I knew publishers focused heavily on first month sales, but it's not often you can see the contrast.

5th March 2013 - Tomb Raider released

26th March - 3.4m sales worldwide

24th August - over 4m sales worldwide

So the first 20 days accounts for about 85% of lifetime sales so far (~5.5 months)

@Reuwsaat I would like to see Unions stay, but sadly your maths was out by a factor of 10.

one quarter of one percent would be just 0.0025 which is 250,000 views out of the 100,000,000 total.

Of course it really doesn't help that GS have all but completely hidden unions from view for a number of years, so it's mainly just the longer standing members that continue in older unions that I would think make up the bulk of those views. I doubt many people that joined GS in the last couple of years are even aware of unions being a feature of the site - sadly :(

@focuspuller lol - just saw that when I hit post :)

I think Wang summed up the reason people don't pay sports developers as much attention perfectly:

"Because there isn't an obvious technical leap from one entry of NBA 2K to the next, a layman may not recognize how dramatic the improvements are. But if you compare every second or third entry in the series--putting NBA2K on the same development timeline as other franchises--you can see a jump that's on par with its more respected peers."

Ultimately the vast majority of the visuals for a sports game are set by the game itself. Basketball has its court, football its pitch, hockey its rink. Turn 10 can create new locations and circuits, DICE imagine new battlefields, Ubisoft more time travelling settings for AC.

Sure there will be graphical improvements in the level of detail, but to the majority of onlookers its still the same bunch of guys in very similar kit doing what they did last year, and the year before, and the year before, ...

Looking forward to this, though keen to see how much of an emphasis is placed on the sneaking and stealth side, and not just being all-powerful and easily able to take down every guard on a level.

so are they having any kind of closing down sales?

@Dragon_Nexus After so many U-turns I don't think even they know which way they are facing

Came into this story hoping for news on a good Falling Skies game

Then I see "Barbie publisher to launch mobile game" and realise there's nothing worthwhile coming.

@Dasim64 My favourite area was Resort from the first game - nice fun light hearted area to mess about it. Jungle was much more linear and not somewhere I really wanted to spend much time exploring.

In the last year we lost loads of GAME, Gamestation and HMV stores, and what is left is not competitively priced.

I've bought plenty of games in the last year, but the vast majority were online or through Steam