It’s been a roller-coaster week for the Wii U, Nintendo’s innovative but troubled home console.
First, French game studio Ubisoft publicly stated that it’s no longer making mature-rated games for the system as they just don’t sell. Then Activision said it’s not bringing the latest installment in its best-selling Call of Duty first-person shooter series to Wii U. But away from these two huge losses, which will limit the appeal of the Wii U to a mature gaming audience, there’s a sliver of good news for Nintendo: Wii U games benefited the most from exposure at this year’s Gamescom, the largest game industry trade fair in Europe. That’s despite Nintendo being the only one of the three major console manufacturers not to have a stage show at the event.
Retail giant Amazon has crunched its sales figures, as reported by MCV, and revealed that Wii U titles saw the largest percentage increase in preorders following Gamescom, with an 8.67 percent rise. Meanwhile, PlayStation 4 game preorders rose 5.16 per cent, and Xbox One titles only rose by 2.81 percent.
Now, it could be that Wii U preorders spiked so much because they were coming from a low baseline, but it’s still movement in the right direction for Nintendo.
The game that benefited most from Gamescom exposure came out of left field. Project Cars, a racing simulator from U.K. developer Slightly Mad Studios, got over 42 percent more pre-orders after the tradeshow, a better percentage increase than big hitters like first-person shooter Far Cry 4 and the controversial action-adventure title Rise of the Tomb Raider. Project Cars releases in Nov. 2014 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and it then hits SteamOS and Wii U in 2015.
A full list of the 10 games that saw the biggest sales increases on Amazon post-Gamescom is below.
1. Project Cars (Slightly Mad Studios): 42.3 percent increase
2. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix): 30.25 percent increase
3. Bloodborne (Sony): 16.08 percent increase
4. Hyrule Warriors (Nintendo): 11.77 perccent increase
5. Quantum Break (Microsoft): 10.77 percent increase
6. Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft): 9.53 percent increase
7. Assassin’s Creed: Unity (Ubisoft): 9.44 percent increase
8. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Warner Bros): 9.03 percent increase
9. Battlefield: Hardline (EA): 8.81 percent increase
10. Super Smash Bros for 3DS (Nintendo): 7.56 percent increase