UK charts: The Sims 3 rides high News

Halo wars seems to have rather good staying power for a console RTS. Impressive.

Looks like the "mystery" solving games are also rather big on DS. Good!

Good to see inFamous still doing well- might prompt Sucker Punch to get started on some DLC. :)

"Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is outselling World at War"

Happy days!

What's the point in all formats charts when a game only released on one platform is compared with a game released on seven platforms?

COD4 is the Dark Side Of The Moon of videogames.

Go Sims!

Glad to see your completely ridiculous review of Red Faction hasn't hurt it too badly.

Sims 3 at no.1 ?

But teh piracy kills the sales!!

@Omroth - Do do realise that a 7/10 EG-rated game is "good", right?

Well I bought Star Ocean :)

same here @ 17quid :)

Someone send an email to SE and tell them the Star Ocean fans are on the PS3/ PSP, waiting.

And people said PC gaming was dying!

It's always nice when a PC-exclusive gets number one! And Sims 3 is fab.

So, Star Ocean any good those of you who have it?

I wouldn't say all of the Star Ocean fans are on PS3/PSP waiting. Star Ocean 3 is one of my favourite games of all time so I got it on Xbox. I could have got it on PS3/PSP but why should I if its out already on a console I also own?

@NewbieZilla

I'm about 15 hours in and I'm really enjoying it. Just feels like a HD version of Star Ocean 3. Voice acting is appalling in places but I wasn't expecting anything different. Battle trophies are as awesome as ever too

Star Ocean 4 did much better than i thought...

And people said PC gaming was dying!

Is that the second time this year a PC game has been No 1.

While it's obviouslly not as big a platform as consoles for sales, it's still profitiable to release games on

While it's obviouslly not as big a platform as consoles for sales, it's still profitiable to release games on

only if it's an MMO or if the target audience is not educated enough to know how to torrent games. obviously the sims falls into the latter category

only if it's an MMO or if the target audience is not educated enough to know how to torrent games. obviously the sims falls into the latter category

This is untrue.

Usually the biggest-selling games are those that play to the PC's strengths, and appeal to exactly the type of person who knows their way around a PC and knows what torrents are. Games like Dawn of War II and Total War.

That's beside the fact that the statement is patently absurd - if PC games weren't profitable they wouldn't get made, simple as that. Yet every year the PC has as many or more platform exclusive games than all the consoles.

@Omroth - Do do realise that a 7/10 EG-rated game is "good", right?

I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the rating system:

7 - Quite Good
8 - Good
9 - Very Good
10 - Average

I just personally think that Red Faction 3 is an absolute lock for an 8, and a 9 with the "right" reviewer. SUBJECTIVE obj.

@JahB

Crysis (targeted at 'core' gamer) and Spore (targeted at 'casual') both seem to invalidate that statement.

Crysis sold between 1 - 2 million copies I think. And Spore was pirated to hell, and still sold pretty well anyway.

Also, these charts dont include disgital distribution

And people said PC gaming was dying!

Come on guys, it's the Sims, it's the latest version of the highest selling game of all time. Nothing, not piracy, not DRM issues, not the "death" of the PC gaming industry was ever going to stop it being number one. They could advertise on the box "This game will give you AIDS" and it would still outsell everything else on the market by a country mile.

Star Ocean did have zero publicity, wheras it's been tough to escape Red Faction. Star Ocean Collector's Ediiton was only Ł38 on Amazon, I got mine. It's pretty good so far, Reimi FTW!

I bought The Sims 3 at the weekend. My very first Sims game.

Installed it on Sunday and sat looking at the screen for around an hour looking quite befuddled.

I had a similar reaction to Viva Pinata. A game I later grew to love.

So...maybe the Sims will grow on me to?

"While it's obviouslly not as big a platform as consoles for sales, it's still profitiable to release games on"

Depending on who you ask, the PC is either less profitable than any single one of the big three games consoles, or more profitable than all three combined.

The problem with deciding is that it's a mess out there in PC land. Take the PlayStation. Sony's brand name appears on every game you buy for it. They get a share of the royalties from every purchase you make at the shops. For all intents and purposes, Sony is the over-arching dictator of PlayStation land, from whom no sales receipt goes by unread. The same is true of Microsoft and the Xbox 360, Nintendo and the Wii, and all of those other games consoles out there.

PC gaming, on the other hand, has no real authority keeping tabs on everything. It also has more ways of generating profit from games. Not only do you have numerous publishers raking in dollar from retail sales, but you also have a multitude of different digital distribution platforms making their own cash. Add in several different operating platforms, with games being made for each, and the mind just boggles.

Just when you think you've had enough with numbers, along come MMOs and their monthly subscription fees. When you're talking about overall profits made on the PC, do you lump in WoW's subscription fees? EverQuest 2's Station Cash? Even The Sims 3, the star of this article, has some kind of premium store which, knowing EA's pricing policies and the scope of Sims fandom, is probably already raking in a fare share of the moolah. If you're an ingenious businessman as well as a games developer, the flexible and anarchal PC platform has so many different ways of making money that I doubt anybody could list them all in a single post.

So, depending on who you ask, PC gaming is either not very profitable at all, or it makes more money than any console manufacturer could ever dream of ever. Depending on who you ask.

"only if it's an MMO or if the target audience is not educated enough to know how to torrent games. obviously the sims falls into the latter category"

So are you saying that those of us who choose not to shoplift our groceries, also do so out of simple stupidity?
Just because you can steal something doesn't mean we all (including "the educated") choose to do so :).

I blame piracy.
No wait.....

Its good to see that casual gamers dont know how to pirate games :)

Let the expansion packs flood!
fly my lovelys!...

COD 4 is outselling WAW, haha, hate to be working at treyarch right now. Must be a shitty feeling that a game out for almost 2 years is still outselling yours, brilliant!