It sold 572,000 copies in the US, having been on sale for just 6 days. PS2’s NFL Street in 2004 held the record until now, selling 325k.
EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich was the one to announce Mass Effect 2 is the new January launch King, and amazingly too since EA didn’t ship the game until the 26th.
”Previously the best selling January release was NFL Street for the PS2 in 2004, selling a little over 325,000 units in its first month,” said Divnich, reports IndustryGamers.
”Typically, January sales are reserved for the overflow from the Holidays and whilst the industry has come to the conclusion long ago that games can succeed in the off-season, few publishers have dared to release a big AAA title in the January month since 2005 (Resident Evil 4 for the GameCube, January 2005).”
”Clearly, the success of three new releases, Mass Effect 2, Army of Two, and Darksiders is unequivocal proof that publishers should not avoid a January release date for their core targeted AAA titles,” they continued.
2009 was a special year as many publishers announced a slew of delays for major titles, pushing them out of Holiday ‘09 and well into early or mid 2010. This was all in a bid to avoid the winter crush of super titles that usually occurs, which can fail new IPs.
