Apparently October was a good month for things with “3” in their title, as the 360 once again led console sales with approximately 393,000 new Xboxes sold in the US during the month. The 3DS also had a surprisingly good month too, coming in at second with a healthy 250,000 units sold, giving hope that there may be a future for Nintendo’s embattled handheld yet. Nintendo is now claiming that the system is selling faster than the original DS did within the same time frame. As for software sales, Battlefield 3 came out on top, with over 2 million copies sold, which, while not quite pulling in the more massive audience that Call of Duty usually gets, BF3 at least seems like it’ll make enough money to ensure that the Battlefield vs. CoD rivalry continues for another iteration.
Batman: Arkham City also managed to become a million-seller, which is unsurprising, given how popular The Bat is nowadays thanks to the Nolan movies and the successful relaunch of the DC universe this past September. Overwhelmingly positive reviews and fan reaction for the game probably didn’t hurt the situation, either.
What is surprising is how well From Software’s unapologetically hard Dark Souls did: it managed to come in at 6th place, just below Ubisoft’s Just Dance 3 and above Madden 12. Dark Souls, which is a sequel to the equally unforgiving cult-classic Demon’s Souls, got a lot of positive press before it was released, but thanks to before mentioned ultra-difficulty and intentionally obtuse and unfriendly design, I expected it to be a niche title, a sleeper hit at best. While I am surprised, I’m glad that Dark Souls has proven that you can make a successful game without having to dumb it down for mass appeal or hold the player’s hand the whole way. It’ll be interesting to see if this spurs other game designers into creating more shamelessly difficult, sadistic games in the future.
