It's UT. Either you like it or you don't. Same with CS, DOD, ...

Crysis on the other hand...is a crisis for the PC (pun intended).

Well many FPS out there these days have great single player AND online. UT3 only gives great online, so its not going to appeal to as many people.

UT3 on the 360 along side the PC version would have created a lot of buzz and sells would have been much greater. Most gamers who prefer shooters are on the 360.

I think people are still burned from the PC version of Gears of War not even working out of the box. Hell, I know I was with how buggy that game is. That made me think twice about Unreal Tournament 3. Then, of course, there's the whole issue of Unreal Tournament 3 being practically the same thing as every other Unreal Tournament, with the addition of some snazzy graphics. Epic's like the highschool football player who got drafted to the NFL, got cocky, and then forgot what it was that got him to the NFL in the first place. Just work on Gears of War 2, you guys.

Meh. Last great UT was UT2k4 for me. Kind of died after that.

People just cba keeping thier computer up to date, especially with consoles closing the gap and being so much cheaper.

Give me a reason to buy UT3 for the PC over the ps3 version?

"how relevant the IP is to the emerging younger market" - this shows how much money you can make by going PS3 exclusive!!! If this was on 360 it would've at least had a chance to compete

Oh Kotaku. You enthrall me with your pics.
Except tubgirl. That was another dimension of emotion...

It has more to do with Midway being an inept publisher. They're responsible for the marketing and frankly, the marketing was non-existent. Midway probably blew their entire marketing budget this year on Stranglehold and it bombed.

If Sony or MS or Activision or EA had been publishing this game, it'd have got a much bigger push.

@ErickTheRed: stop living in the past, u do know hating on the ps3 isnt what the cool kids do anymore - times change :P

@ErickTheRed: Ugh... bordeline trollish.

As much as I like UT3, it really does feel alot like UT1 or 2k4 on graphical steroids. Given that the main thing to love about those games is mod/customization, and people have barely started doing mods and such for UT3, I have to agree with Mark its not really fair to judge until its had a few months on the market where it wasn't competing with 15 other good new FPS games.

Still doesn't mean its doing great :(

People are used to console sale numbers. PC being an open market and more money in devs pockets, the numbers don't need to be as high.

They will be fine. And games on PC, like consoles, will be bought later on when people get new equipment.

The "I always wanted to try this, now I can" syndrome.

Here's a hint for Epic. If you want to sell more copies, try fixing all the rampant instability issues. I'm a die hard UT fan, but it'd be so much easier if they didn't make it so hard.

Also, the one add I did see played much too heavily on the very thin and mostly unnoticed story segment. UT is a multiplayer franchise with a story mode as *ahem* an afterthought. Not that I don't like the single player, but it's not what those adds need to focus on. Here's a slogan:

"Halo who?"

I'll take royalty payment by certified check. Thanks so much.

@reptile168: The flip side of that is that it can be better to be a big fish in a small pond.

It is amazing how people can look at two weeks of sales (in our case) in one single territory in the busiest Xmas sales season the industry has ever seen and come to the conclusion these titles are doing "badly".

But the issue becomes that almost all of the big deal games that launched during that window all sold hundreds of thousands if not millions of copies in the same time frame and territory.

What's "Unreal TOUNAMENT"? sounds familiar..

Well said. I still see copies of Doom III on the shelves.

I think Gears will go down as a mistake for Epic. Hear me out before you have a fanboi assplosion. Whenever UT is mentioned now it is with/in the shadow of Gears (especially on the console side). The PC gamer who cut their teeth on UT will always be there for the franchise, whereas Gears has set itself up as the "UT" for console. I find it funny when I hear people say shit like "aaah UT sucks it's a Gears rip off" or some such nonsense. Couple this with the rampant piracy (see the recent CoD4 statement) and the sales take a huge hit.

Though the UT franchise is without question getting tired, it is still usually the technical bar (as it has always been) for what the current UT-Engine can do. That said, it is time to re-imagine what UT will be going forward if they want the franchise to matter anymore outside of being a "Tech-Demo".

@DaiMacculate:

As much as I like UT3, it really does feel alot like UT1 or 2k4

That is the beauty of it though ... if Epic has things up their sleeve for supporting it, and mods start rolling out (need another strangelove mod), then things will pick up more.

It is a double edged sword though. If they change it the way the fans loved it, lynch em, if they leave it the same, where is more?

