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News

  NPD: October Top 20 Sees Impressive Demon's Souls Showing
by Matt Matthews
12 comments
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November 13, 2009
 
NPD: October Top 20 Sees Impressive  Demon's Souls  Showing
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Following up on Thursday's release of the latest retail video game sales data, the NPD Group has given Gamasutra a list of the top 20 U.S. console retail video games across all platforms for October 2009.

Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3 leads off the extended listing at #11, with just over 150,000 units. Originally developed by From Software and published by Sony in Japan, the notoriously unforgiving role-playing game was published in the United States by Atlus.

Three more PlayStation 3 titles made the chart with FIFA Soccer 10 from EA coming in at 13th, Namco Bandai's Tekken 6 at 16th, and Take 2's Borderlands at 17th. The Xbox 360 versions of Borderlands and FIFA bested their PS3 counterparts, taking the 2nd and 10th spots on the chart, respectively.

The Xbox 360 dominance of the top 10 continues throughout this extended chart, with three more titles. The Xbox 360 versions of Brutal Legend and Madden NFL 10, both published by Electronic Arts, slipped in as the #12 and #18 titles for the month. THQ's WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010, also for Microsoft's console, ranked 15th.

Rounding out the top 20 were three titles published by Nintendo: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky, both for the Nintendo DS, and Mario Kart Wii for the Nintendo Wii.

The full list of NPD's Top 20 console retail sellers for October 2009 is as follows:



Nine publishers had titles in the top 20 in October 2009. Nintendo led the pack with five titles for its console and handheld. Both Take 2 and Electronic Arts claimed four titles each on the list. Microsoft had two titles to chart in October, both for the Xbox 360. Atlus, Namco Bandai, Sony, Square Enix, and THQ each published a single title in the top 20.

Notably missing from the top 20 this month was Activision Blizzard, but we expect the publisher's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to top the chart in November.
 
   
 
Comments

Andre Thomas
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I wonder if SCEA now regret not publishing game.

Wolf Wozniak
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Atlus in the top 20!

Wow!

Way to go guys!

Adam Bishop
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Brutal Legend in 12th place with 150 000 units (+PS3) sold has got to be considered a huge disappointment. EA was playing that up with a big marketing campaign and the game got tons of glowing press. I was expecting it to be in the top 5 for October.

B N
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Personally I'm glad that Brutal Legend didn't do as well as people thought it would because it was marketed as something it was not. They can say it was marketed legit all they want, but the official demo was even misleading. Of course playing the demo to begin with I didn't know I was being fooled, but after playing the game and getting past the demo portion of the game I soon realized that the first 10 minutes are set up as an action/beat em up type game that is going to go in stages (much like psychonauts or other platformer games) then it shifts to an RTS after the demo period is up. It made me feel as though the beginning portion of the game was made for no other reason than to be able to release a misleading demo. It was a decent game, and the RTS elements were original and fun, but it wasn't what I or many other people that played it went in expecting due to the marketing. That isn't something that happens to me often, I can usually tell exactly what a game is all about by nothing more than a few videos, but not when there is a conscious cover up for whatever reason.

As for Demon's Souls, that is an awesome game, and much deserving of its success.

Christopher Shell
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Small correction: Demon's Souls was developed by From Software with Sony acting more as a producer and publisher.

Andre Thomas
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Look at the list, its obvious that Namco once again shot themselves in the foot. Had Tekken 6 remained a PS3 exclusive then then the game would've done much better at retail because Xbox gamer in the end don't really care about the game and mark my word, the same would go for FFXIII.

Roberto Alfonso
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@Andre Thomas, how does releasing a game in less platforms would ensure more sales? Taking away first and second party exclusives, it doesn't make sense.

B N
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@ Roberto Alfonso

I don't think releasing Tekken 6 or FFXII on PS3 alone would result in more sales at all because that doesn't make much sense like you say. I will explain what I believe Andre's thought process to be though. Releasing games like Last Remnant, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Tales of Vesperia, etc on PS3 alone would have probably resulted in more sales than releasing them exclusively for Xbox360. This is just giving a certain demographic the type of game that they want.

Alternately, I think releasing Uncharted on both consoles from the beginning would have resulted in not many more sales, or less, due to the exclusivity causing hype more than the actual game. The only time exclusivity (selling on less platforms) results in more sales is when the game is an unknown franchise because just the fact that it is an exclusive will create buzz whereas releasing an unknown on both consoles will simply result in it getting lost along with all the other games. For games such as Tekken and Final Fantasy it makes little sense to release exclusively.

Bob Stevens
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Games on both platforms typically sell 2:1 in favor of Xbox. Some notable exceptions are Arkham Asylum which most likely sold more than normal on PS3 because of the additional DLC, and Street Fighter which may have sold better on PS3 due to the controller (not sure).

Point is, it's rare that making a game PS3 exclusive is a good financial choice. Would be interesting to see how much better Demon's Souls would have done as crossplatform. Still, it's a great game and it's good to see it getting some sales and notoriety.

Simon Carless
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Thanks for the correction, Christopher, we made sure From Software was added to the story as the developer.

Fiorentino I
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Andre what the hell are you talking about?

Tekken 6 did poorly because fighting games don't sell well anymore! Fighting games are a dying breed sadly. Capcon's SF4 brought back some life into the genre

As for FF, I think otherwise. I've already pre-ordered FF13 for the Xbox360 and I know it will do very well. Many Xbox owners are waiting for it.

Tom Newman
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Very happy to see Demon's Souls in the top 20. It's a pretty hardcore title, and probably the best new IP of the season. I thought Brutal Legend was awesome as well, and had no issue as I did not see the demo as being misleading. On the contrary, BL had one of the best pre-release demo's this year, and it really did capture the spirit of the game. Tekken 6? With games like SFIV and BlazBlue redefining the genre, Tekken 6 doesn't really bring much new to the table that hasn't already been done in past versions. Plus the complaints of the online mode being not as smooth as other online fighters is delaying sales I'm sure as well.


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