THQ: Red Dead hurt UFC 2010 sales

THQ says the runaway success of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption’s damaged sales of its brawler UFC 2010.

The 2009 edition of UFC was a smash hit, debuting at the top of the All Formats Charts and even receiving a nomination for Sales Triumph in this year’s MCV Awards.

So expectations were high for its sequel.

However, despite reasonable sales, THQ admitted the game hasn’t quite met expectations – at least not yet.

Our sales were softer than where we would have liked them to be,” THQ’s UK marketing director Jon Rooke told MCV.

We know our UFC and MMA fans have bought it, but we haven’t delivered the broader sales yet.

That’s largely down to Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar have probably taken a fair amount of our market share. They shipped 5m units, taking a lot of consumer dollars.”

May saw the debut of a wide array of promising titles from several leading publishers, but none were able to prevent Red Dead from racking up six weeks at No.1.

Rooke went on to claim that UFC 2010’s performance was also due to a change in circumstances” compared to when UFC 2009 hit the market, and he is confident UFC sales will pick up in the coming months.

Last year, we had the perfect storm,” he said. This year, Rockstar did.

That’s not to say our sales were in any way disappointing. We still managed to ship 2.6m units, which is a fantastic achievement, and that figure is still growing.

And we’ve got a long tail with that product. We know it sells consistently and will do so over a long period of time.

We absolutely believe we will deliver our initial sales expectations for UFC and the 2010 edition has been a phenomenal success.”