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Mass Effect 2 Outsold All Major Releases in January by Six-to-One, says DFC

Posted February 9, 2010 by DFC Intelligence

In recent months DFC Intelligence has been reporting on the usage of Xbox 360 games through monitoring plays registered by the GamerDNA audience on Xbox Live. In November 2009 the major story was about the overwhelming dominance of the hit game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The GamerDNA data allowed us to make projections about November sales and accurately forecast Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 at 4.2 million units.

In an article in the DFC Dossier, we noted that contrary to normal trends usage, Modern Warfare 2 was still strong through its second month of release. During December 2009, Modern Warfare 2 was played by roughly 15% of the GamerDNA audience on each day of the month . Meanwhile, no other game on Xbox 360 was played by more than 3.5% of the audience. This was a significant change from past trends for popular games, which tended to have high initial usage followed by a fairly rapid tapering off of usage. For example, in December 2008 the top five games captured between 2% and 5% of the audience each day with no clear leader. Thus, Modern Warfare 2 not only dominated the holiday period in sales but also in game usage. This seems to underscore the presumed wisdom of other publishers who make sure to keep certain key titles out of the crowded holiday launch period.

In January 2010 there were several core action titles launched on the Xbox 360. One title that waited until after the holiday season to launch was Electronic Arts’ Mass Effect 2, an Xbox 360 exclusive. In the case of Mass Effect 2, it appears that waiting until January to release could have been a smart move. The charts show the daily reach of top Shooter, Action and RPG games among the GamerDNA Xbox 360 audience. Major core titles released in January are listed in red in the key. Combined with major titles launched in the second half of 2009, the chart shows how crowded January was for core titles. Of course, picking up where it ended in 2009, Modern Warfare 2 continued its reign as the top title in audience reach. However, Mass Effect 2 had a real impact on audience usage, the first title to do so since the release of Modern Warfare 2.

What is also clear is that Mass Effect 2 was the only title to break through the clutter and come anywhere close to Modern Warfare 2’s reach. Furthermore, the first Mass Effect, which was over 2 years old, also showed a significant increase in usage. It appears that in anticipation of Mass Effect 2’s release, play of the first game in the series increased by several times its 2009 average, peaking just before Mass Effect 2’s launch. This was likely supported by the ability to transfer a save file from a completed Mass Effect game into Mass Effect 2 where several key player decisions in the first game could be carried over into the second game.