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Alan Wake has a US sales nightmare

Split/Second, Blur, POP fail to perform.

Number crunching firm NPD has revealed that Alan Wake sold just 145,000 units during the month of May in the US.

The heavily marketed Xbox 360 exclusive finished eighth overall on the software chart. The game had been on sale for exactly two weeks when the numbers were collected.

Split/Second: Velocity was released on the same day but missed out on a top 10 finish. Black Rock and Disney's racer notched just 86,000 sales during the two-week period.

Worse were numbers for Bizarre and Activision's racer Blur, which sold 31,000 units. The numbers represent five days of sale but are low nonetheless.

Even Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands struggled, managing to shift only 100,000 units across five platforms in two weeks.

Region leader Red Dead Redemption put those performances into perspective. Released on 18th May, Rockstar's Wild West triumph sold 946,000 copies on Xbox 360 and 564,000 copies on PS3.

"What I found interesting about Red Dead is that it is the second game in the franchise," commented NPD's Anita Frazer. "First game got middling review scores and sold good but not great - 920K life-to-date.

"I applaud it when a publisher can take a franchise with solid results and improve on it significantly next time out the gate."

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