UFC 2010 Shipped 2.6 Million Units by July

Phil Elliot of GamesIndustry.biz has published an interview with THQ’s Jon Rooke in which the head of marketing discusses how UFC 2010 failed to meet lofty sales expecations, but still shipped over 2.6 million just six weeks after hitting the market.

“We’ve had Red Dead Redemption released one week before us and that sucked, to-date, probably three quarters of a million units from the market,” Rooke explained. “The economy is still in decline – we haven’t come out of recession yet, with VAT set to go up and the government looking for 40 per cent budget cuts… people are nervous about spending.

 

“There was that macro-setting, plus we were around the World Cup, which takes out a lot of consumer spending as well. You could even put into there the iPad launch as being on the same weekend – so a lot of things are coming on to it.”

 

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“When Red Dead had shipped about 5 million we’d shipped about 2.6 million units of UFC globally – so it’s still a massively successful game… just that the expectations might have been that little bit more. You have to step back a bit and recognise that.”

Payout Perspective:

It’s important to distinguish between units shipped and units sold. THQ has shipped and received revenue from retailers for 2.6 million units, but that doesn’t mean all 2.6 million copies of the game have sold at retail. It’s been a tough go for many retailers in the last month; some even resorting to some rather cheeky sales tactics in order to push UFC 2010 out the door.

Nonetheless, 2.6 million units is a pretty strong number for any video game. And, if you consider that last year’s game shipped 3.5-4.0 million copies, this 2.6 million figure illustrates just how out-of-whack THQ’s expectations must have been.

I think THQ needs to be careful with how often it plays the timing card related to UFC 2010; excuses have a way of breeding complacency that no company can afford to tolerate. UFC 2010 was not the victim of poor timing or some force majeure. UFC 2010 was the victim of poor planning and gameplay issues.

THQ released a new game that had some flaws and wasn’t that much different from the previous edition (that had only been released one year prior) into a competitive market place where it couldn’t compete for limited consumer spending against superior purchase alternatives. Simple.

Perhaps THQ could have waited another month or two to release the game, but then it would have run into further competition like NCAA Football or Madden and the back-to-school crunch, etc.

My philosophy has always been that a superior product trumps most, if not all, market conditions. If not, then why did Red Dead, the iPad, and the World Cup prove to be such resounding successes? Each competed in the very same marketplace.

Each delivered a better value proposition.

Note: THQ announced this week that UFC Undisputed 2010 will be released for the PSP on September 7, 2010. This should add more units to the shipment total and help the company recover a bit of that lost revenue estimate on the year.