Wrath tops the PC sales charts for November
by Mike Schramm 
Dec 28th 2008 at 6:00PM
Surprised? You probably shouldn't be -- NPD has released the top sales list for November, and our favorite game is sitting right on top. In fact, the most interesting thing about the list is what's not on it: games. Wrath is at number one, followed up by such great titles like Office 2007 and Trend Micro Anti-virus. The collector's edition of Wrath comes in at number four, and after that it's all utilities except Call of Duty: World at War at number six and Spore at number 10.That's a sad month for PC gaming, especially during a time when sales are supposed to be at their highest. Blizzard's leading the charge (and they're not leaving PC anytime soon), but they seem to be pretty much the only PC studio able to bring it home this year.
Videogame sales in general are doing just great: even in a bad economy, console companies -- both developers and retailers -- are seeing nice growth. But those saying PC gaming is dead will only have to point to November's sales for proof. Maybe in 2009 we can get a couple more titles quality enough to give World of Warcraft a run for its money.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Making money, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
The Hammer Dec 28th 2008 6:10PM
Is this retail, or online? Are they International, or American? Because if it's retail, then these sales are hardly good enough to make assumptions about how the PC gaming market is doing - with a lot of publishers and developers selling their games digitally these days (And outlets such as Steam, Good Old Games, and Stardock). These sales will not be counted, and as such, stuff like Left 4 Dead, Red Alert 3, and World of Goo may have exponentially higher sales than these charts suggest.
Additionally, consider the fact that America is quite a small market for PC games, and middle European countries, such as the Scandinavian ones, and Germany, have far more consumers, and... yeah.
Also, not everyone who has a PC is going to want to play games. But most people want their Microsoft Office, Anti-Virus, and other utility programmes. It's likely that, yeah, these factor higher in sales charts than games do.
All in all, I'm not convinced this story is particularly a death knell for PC gaming at all...
Azhariel Dec 28th 2008 6:43PM
Technically speaking, this means that people care more about going to Northrend than having Office or having a paid anti-virus.
[/joke]
Hurode Dec 28th 2008 8:12PM
I'm willing to bet this study only tracks physical box sales inside America. International and online-distributed content make PC gaming bigger than the numbers would imply.
spencer.acker Dec 28th 2008 9:37PM
Sad to see software tailing behind WOTLK, i thought maybe warhammer would be up on the list somewhere.
spencer.acker Dec 28th 2008 9:40PM
I'm pretty sure this is retail sales only be counted, or like you said there'd be a lot more games up here.
DJBat Dec 28th 2008 11:21PM
Well of course it will sillies...
11 Million subscribers and a good percentage of them are FORCED ( ;-) ) to upgrade so yea, it's sort of a
/drawntogether aaaduuuhhhhhh
when it comes to statistics in reporting sales figures.
As long as Blizzard keeps releasing new major upgrades for WOW, they'll hit the #1 spot by proxy everytime.
...and I think that emote should be put into the game. I miss the donkey-teeth.
Lemons Dec 29th 2008 1:36AM
Good to see us Americans have more sense then those drity British across the pond. What with their "Call of Duty" and whatnot, what a bunch of nonsense...honestly.
Here in America we like our crits big and our lootz phat...
Mark Dec 29th 2008 1:32PM
Sadly, the PC gaming developers spend all their time whining and bitching about piracy and loading ever more draconian anti-piracy tools into their products (which are still countered within hours) with the result of alienating their customers but the core problems of running games in Windows remain.
I spend a lot of time on Vista gamer support forums trying to help people out, there is a never-ending stream of problems getting PC games working, people spend literally weeks trying different drivers, settings and reg-hacks for games, while the console games just work.... its little wonder the people without a stomach for trying to get things to work flock to the consoles.