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Racing Games Of May Fail To Make NPD Top Ten
The month of May was an exciting time for gamers in general, but racing game fans were especially spoiled. Three high-profile racers -- Blur, Split Second, and ModNation -- all released in mid to late May, but not a one made it on the NPD’s 10 top-selling games of the month.
Blur, ModNation Racers, and Split Second were each critically well-received, so it’s not a lack of quality that kept the racing triplets from making the top software sales. Could this lack of one hit title out of three mean that interest in the genre is waning? Or could it be that racing fans’ attention (and money) was spread out among all three (since they all released within two weeks of each other), watering down the retail potency of each?
Perhaps the biggest loss of this group is ModNation Racers, the latest in Sony's Play, Create, Share initiative. In addition to being a fun, accessible kart racer, ModNation was meant to continue LittleBigPlanet's style of allowing players to build and share their own content. If it hasn't picked up as much as Sony might hope, they may begin questioning the Play, Create, Share line.
This lack of sales ranking could also simply mean that the games didn’t have enough time to grow to their full potential in May, and we’ll see more racing representation in June’s NPD sales. For the sake of racing fans everywhere, here's hoping.
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