The only new entry in this week’s UK top 40 is The Sims 3: Town Life Stuff at #12. There is a bit of shuffling going on in the top 10 though. Zumba Fitness unsurprisingly holds onto #1, Cars 2 dashes up from #8 to #2 – with the DS version shifting the most copies – and Just Dance 2: Extra Songs jives up from #18 to #4.
A near universal slating hasn’t harmed Call of Juarez: The Cartel – it’s currently at #3. The average Metacritic store now stands at just 48%.
If we look at the individual format breakdown of the chart, there are actually five Wii games in the top 10. For a system that’s been written off by the press as being close to death, that’s not bad going.
After making an impact last week, arriving at #15, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon has done a vanishing act. It has left both the top 40 and the PlayStation 3 chart already and has dropped from #3 to #18 in the Xbox 360 chart. This could be due to one of two reasons – it’s either proved to be more popular than the publisher thought and has sold out, or everybody who wanted a copy went out and bought it at launch.
Regarding EDF, I rather suspect it to be the latter. My local gamestation reported only 2 people had asked for it. (I was one of them)
When they finally got it in they wanted 30 quid for it.
So, obviously, I told them “Not a chance” and bought it online for under 20 quid instead.
So 2 people wanted it, then at least one of them bought it elsewhere instead. Thus, the store only has 1 or 2 copies on the shelf anyway, which they’ll no doubt struggle to sell (for 30 quid), compared to fifty-bajillion copies of Duke Nukem/Zumba/Cars/whatever else.
I’m amazed it made it into the charts at all.
The series has a cult following (glad auto spell check didn’t kick in there) and sales of games has been slow for the last couple of months. It could have sold just a few thousand copies to make it to #15.
My local Tesco were stocking it and they only stock the top 10 or whatever. This may have been a one off though – the store buyer might just have thought the name sounds cool.