Here’s the Top 20 best-selling PC games of 2008. This doesn’t count digital distribution so the results are skewed. Let’s have a look!
1. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
No surprise here. World of Warcraft: Poop in a Box would sell a couple million copies. Fortunately the expansion turned out to be pretty good, even if it did actually contain poop (quests).
2. Spore
Incessant hype, lots of controversy (DRM, science vs. toy game design, penis creatures), that Sims-y vibe. No surprise it has sold so well. The Creature Creator probably played a big part in greasing sales.
3. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest
I guess everyone buying #1 would need something like #3 so this is inevitable.
4. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
They recently merged over half the servers but this sold like crazy for a few months. A textbook example of launching an incomplete game and torpedoing your long-term efforts as a result.
5. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning
Four of the top 5 games are MMOs. WAR stopped bragging about its numbers even sooner than Conan and Mythic has been stealthily working on server merges/closures. Will publishers look at box sales or subscription numbers when deciding whether or not to green-light future MMOs? The answer is: more money will be flushed down the drain on expensive persistent-world games that fail to deliver while everyone keeps buying extra copies of WoW (see below).
6. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
CoD is the new Quake. This game is a year old, which is actually kind of young for a PC title.
7. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
Way down the list at #7. Shocking! The Sims 3 ships next month. Not so shocking.
8. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition
A lot of #1s were bought when #8 sold out. Probably going for $5000 on eBay now.
9. Fallout 3
Bethesda successfully revives a series that has been dormant for a decade, a neat trick. Name recognition still matters (or so 3D Realms hopes).
10. World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Yeah, okay, this has been out for two years now. Do people just buy some flavor of WoW every time they go down the PC game aisle?
11. Call Of Duty: World At War
See #6.
12. The Sims 2 FreeTime
Inevitable Sims 2 expansion, amazingly not in the top 10.
13. World Of Warcraft
There are three dozen SKUs for WoW. Buy all of them, people!
14. Sins Of A Solar Empire
The first RTS in the list (sorry, EA and Red Alert 3) and an impressive debut for Ironclad. Would place even higher if its Impulse sales were counted.
15. Warcraft III Battle Chest
“Hey, I thought it was World of Warcraft!”
16. The Sims 2 Apartment Life
My apartment life included a drunk landlord that tried to burn down the building. This will get recycled some time in the next year for Sims 3 (the expansion, not the torching ways of my ex-landlord).
17. Crysis
Despite murdering hardware, this game has done very well, sales-wise. PC gaming is still doomed though, right?
18. Left 4 Dead
Steam sales would place this a lot higher, I suspect.
19. Diablo Battle Chest
“I thought it was Diablo 3!” Diablo 2 was released in 2000. The most successful Diablo clone since then might be Titan Quest — and the developer shut down after its release. Advice to game companies: Don’t try to emulate Blizzard’s success. Even when your games are good, people will still choose a 10 year old Blizzard title instead. I recommend changing your company name to Blissard Entertainment as an alternate strategy.
20. The Orange Box
Again, Steam sales would lift this higher. Another 1+ year old game but it almost counts as brand new in comparison to some of the others.
A handful of FPSes, an RTS, the Blizzard catalog and the Sims. This was the state of (retail) PC gaming in 2008. I suppose it could be worse. Deer Hunter and Myst clones no longer make the list but it’s a bit scary that games that predate the original Xbox are still in the top 20.
Follow-up: Shacknews has an NPD report that PC retail sales dropped 14% in 2008 to $701 million. Considering that Blizzard generates over a billion dollars per year from WoW alone, I think it’s safe to say retail is providing a picture of revenue that is…less than accurate.
