71 - Sales

For some peculiar reason, I’ve recently become obsessed with video game sales numbers.

I keep fretting, long in to the night, that some Xbox Indies game isn’t selling very well and I hate myself for not ponying up the 200 odd points. I keep thinking about the number of copies an iPhone game has sold or worry about the fact that I haven’t bought anything on Xbox Live Arcade or PSN recently, or think that if Heavy Rain doesn’t sell very well, the entire gaming medium is doomed to juvenile shooters for eternity.

It’s weird - normally I couldn’t care less. I laugh at the nerds in NPD threads, predicting the outcome of millions of dollars, more money than they’ll ever see. Sure I secretly hope that a Tim Schafer game suddenly sells bazillions of copies or a remake of Broken Sword becomes an instant blockbuster hit, but I’m usually disappointed.

I think the sudden change is because of two things. For one, a lot of the games I fret about come from tiny start-up developers and bedroom programmers. It’s hard to care if a gigantic mega corporation like Activision loses some pennies, but if a hard working garage-programmer fails to find an audience, that’s heart breaking.

The other element is that games are downloadable. Factor retailers and shipping orders and distributors into the equation and things get a little hazy. Nowadays, a lot of my cash goes directly into the creator’s bank account, maybe with a little scraped off for Apple or Microsoft.

I’m well aware that it’s an irrational obsession to have, and pretty weird too, but I just can’t shake this feeling. Every time I play a cool app on the iPhone or download a neat Xbox Indie game, I just fret and fret about how many copies it sold. It’s super weird.