It seems as if NBA 2K12 had a good October (at least compared to it's peers). Of course, there's so much more to this story than just that -- as video game sales have been having issues for the past year and even with a strong lineup of games, October saw little growth over last year.
Given the lack of hard data publicly available in NPD reports these days, hard game sales numbers are hard to come by. But, in this comparison we'll try our best with some data from the historically unreliable (but yet best we have to offer) VGChartz. Compare the two links of 360 sales figures of the game:
NBA 2K12
NBA 2K11
There's something that sticks out at you. Whereas 2K11's sales saw a secondary weekly spike last year, and generally stayed strong through the entire 10 week curve; 2K12's story is different. The game sold huge in the first week, and the sales have trended below last year's, significantly so the past several weeks.
Right now, it seems clear NBA 2K12 will not be outselling it's predecessor, perhaps taking a sales cut of up to half. That's going to leave a mark no matter how you slice it.
Now fast forward to next season when we are expecting two NBA games to hit store shelves. The question becomes three fold: How many people can EA entice to buy their game, will there be enough to bring EA back the next year, and finally will there be enough buyers available in the first place?
The answer lies in all sorts of things, but the lack of a 2011-2012 season would kill the NBA's popularity like it has other sports. The NHL is still trying to recover from a similar situation. Baseball took several years to recover from the 1994 strike.
Now Basketball seems heading down that same dark road. And with the NBA being one of the only sports with same-league competition these days -- I can't help but think that might be something which is numbered. With sales appearing to be heavily slumping for 2K12, and with more competition coming from EA next year which will at least take some customers away from the 2K series, the basketball gaming landscape is heading for an interesting period to say the least.
Do you think the lockout is a chief contributor to 2K12's slumping sales? Should 2K (or 2K fans) be worried about the future? Sound off!