Most companies measure their game’s successes against each other, but in the case of the endangered skateboarding subgenre, the best publishers can hope for is that their game did slightly less poorly than their competitor.
Take the rivalry between last year’s Shaun White Skateboarding and Tony Hawk Shred, for example. According to the Hollywood Reporter, although Shred sold an embarrassing 3,000 copies during its launch week, the game went on do considerably better with 270,000 units worldwide. By comparison, its predecessor, Tony Hawk: Ride, managed an extremely respectable 1.3 million.
270,000 seems like an easy goal for Ubisoft to beat, especially considering previous Shaun White snowboarding titles have pushed well past the three million mark, collectively. Unfortunately, Carrot Top’s mini-me has only seen 120,000 in sales, despite launching the same month as Shred.
On the upside, at least the developers behind Shaun White still have their jobs…