The Shrine

From 1up.com

* Top Selling Computer Games of 2005
1) World of Warcraft (Vivendi Universal) - $47 million
2) The Sims 2: University Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - $33 million
3) The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts) - $45 million
4) Guild Wars (NCsoft) - $48 million
5) Rollercoaster Tycoon II (Atari) - $30 million
6) Battlefield II (Electronic Arts) - $48 million
7) The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - $32 million
Age of Empires III (Microsoft) - $47 million
9) The Sims Deluxe (Electronic Arts) - $19 million
10) Call of Duty 2 (Activision) - $46 million

1UP's did you know fact of the day: World of Warcraft was not only the best selling game of 2005, but it was actually released in November 2004.

WoW wasn't published by Blizzard?

Vivendi owns Blizzard and is one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.

I believe the President of Square Enix was quoted saying about the game "Oh! So THAT is what a successful online RPG sells like!"

100,000 sales in a year is NOT good; despite what the online RPG community would have you believe. World of Warcraft selling 240,000 copies on its US launch day alone is proof of that =P

Is World of Warcraft an anomaly? It's the only really successful online RPG ever.

I'd say it is, I remember Don having an arguement with me about it having to compete with Everquest 2 and how they would both sell badly because the sales would be split down the middle..well...hehe.

I'm most struck by the fact that the real winner is the Sims franchise. I doubt those take as much time and money to make compared to the rest of the titles on the list, except for maybe Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Doesnt it look like Guild Wars should be #1? Whats up with the number after the name, is that not revenue generated?

I said WoW would split with the existing MMORPG, which is probably true. But WoW's primary market comes outside of the existing MMORPG so it's not really meaningful.

I think it's ironic that Seeker, of all people, seems to be implying big sales = better while supporting a console system that, as a whole, has anything but big sales.

Don Wang wrote:I said WoW would split with the existing MMORPG, which is probably true. But WoW's primary market comes outside of the existing MMORPG so it's not really meaningful.

I think it's ironic that Seeker, of all people, seems to be implying big sales = better while supporting a console system that, as a whole, has anything but big sales.

Well, if you mean that I stated that bigger sales = high success, and that high success is better than not having high success. Then yes I did imply that.

Arguing my statement ironic is a very weak argument though, I own and support several systems that are not known for big sales (but there are also quite a few systems that aren't known for big sales that I do not own). I also own and support ALL of the systems that ARE known for big sales. On top of this, I do NOT own World of Warcraft and therefore do not support it. I also did not, and have never, claimed that low sales = better than high sales.