A quest to find a copy of Fuse today proved fuseless. Sorry, fruitless.
Admittedly, we didn’t stroll into GAME – the one place that’s almost guaranteed to be stocking EA’s new shooter – but Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s all appear to be giving it a miss.
It was revealed last year that supermarkets now sell more games than not just GAME and HMV but also Amazon. As such, it’s hard to imagine Fuse entering the chart at a particularly high position next week.
We can only speculate why the supermarkets aren’t stocking it. The most obvious possible reason is that reviews haven’t been great – the Metacritic currently stands at 63% on Xbox 360 and 67% on PS3. It should be noted however that poor reviews didn’t stop the likes of Tesco and Asda from stocking Activision’s terrible The Walking Dead tie-in.
Another possible reason is that Fuse has been rather under the radar. We’ve seen a few banners on gaming sites and a spot of promotion on Xbox Live for the recently released demo, and that’s about it.
Although this article may seem a little trivial, it does illustrate how tough it can be to launch a new IP. If super publisher EA can’t get supermarkets to stock a new franchise, then what chance do smaller publishers have?