It is a tough balance ... but I think keeping to its core game play is better than trying a new failure. And who knows, maybe things will be added, and it is early like you said. Epic are the kings of free stuff for their games.

Demographically speaking many mid level to lower level PC users have migrated to the xbox and to a lesser extent the PS3. Due to online gaming, studios like EPIC, Sierra, Valve also migrating some of their titles to the consoles. This trend will continue due to piracy and people just not being able to afford a top of the line PC every three years. Consoles are a wonderful alternative for high end gaming in a weak economy. So it surprises me to hear rumors like Crysis only coming to the PS3, and UTIII being first released on the PS3 when all the cheap ass ex pc users all play on the the 360.

Well he is right, people get to excited with numbers and love to claim games failed based solely on first week sales. Games, especially in the US often continually sell throughout a year or more unlike Japan which has sharp sales drop offs.

@Nirolak:

Console games have alway sold more. This is nothing new. Just wait till it hits the 360.

@Kyle81:

Good point!

@MasterOfPastures:

How is he being a troll? The fact that he is pointing out that the first person shooter demographic has switched over to the 360, isn't that what PS3 fanboys are always saying? That the 360 is an FPS only console? You can't have it both ways...You can't say the 360 is an FPS only console and then turn around and deny that UTIII wouldn't do better if it were marketed and sold on the 360? Choose your facts guys and stick with them.

Porblem with all these numbers and sales data released its nearly all american.

The world is a very different place outside of american u know :o
The ps3 actually outsells the 360 in alot of the world (not being a fanboy, just making a point :P)

and like kyl81 says, too many people are quick to shout fail!!!
But i suppose everyone likes to see things they dont like fail :(

@-EDGE-:
I can't see how Gears is possibly a failure for Epic. It's massively loved. I don't think it's taken the wind out of UT's sails - that was done by the ambiguous amount of change in each new addition to the franchise. You have people like me who try UT3 and go "meh, more of the same" and people like a friend of mine who's convinced it's nothing like UT and they've ruined it. The actual fans of it are just one of three sides of UT fans in general.

As much as dislike most of Mark Rein's statements, he has a very good point here. Both games were games were poisoned by internet hate long before their release and had a strange cloud of bad rumors surrounding them after the fact but their sales performance aren't so untypical for PC centric titles. As far as PS3's sales go, one shouldn't let the performance of other "more accessible" shooters sour the sales impression of UT3. Besides, the true profit for both of these games lay in the amount of developers they can license the technologies to and not the games themselves.

@MasterOfPastures: How is he being a troll? Millions of people state this on forums and if anything it is pure fact. Unless your pissed of about the 360 being a fps console get a PS3.

@Fluffy22:

But i suppose everyone likes to see things they dont like fail :(

Bingo!

The real reason this game isn't selling as much is because Cliffy B wasn't behind it like he was before on the previous UTs.

And really i doubt the sales will do any better on the 360, if they do it's only because of a better release schedule. They just released the PS3 and PC versions next to COD4 and Halo 3 but they failed to realize that COD4 was on PC and PS3 too so no one was going to play this.

In the case of Crysis, I could buy an entirely new beefed up computer and that still might not be be enough see all it in all its glory. Why bother? It doesn't hurt that this was the year of the FPS. I can plunk down the money for the Orange Box and get an amazing single-player game (HL2), an amazing multi-player game (TF2), AND Portal. I'm sure Crysis and UT3 are great, but there's just better ways to use my money.

People need to understand that PC sales numbers are totally different than console sales numbers.

For one thing, PC games do not need to sell as much as consoles for the devs to make money. That's just fact. Add that in to the fact that PC gaming has little to ZERO marketing, and there just isn't as much money spent on making PC games, therefore they don't need to sell as many copies to make money back. And all the licensing costs that go along with making console games just don't exist in the PC realm. And then of course all the people who don't play PC games just because they think they need to have a 2,000 dollar computer for the games to even work.

Second, PC gaming is much different in console gaming because a PC game can sustain at least decent sales for years, where as a console game essentially gets the great, great majority of its sales in the first couple months of release, and then it's over. People will be buying Crysis for years as PC's get stronger, and people are able to run it at higher and higher resolutions/detail. The same thing can be said for a game like Flight Simulator. It's PLAYABLE now, but the game will look incredible 2 or 3 years from now.

