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31,000 units sold during its first week on sale was not the start publisher Activision and developer Bizarre Creations would have wished for its arcade street racer Blur.
A bona fide failure then? Well, Activision blogger Dam Amrich believes it’s too soon to make that judgement. Pointing to Activision’s own DJ Hero – labelled a flop at launch, but now with sales of 1.2 million units – as an example, Amrich also listed several reasons why the game should be given more time.
“I think it’s way, way too early to call Blur a failure by any measure,” he wrote.
Firstly he pointed to a three-way battle for racing game sales, with Blur going up against Disney’s Split/Second and Sony’s ModNation Racers. This is turn lead to a cash shortage amongst gamers, which Activision combated in June by offering gamers a $20 coupon to encourage them to pick up Blur.
Amrich’s third point added: “Blur shipped May 25 in the US, May 28 in the UK. Since the June data is not yet available (and won’t be for a few more weeks), we are looking at one week of sales and no international data. More importantly, while big sales out of the gate are always preferred, a slow first week no longer means a death sentence.”
Proof being the long-tail of DJ Hero.
He concluded: “Hundreds to thousands of people playing online every day, stable servers, positive reviews… folks, this game is not a failure, and it’s an irresponsible disservice to use that word to describe Blur. All it’s really guilty of is coming in third in a three-way race. And that was just the first lap.”
We’ve done our best to encourage you to give Blur a go, awarding the racer a very impressive 9/10 review score.
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