Now there’s been many reports about games declining sales which are not to be believed all the time as some reports only include one country or just physical sales so there’s no actual truth to whether some games sold as bad as reported. We can however reveal five games that did sell beyond expectations, and performed well in 2016.
1. The Division
Now it’s true, The Division was hyped like crazy through E3 conferences, and advertising, but lets remember at the time there were no reviews live for the game before being sold and it was a brand new IP. There were a lot of question marks about this game, and it could have easily blown up in Ubisoft’s face, but actually it ended up being the first major hit of 2016 video game. The Division had 9.5 million active users by May 2016, which was only two months after the release of the game. It was said that The Division, not only met expectations, it actually exceeded those expectations.
2. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Special Edition
When Skyrim released on Xbox 360 and PS3 5 years ago, it was a major hit, and was rated one of the best games of the generation. Just like the original version, the PS4 and Xbox One was a big hit and sold very well in just pre-orders alone. When it released it was beating the brand new AAA titles that had just released which was crazy as this is just a remastered PS3/360 title but was outselling the biggest games of the fall which is why it earned its spot in this article.
3. Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst
The first two entries, while they earned their positions, they were still expected to sell well but for this entry it’s completely different. Mirror’s Edge sold well when it released on PS3/Xbox 360 but the promotion and anticipation for Catalyst was so low that many expected this to be one of the worst selling AAA games of 2016 but somehow the game ended up doing better than the original, selling close to two million copies, and was said by EA themselves to have met sales expectations.
4. Mafia III
Mafia III had the hype and advertising needed to make it a solid release for fall 2016, but no one expected it to be “the fastest selling game in 2K history” with an incredible 4.5 million copies shipped in the first week. Yes, it’s true with the backing Mafia III had it should be selling well, but it broke records that not even 2K thought it could do, and ended up performing much better than expectations.
5. Quantum Break
Quantum Break didn’t release to that much hype, but it was the first major Xbox One exclusive of 2016 so there was some hype there. Due to the review scores, and the lack of hype, the game was rumored to have sold poorly but it was later confirmed that not only was it selling well, but it was beating all of Microsoft’s expectations it had for the game. The exact quote from Aaron Greenberg was that it “sold really well”.
Did any of the games listed in this article surprise you at all? Let us know in the comments section below.
