No Buys: Big Video Game Franchises Stink Up The Joint In October

Man, October was a pretty bad month for video game sales, particularly those published by the big guns. Medal of Honor, EA’s modern day reboot of the series, sold a little more than 1 million copies. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, 1 million copies sold, but the expectation was for closer to 1.5 million copies sold. Perhaps people saw that the game was just OK: nothing stellar but nothing to freak out over.

The other big EA release last month, EA Sports MMA, sold only 45,000 copies. But we already knew the game was “dead on arrival,” which is a shame because the reviews are positive.

Let that be a lesson to everyone: it’s UFC that’s hot right now, not all of MMA. (The two cover athletes gave bad omens from Day One: Randy Couture, who’s not even in Strikeforce, is considering retirement, and Fedor is no longer the undefeated superman he once was.)

Over in Activision-land, two of their big games didn’t sell too well in October, either.

The latest Tony Hawk game, was described as a “virtual no show” at retail.

DJ Hero 2, which I understand to be much better than DJ Hero 1, sold only 59,000 copies.

Were people saving their cash for CODBLOPS, or maybe Gran Turismo 5?

So, that leaves Activision with how many successful franchises? World of Warcraft, Call of Duty? That’s it? Maybe they shouldn’t have released, I don’t know, 800 Guitar Hero games in the span of a few years.

The real question is, will people keep buying these Call of Duty games? $60 every November for what amounts to a re-skin, maybe a few tweaks here or there, may grow old after a while.

See: all those music games.