Minecraft Sales UP, Black Ops 2 Sales DOWN!

A couple of interesting little tidbits out of the Gamasutra Stable, it seems that while Call of Duty Black Ops 2 has broken its predecessors sales figures within the initial first to a billion USD $1 billion, its overall launch month sales are down for consoles, when compared to Modern Warfare 3, released in the same timeframe last year.

Modern Warfare 3 moved 8.8 million copies during its launch month, while combined figures for platforms for Black Ops 2 only moved 7.4 million copies; this is below even Black Ops 1 launch month sales figures, at 8 million copies moved. Reasons for the potential shortfall is cited as being that Modern Warfare 3 was launched earlier in the month versus this years’ launch date of 13 November, plus no sales figures being available for the Wii-U and the PS Vita at time of publication.

Of interest is the split in platforms, with Microsoft’s XBOX 360 reigning in at 4.5 million units moved, versus the 2.9 million units on the PS3.

In other console sales news, Minecraft for XBOX 360 is proving to be just as much a winner on the console as it is for the desktop players, with it topping the charts on XBOX LIVE Arcade as well as being the third-most played game on the console overall. Current sales figures as released for the end of Novmber peg the games’ sales at 4.4+ million copies sold.

That’s some serious numbers for a game that looks like it came from two decades ago as well as being an open-ended sandbox game. On a console. The PC version still rules the roost with its purported 8.2 million copies sold to date

Thanks to Gamasutra for the sources, here , here and here