Mark Rein Defends UT3 PC’s Sluggish Sales
Unreal Tournament 3 for the PC didn’t really get the fanfare arrival Epic Games and Midway had hoped for. Too bad, because it’s pretty damn good – if you like excessively violent games that move faster than any normal human’s mind can process
Released in the second-half of November, the game only managed to move 33,995 copies for November, according to the NPD group. Compare that to the other high-profile PC release for November, Crysis, which managed to sell 87,000 units (still not too impressive, however), and UT3’s launch gets put into perspective. Mark Rein of Epic Games isn’t too concerned though, and defends UT3’s sales in a Guardian Games interview.
"It is amazing how people can look at two weeks of sales (in our case) in one single territory in the busiest Xmas sales season the industry has ever seen and come to the conclusion these titles are doing ‘badly’"
"I don’t think either title [UT3 and Crysis] is doing so badly. Crysis probably has 3-4x the marketing budget of UT3 and more mindshare because it is a PC-only, high-end, single-player oriented game"
Rein pointed out his belief in UT’s long-term success, due to its high volume of user created content and customization, which will keep fresh content and gameplay coming, "… it’s doing pretty well and we’re going to support it with some pretty cool things to help it keep selling over time."
