Every year (since 2008, anyway), Xbox Live hosts the Summer of Arcade; just over a month where a new great arcade game is released each week. It’s the same promotion that gave us gems like Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2, Braid and Limbo. It usually brings in some pretty significant sales numbers. Not this year though. This year’s Summer of arcade bellyflopped.
According to a report by Gamasutra, this year’s Summer of Arcade pulled in some pretty spectacularly low numbers. It’s easy to see why though, looking at the games on offer; Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, Deadlight, Wreckateer, Dust: An Elysian Tail and Hybrid.
Here’s the breakdown, based on number of people on the leaderboards in the first week of availability;
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD – 98,000 players
Deadlight – 53,000 players
Wreckateer – 6629 players
Hybrid – 12,168 players
Dust: An Elysian Tail – 32,000 players
Wreckateer, the Kinect-only Angry Birds clone now has the dubious honour of being the worst selling SoA game since 2009. thing is, XBLA is still a viable marketplace – it’s just the games on offer this time around were things nobody really cared very much about. Eurogamer notes that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which launched just a week after Summer of Arcade ended received 145,709 players in its first week- a number that would probably be higher if it was bloody well available locally.
Last Updated: September 7, 2012
