Boom Blox sales: EA content, analysts less upbeat
While we thought sales of Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox was less than stellar (in all fairness, it did sell about twice that of Zack and Wiki in its first month), Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitello said the game has met internal expectations. Speaking at a William Blair Investor Conference today, he said "It's continued to sell well. It did break into the top 10 for the Wii, and the advertising is doing exactly what [our] team expected to: drive sales."
MTV Multiplayer spoke with a few analysts who were decidedly less impressed with the sales so far. Pacific Crest Securities, who initially predicted 250,000 in unit sales, said, "It appears that success on the Wii will remain difficult to achieve." Michael Pachter, who wasn't too hopeful in the first place, wondered if it was a marketing problem on EA's part.
Joystiq's official in-house analysts all agree that the game would have sold a minimum 3 bajillion more copies had it kept head tracking. Maybe it's going multi-platform, after all. Riccitello also said the game could sell several hundred thousands, and given Zack and Wiki's continued sales, he may have a point.
MTV Multiplayer spoke with a few analysts who were decidedly less impressed with the sales so far. Pacific Crest Securities, who initially predicted 250,000 in unit sales, said, "It appears that success on the Wii will remain difficult to achieve." Michael Pachter, who wasn't too hopeful in the first place, wondered if it was a marketing problem on EA's part.
Joystiq's official in-house analysts all agree that the game would have sold a minimum 3 bajillion more copies had it kept head tracking. Maybe it's going multi-platform, after all. Riccitello also said the game could sell several hundred thousands, and given Zack and Wiki's continued sales, he may have a point.





















(Page 1) Reader Comments
Nope. It sold about 50k first month. Look at it now.
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eclipsemagazine.com
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Also... is this a legit comment, or just blogspam?
Analysts serve no purpose to people like us, the consumers who play the games. Their main purpose is to install confidence/fear into the business types so they know how to play their cards.
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So I'm not terribly surprised by the sales #s, but I think word of mouth will be kind to the game. Once you play the game, you realize how ridiculously fun it is, and once your friends try it out, they'll want it, too.
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Does EA really expect Joe Consumer to pluck down $50 for a game that looks like a Jenga Rip-off? Apparently not, since it met expectations.
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commercials for it, massive hype, according to other people, on the
BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and NARUTO!!! It aired during those shows,
Nintendo's key demo, AND IT STILL FAILED, IT WILL PROBABLY NEVER SELL
ANOTHER COPY!!! Proof the Wii is a fad and 3rd party suckers!!!
Sarcasm aside, I never saw a single advertisement for it. What's
more than likely is the majority of people who have had exposure to
it up to this point are core gamers, or dare I say it, the overused
stupid moniker 'hardcore' gamers. People who read gaming blogs, and
gaming sites.
I'm looking forward to picking this up, when I can finally manage to
put GTAIV down. Also, I'm thinking of starting a petition to keep
the Hillbillies off the air, FOREVER.
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Not the poor sales of Boom Blox, but the fact that one of Michael Pachter's predictions was actually correct. Amazing!
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This is totally non-newsworthy. You don't see film sites trying to make a big deal out of the fact that Juno only made 1/3rd of what Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made!?!
Independent/niche games (which is essentially what this is) are never gonna make as much as big blockbuster franchises... but they don't cost as much either, and the publishers have different expectations of their performance.
I think the games market is big enough for blockbusters, indies and casuals.
(however, I do think the price for wii games is too high. casual users are used to dvd/cd prices, not used to shelling out 3-4 times that for a game. Wii devs should make shorter games, and sell them for dvd/cd prices. )
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