That's one thing that I definitely love about PC gaming is that I can have a different experience with the same game for years, instead of just spending the money on it up front and being done with it after 6 months, like the typical console game. Where as people will buy tons of console games every year, I could play 5 PC games for the entire year and be totally content. Just a better overall experience.

Unreal Tournament's always going to have a built-in market as long as they continue to make it ridiculously easy for budding artists, programmers and game designers to get together and generate a ton of extra material from the community. It's added replay value, which means a win-win situation for Epic and gamers.

Gears was in no way a failure. That fact that it's become the standard by which the rest of Epic's games are compared to is a testament to how good it is. What Epic needs to understand is that times are changing. With high-end televisions and surround sound systems people are more likely to buy a console that can produce great graphics and sound at a fraction of the cost of a brand new computer. Let's face it, games like Crysis, which require a significant investment in computer technology, that will likely be out of date in three months, just doesn't cut it anymore for the average consumer. Not everyone is a high end gamer. In fact, most people can barely can pull off the prices of the next gen consoles. Why do you think the Playstation 3 got such a poor start? It wasn't because it was affordable, I can tell you that. Epic needs to take these things into consideration. And if it wants to get higher sales for a game like UT3, then it had better release it on the Xbox 360 first, or at least at the same time as everything else, because that 9 million customer install base outnumbers the Playstation 3's base 3:1.

@EnigmaNemesis: Well, I think it's at least more recent than "always" because back in 2004 Half-Life 2 sold four million copies and Doom 3 sold 3.5 million so I think it at least had to be the console generation switch that caused it. I mean I'll admit I'm part of the problem as I switched from playing almost exclusively PC games to playing almost exclusively console games around the same time.

@fuchikoma:
I hear you, and Gears is a great game. But I more meant it in terms of establishing Gears on Console before UT has hurt the console side of their UT business.

Gears was a "fresh" take on UT and people snapped it up (and this is a good thing). But I think it was a missed opportunity in terms of timing. I think if they could have envisioned UT and released it instead of Gears thing might look different for UT. Because UT would have been a fresh experience for many console gamers as well.

Never, EVER, release a bad demo.

@Fluffy22: I think everyone understands that the U.S. isn't the world we hear you. You know what though the gaming industry couldn't survive without it. I know it may pain you to say this but the gaming industry could survive without Japan and still maintain its growth, it could survive without Europe and maintain its growth, it could survive without Australia and maintain its growth as long as the good ole' USA is the driving economy in gaming. Maybe that is why the US sales charts are really the ones that matter, its not arrogance just economic facts that drive the world. You know those FPS titles the nationalists always like to rip apart those are going to be the driving force that keeping consoles profitable enough to make those same consoles viable enough to sell a niche JRPG and make it happen even if it sells only 250,000 copies.

Having played UT2k4 for about 3 years, I'm bitter about UT3. They ruined it. I'm hoping in the near future that mods will make the game worth buying.

Funny thing is, they probably would've sold more copies if they hadn't released the demo. It certainly changed my mind, and that of a few friends as well.

Should have put it on 360 along with PS3 at the same time. I bet you anything the sales would have been huge, especially with 360 owners being a lot are the people who bought gears and cod4. fps's are in their blood.

I don't know why anybody is even bringing up the Xbox 360 or PS3. I'm pretty sure that this article is only talking about PC sales.

Personally I don't think the sales would have been huge on the 360 if it released on that console instead of the PS3. There were simply too many good games to get this winter and Unreal Tournament III simply fell through the cracks. With games like Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, COD4, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc etc... to compete with it simply got lost in the shuffle.

I know thats the reason I didn't pick it up this year. There were simply too many other games already on the market by the time it finally hit stores.

@Nirolak:

Yes, and during those years, they didn't have a 360 with a ton of AAA titles out all in one year.

I agree, there was a switch. Things are getting more expensive and people (normal people not the filthy rich) are not making any more money than they do to compensate. Thus I fear a recession in this country.

I was guilty of switching as well... but I also just built a new PC last month. I think things will pick up when the higher spec machines will become cheaper.

My point about UT though, is it always sold over time, never was "huge" right away like the Half Life's and Doom's.

I check out the guardian gamesblog everyday and was tempted to put a question in that post. I didn't think he would actually answer them directly though!

Now I'll never know whether he prefers coronation street or eastenders.

@Fluffy22:
Yes true that the world is a different place outside of America but North America is by far the most important market and thats why a lot of the numbers we get are from North American sales.