According to info compiled by the sales analysts Cowen & Company, both Sony’s God of War: Ascension and Microsoft’s Gears of War: Judgement failed to live up to the sales standards set by their predecessors.
According to estimates compiled by Doug Creutz, Gears of War: Judgement sold about 420,000 units during the last month, a significant drop from the nearly 2 million copies Gears of War 3 managed to sell in its debut month. Gears of War: Judgement was the first game in the franchise to not be developed by Epic themselves; Judgement was created by the team over at People Can Fly, the developers who previously created Bulletstorm and Painkiller.
Gaming’s other “GoW,” God of War, suffered a similar fate this month: the latest title in the series, Ascension, is estimated to have sold about 360,000 units in its debut month, about a third of what God of War 3 sold during the same amount of time. Unlike previous games in the series, Ascension was released to somewhat mixed reviews: while most critics applauded the game’s new multiplayer modes, they panned Ascension’s single player campaign.
Gears of War: Judgement and God of War: Ascension are both prequels set before the “main” trilogy of each series, so perhaps gamers just weren’t interested in paying $60 for games that were perceived as “side stories” rather than full, numbered sequels. March was also an extremely crowded month in terms of new releases, so it’s possible that both GoW’s simply got overshadowed by Tomb Raider and BioShock Infinite’s hype.
Chris Hernandez
Holy GoW Batman!
but seriously, why would they expect a prequel to do nearly as well as sequel. Halo Reach may be the exception.
Vinny Parisi
Too true. Plus, given the fact that these games have already seen so many iterations on the current generation on consoles (especially Gears. But even God of War got a couple re-releases on PS3), sequel fatigue is certainly a factor. That’s not even considering lukewarm critical reception.
Chris Hernandez
Not to mention the PSP iteration of God of War. I’m surprised the publishers thought the series had more clout than was reasonable. But I’m not surprised that they’re disappointed though, publishers are typically pretty ignorant.
Vinny Parisi
At least they didn’t plan for the game to sell 7 million units…
Epic messed up.
I agree with it all but the last part! As a gears of war fan Judgement was just a massive shitty fail. The game was very bad and it wasn’t gears of war anymore. It was a mix of Call of Duty and Halo. Mixing game is just a big let down for me. They will really have to impress me next time or I’m not going to buy it.