In Review: The Year’s Fan Favorites and Total Flops
We all know that games like Call of Duty: Black Ops has reined sales over the last year. With every brilliant release like this and Halo: Reach this year there were others that didn’t quiet live up to sales expectations. While many will believe this is because the games were just not that good. The harsh reality has to do with the business aspect of games themselves.
Activision spent a lot of money promoting Call of Duty: Black Ops and it led to the best sales figures of all time. The problem is they neglected titles that were equally as good but different. Blur, was a prime example of this with its unique style of blending cart racing and street racing to create a unique gaming experience. Since Activision spent most of their budget backing Call of Duty caused them to neglect this series.
The biggest disappointment this year was the Wii’s lack of mature titles. Every year gamers want more of an experience with the Wii beyond bright colorful cartoon characters and another release of an intellectual property from 20 years ago. Would it hurt Nintendo that much to make games for an older audience? This has to be the biggest disappointment for all gamers this year.