Q: What would be the greatest selling game of 2008?
Here are the NPD Group's top 10 best selling PC games list in the US for the week of Feb. 14th-23rd:
1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision - $45
2. Sins Of A Solar Empire - Stardock - $39
3. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts - $30
4. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi - $23
5. World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $20
6. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Vivendi - $39
7. The Sims: Castaway Stories - Electronic Arts - $28
8. The Orange Box - Electronic Arts - $42
9. Crysis - Electronic Arts - $36
A: Sim: Call of Solar Empire Crusadecraft....Box
So this is a big deal. A new title out there that is not an MMOnline crack dealer, or Twitch gamer wet dream is pounding the sales frontier. This makes me proud. While I don't think of Sins as ground breaking I do feel they have given me a different way to look at where we can take RTS. You can now actually say that you are moving a massive army against your foes with clarity. Before you were talking about the twelve siege tanks you were able to scrape together before you were once again basilisked to death. Now you are talking about your actual armada. My capitol ship and fifteen thousand of my closest friends have come to ask you once and for all to get off our lawn.
To call Sins complex and not for everyone is totally fair. It is only fair if you find lying through your teeth a perfectly good past time. The learning curve is easy if you have ever played a civilization game or any other RTS. Fact is that once you get the grip of things you are now really into the game. What is better yet is with all the ways you can participate (meaning you don't HAVE to blow the crap out of each other to screw one another over) the game really is for everyone. Sure the zoom function is smooth and crazy good to look at unless you like to zoom too much like me. Then it is an act of self eye mutilation but that could be just me.
The front end of what I ended up calling the Pwnd club for one half the universe
What is really wonderful to see here is someone trying something new. That we have attached staples for success in the game world still bothers me. You must be online, you must have multiplayer, and if it doesn't have any sort of editing software built in forget getting anything over an "8" in reviews. Well Sins did all that and made it something new too. So there is no single player campaign, big deal. Seems to me you left that out of the "must haves" so I say kudos to them. I hope this game keeps right on going and shows all the cookie cutters in production out there that they have to do better. A whole lot better.
Since we were on the topic anyway it is true that the only game that I have not played on this list is anything in the Sims line (for more than 20 minutes before washing myself in bleach). If you have dabbled in the MMO scene at all you might remember the Final Fantasy title some half a decade ago. In that game you had a choice of playing either the MMORPG aspect.... or this card game they mixed in. That is how I feel about Sims Online. There are lots of games out there but here is this little crap mini game they tossed in the mix. At least Second Life is bringing in people with some truth in advertising.
Alex-
My Chi is a gay pirate in your "Life".
