European editor of gi.biz.

Codemasters speed to the top of the All Formats Chart for the first time since ‘F1 2010’ back in W38 2010 thanks to ‘Grid 2’. The sequel goes one better than its predecessor which could only manage No2 five years ago, however launch week sales are 29% down on the original. ‘FIFA 13’ holds on to No2, enjoying a healthy 17% weekly increase in sales during this Half-Term week. ‘Dead Island: Riptide’ (-0%) is up one place to No3, ahead of ‘Far Cry 3’ (+35%) which climbs 4 places to No4, boosted by a new budget price point. Last week’s No1 is No5 this week as sales of ‘Resident Evil: Revelations’ fall by 45%. ‘Assassin’s Creed III’ (+10%) has to settle for the title of Ubisoft’s second biggest selling game this week behind ‘Far Cry 3’, despite holding on to No6. No1 three weeks ago, ‘Metro Last Light’ (-40%) slips from No3 to No7, ahead of ‘Donkey Kong Country Returns’ (-17%) at No8. ‘Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes’ (+35%) bounces back into the Top 10 for a second time, at No9 (having made another reappearance back in W15). ‘Tomb Raider’ (+0%) clings on to the Top 10, falling 3 places to No10.

There is only one other All Formats Top 40 debut this week; ‘Fuse’ from EA, new at No37.

God damn!! I knew it was gonna bomb but that is some serious tanking.

I would have bought it, if they kept the original "incredibles" art style. The original game looked like a lot of fun. Damn, EA.

So he's speculating, and I have to imagine he is underestimating the number of units sold.

It's kind of a lifeless third person cover shooter that has shipped on the cusp of a new hardware generation full of promising and innovative new titles. I feel bad for the developer because I'm sure they worked hard on it, but this is a game that would maybe sell O-K roughly 3 years ago.

So he is speculating "a couple of hundreds" and you turn that into "200 at most".
If the Top 10 however are just about 5000 sales it's not even tanking (well...it is of course) but what's going on in the UK? Nobody's buying games any more? Don't tell me it's because nothing coming out, cause well....there are a bunch of new games, right?

Couple = 2

Hundred = 100

2 + 100 = The game clearly has sold exactly 102 copies in the UK. Math doesn't lie!

Seriously though, a new game hitting the charts at 37 sounds really awful.

I wouldn't be too surprised, it didn't exactly receive much of a fanfare when it was released, from advertising point of view or a in terms of word of mouth (at least I didn't hear much)

It's one of these situations where I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing, on one hand I have loved Insomniacs' past titles and want them to succeed so they can create more unique and ambitious stuff, but if the sales were through the roof for this game it would encourage them to go forward with more Fuse stuff which just seems pretty bland all round (apart from the odd, interesting weapon ideas)

Do you know what a "couple" is?

It's a weekly chart and we're in the summer months so 5000 to get into the top 10 for this time of year doesn't surprise me. And that doesn't necessarily mean the number 1 game didn't do well, I'm sure Grid 2 sold tens of thousands of copies.

Insomniac deserve better but I personally love it when EA tries something and fails. This pleases me..

Will it please you when a bunch of people get laid off at both companies too?

@adam1808: maybe they go back with Sony?

@mracoon: My issue is that even if it's 5000 to barely make the 9 or 10 spot, people are making a lot of assumptions about how quickly it falls off after that. Though yeah, #37 is definitely bad for a new game.

I really hate that this happened to Insomniac, but I hope this serves as an example to devs that bland, cookie cutter third-person shooters aren't cutting it anymore. Still though, damn that is poor. I hope the next Insomniac endeavor reflects more on their creative side.

That's what the "Insomniac deserve better" part is about.

Also I'm unemployed why don't you have sympathy for me? ... So what if they lose their jobs? Everyone around the world loses jobs and have broke ass phases until they find another, nothing special about game developers, they don't get raped when they're fired, they just get fired and have to look for another job, like you and me.

Sounds like Syndicate all over again. And I like both games very much.

What a focus group in the US wants is not what a focus group in the Europe wants. I wish they'd deal with that.

Never been a fan of Insomniac's games. Granted, I've only ever played the first two Resistance games. Let's hope they make something more interesting next time.

Not to be pedantic but 'a couple of hundred' is 2 x 100 = 200, not +.

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What's more worrying to me is apparently it only takes 5000 sales to enter the top 10. What does that say about the industry if thats a 'good' number of sales? I'd expect at least another zero on that.

Well that's to bad for Insomnia. Maybe if they stuck with there original ideas and concepts. Fuse could of had a better chance in the gaming market.

That really sucks for Insomniac but that game really didn't look too good.

Can't imagine what Insomniac is going to do with it's IP, make another, retool or move on.

