NEWS - Tuesday, January 27, 2009
World Tour Doubles US Sales of Rock Band 2
World Tour, which was released in the US on October 26 – six weeks after Neversoft’s Rock Band 2 – is said to have amassed sales of 3.4 million units in the US last year. Rock Band, on the other hand, sold a total of 1.7 million copies.
The data, uncovered by Gamespot, illustrates the distance Activation’s flagship title has over its biggest competitor. And though there are many parallels to draw between the two titles, one of the biggest differences between each can be found in their release strategies.
World Tour underwent a multiplatform launch across the four home consoles on day one, whereas Rock Band 2 launched a month before just on the Xbox 360, limiting the ‘head-start’ to just a single platform. Rock Band 2’s PS3 version followed on October 19 – just a week before the full release of World Tour – while the Wii and PS2 versions launched a significant number of weeks later, eventually arriving on December 18. Here it is suggested that, in holding off Rock Band 2’s PS2 and Wii releases to a week before Christmas Day, MTV Games missed a lucrative sales opportunity with the two biggest consoles in the US.
Despite the disparity in sales volume, Metacritic shows both games were given fairly equal praise, with Rock Band 2 edging ahead by a negligible amount.
Source: http://www.next-gen.biz
