[GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley examines PlayStation Network's debuts and successes during February 2011, using leaderboard and chart data to analyze their sales and downloads.]

The PlayStation Network on PlayStation 3 was quite busy in February -- titles like Stacking, Plants Vs. Zombies, Explodemon and Back To The Future were all released to acclaim. Unfortunately, as is often the case with PSN releases, not many of them had Leaderboards that we could follow.

Here we do our best to try and make sense of the PlayStation Store, how well games seem to be selling on it to help developers understand the ecosystem they're getting into.

About The Undergarden

Unfortunately we were unable to test for all games that came out during February – only three had Leaderboards we could follow.

The Undergarden added only 3,624 players to the Leaderboards from the 1st of February till the end of the month. This is actually a little bit better than the Xbox Live Arcade version has fared since its release, but still very low.

TNT Racers was only released in Europe, and on the 24th, so seeing a low number was likely – but only 555 players have apparently played the game.

The XBLA version received 1,275 leaderboard submissions in a similar time frame worldwide. Again, this is extremely low on both fronts.



About A Blob fared a little bit better than the others, but once again, seems to have not sold a whole lot. It did fare better in reviews with a generally favorable response to the game, but ultimately was ignored. Releasing alongside Stacking, Plants Vs. Zombies and Explodemon probably didn’t help either.

All other games we were unable to follow for one reason or another. We do know that Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 seems to have sold much less than the original on the Xbox 360, at least. We also know that Space Ace was only reviewed by one Metacritic contributor, and that Days Of Thunder for the XBLA and PSN has yet to be reviewed by anyone, which doesn't automatically bode badly, but does not happen often.



Other Statistics

Unfortunately we were unable to continue to check Leaderboards for Dead Nation, Tetris or Eat Them on PSN in February – we may update for the March list if possible.

Outside of those titles, not much has changed. Modern Combat has added a lot of players, but do remember that it includes both players of the full and retail title. Blacklight: Tango Down had less “new players” than January, despite the game being on sale during February. Both DeathSpank and Castle Crashers seem to be doing reasonably well for themselves, so long after release.

Lousy Smarch Weather

March 2011 looks to be good for the PlayStation Network – with releases including PixelJunk Shooter 2, Hard Corps Uprising, Swarm, Slam Bolt Scrappers and more, so we should hopefully see some successes this month.