It would've been my rare day one purchase if it was still Overstrike. I'll pick it up later on in the year.

If only they would have stuck to Overstrike, THEN CLEARLY it would have sold like a million in a week. Yup. The one and only explanation why nobody is buying it.

They will have sold a lot more than that. Just like Walmart doesn't contribute data to NPD in the US - a lot of online stores and supermarkets don't contribute data in the UK.

It likely sold thousands - either way is bombed.

Oh I didn't know "a couple" literally means two. In Austria the same german phrase usually refers to an uncertain (but low) number, even though the word "ein paar" also actually means two. Sorry for that.

It might not have been a million seller still because hey its the middle of summer and all but it would have done better. Had Borderlands not changed its art style it would have never turned into the franchise it is today. I think Artstyle is way more important than you think.

People voting with their money at work!

Hopefully it'll tell Insomniac to not be bland and boring and go back to being fun. Hopefully.

You realise that EA trying something and failing is exactly what lead to the current EA, which everyone seems to hate?

Chastising them for financing the creation of new IP is exactly what we shouldn't be doing.

I don't know if English is your mother language, but "a couple of" may be both "literally two instances of the same item" or, informally, "a few indeterminate instances of the same item". So when you say "a couple of hundred units", you may be saying that "it literally sold 200 units" or that "it sold a few hundred units". If you don't believe me, trust xkcd. Or, you know, the Collins English Dictionary. Or Wiktionary.

@alekss said:

They're working with Sony on the Ratchet & Clank movie, but rumor has it that the next game from their main team will be an Xbone exclusive, probably announced at E3.

Lot's of Ea partner titles has sold poorly. Shadows of the damned deserved better, I hope Remember Me which isn't so generic can sell better.

Yikes, I hope Insomniac is able to weather this dud. Their past three games have not done particularly well. Fuse seemed so generic even with a meager release calender I have no intention of buying it.

Well we can't say we didn't see this coming.

Man there isn't even much serious competition at the moment either.

I don't know who keeps making decisions that it's better to make your games as generic as possible if given the option.

Mistakes were made.

He could of meant a Mormon couple

I never thought I'd see Insomniac release such mediocrity. At least their past mediocrity had some character and heart. This thing is just lifeless.

@joeyravn said:

Ahem. English speaker, from the UK, London to be precise. I don't get why you felt the need to get in my face about semantics (especially when you're wrong) but let me school you on a few terminologies spoken here (as the guy quoted here is from Wales, UK) -

• Couple - Two
• Few - Three
• Handful - Five (Five fingers on a hand you see)
• Several - Seven and above.

'Couple' said in this context is a rough guesstimation and is around (above or below) the 200 copies mark. Now, believe me and do yourself a favour and play 'smart guy' somewhere else.

I don't doubt it sold badly, I often meet the same handful of people in Echelon mode over and over. The game is good though, Brad's review is mostly on the mark. The thing I don't understand is the bitching about the Overstrike trailer and what could have been. If you've played the game the similarities between what that trailer showed and what we got are a lot closer than most like to admit, Dalton's design for instance is almost entirely unchanged. It's not like it was this huge jump. The Incredibles, which seems to be the closest comparison is insane, that movie is really stylized while that two minute Overstrike trailer (Which is the ONLY hint at what that game could have been.) shows the characters to be cartoony, but still proportioned like real humans.

The game has issues, many of which I doubt were EA's doing, but Insomniac put out a new IP at the end of a console generation and that to me is a good thing. There's more personality in the game than people that haven't played the game like to talk about. Sure, the art isn't the best, but there are flashes of brilliance in fuse and if this came out a few years ago I could have seen it being a hit.

Wait, this is a retail game? Holy shit.

I assumed it was just a little XBLA game that cost like £10 or whatever.

There are only like 1000 people in Britain anyways, right?

And so another EA Partners Program game is sent out to die. It had that working against it from the outset, but really, Insomniac/EA ruined this game's chances by basically focus-testing anything interesting out of it. Perhaps Fuse bombing will send a message that focus-testing a game's soul into oblivion is not the way to create a success.

The UK has roughly 1/6th the population of the US and this is a weekly sales chart. If we do some math, 5000 copies * 6 times the population * 4 weeks per month and we get 120000 copies sold per month for a number 10 game. That seems to be in the right ball park to me, if not a little high.

Imagine if this was Gears of War but faster, more colourful, 60fps and was abit more creative with its 'creative' weapons. Instead it's slower and awkward with less of a bang and more of a fizzle.

There wasn't anything that I saw that made it stand out; I'm not exactly that surprised but damn that looks bleak.

Am I one of the few that finds this game kinda fun? =[

Have any EA Partners games ever done well? All I remember is them being sent to die.

I think it's actually a couple hundred.

200 would be insane

the game industry is crashing again