribly broken games, not mediocre ones (not saying that it's mediocre, but that's what the reviewer thought).

I'm extreamly happy Sydicate bombed. It was clearly a cynical cash in taking a classic pc game and turning it into a console "call of duty" game.

It represents whats wrong with gaming today, excellent news.

i actually really enjoy syndicate. The only reason im not currently playing it is because of that game breaking crash for coop thats been effecting me... oh and mass effect 3 came out so fuck all previous plans.

Too early to tell.

@Metal_Mills said:

@AhmadMetallic said:

How do you know they bombed? each sold over 30 thousand copies in one month, since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success? It's not like every successful game out there sold in the millions.. Only a few titles or franchises manage to get such figures.

34,000 is atrocious even for lower budget games. Psychonauts was considered a gigantic bomb after it sold only 100,000(It has sold far more than that now thanks to steam).

But you're comparing a week of sales to a year of sales. Psychonauts sold about 13k copies during its first week.

Bloomdicate selling bad doesn't surprise me.

@AhmadMetallic said:

since when does a game have to sell a million units in a week to be a success?

Late 1990s. 34,000 x $20 (generous estimate of Starbreeze's take per copy, likely closer to $13) = $680,000. That game cost a hell of a lot more than that to make.

I'm not surprised by this at all.

The ironic thing here is, if Syndicate was a smaller, lower budget title sticking to it's roots and released on steam, it probably would have made more money as indie games easily make 100+ thousand units

So once again, ha ha EA. Ha ha.

Not shocking really.
 
In Asura's Wrath you have a game that looks very entertaining, but people aren't going pay $60 for what amounts to a 7 hour interactive anime without much replay value.   I can see a lot of people picking this up at $20, but not at full price.
 
In Syndicate we have a FPS coming into a market already filled with games way too much like it.  It also has no competitive multiplayer which is what games in this genre keep their staying power.  Why would someone interested in FPS play this over Battlefield or Modern Warfare 3?

Syndicate was a pretty generic linear FPS (one of the most oversaturate genres there is) that at least looked like a cynical cash in on an old beloved PC game. Jeff is pretty much the only reviewer that really liked the game, no surprise it bombed. The game, just like the XCOM FPS, represents everything that is wrong with the game industry today. I hope this teaches game publishers to not try to take the names from an old game just to sell more copies of some game that has almost nothing to do with the old one.

The ironic thing here is, if Syndicate was a smaller, lower budget title sticking to it's roots and released on steam, it probably would have made more money as indie games easily make 100+ thousand units

So once again, ha ha EA. Ha ha.

Aw man, that's a real bummer.  Alpha Protocol selling 38k makes perfect damn sense.  Asura's Wrath selling 36k makes perfect sense.  Shadows of the Damned maybe should have sold more.  Syndicate should have sold WAY more.
 
I bought mine through Origin so I guess I'm contributing.