Industry analyst Michael “Was Angry At Jim For A Bit” Pachter has cut his estimates for Duke Nukem Forever‘s sales performance in half, claiming that the game didn’t have an impressive run at retail and won’t be among 2011’s biggest sellers.
“We had previously expected Duke to be one of the year’s top sellers due to a high degree of hype and a dedicated fan base, and expected solid profit contribution as the bulk of development had been previously expensed,” said the stallion. “However, the game’s poor reviews (average Metacritic score of 49) likely had a negative impact on sales, causing us to lower our [first quarter] sell-in estimate to 1.5 million units from 3 million units.”
On the bright side, he reckons L.A. Noire will be incredibly popular after learning that Take-Two had to ship four million units to retail. This prediction is echoed by analyst Jesse Divnich, who told us similar things.
In the case of DNF, 1.5 million sales is a pretty damn good number, but perhaps not good enough for a game with so much hype behind it. I’m also really eager to learn how many trade-ins the game had, as I suspect a lot of people returned the thing. DNF single-handedly justifies the need for a used market, says I.
Pachter: Surprising LA Noire Sales Offset by Bad Duke Nukem Forever Sales [GamePolitics]
