Spielberg's Boom Blox Bombs at Retail

Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox has failed to fulfill sales expectations.

Judging by the low sales of Boom Blox, even Hollywood directors can't outsell Nintendo's first party Wii titles. With only 60,000 units sold, Boom Blox barely made the top 25 selling games of May and placed ninth for the Wii. In attach rate terms, only .6 percent of North American Wii owners own a copy of Spielberg's full-priced puzzler.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier gabbed with GameDaily about Boom Blox being released alongside iconic Wii games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the adverse affect on sales competition would have.

"It's still really hard for new IP to breakthrough the noise in the market," she explained, "and there has been a lot of noise so far this year... there have been some really high profile game releases. The game was really well reviewed so I'm suspecting the marketing just didn't break through the clutter to the extent that they were hoping for."

Source: GameDaily via Joystiq

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I may be alone on this one, but when I hear the name Spielburg I think epic action adventures with a bit of soul / incredibly depressing World War 2 stuff.

Finding out that he was making a game about a bunch of anthropomorphic jenga blocks made me lose on the enthusiasm front. Still waiting for David Lynch to make a video game.

I was pretty excited for Boom Blox myself, to be honest. It seemed like the sort of mindless fun that'd be nice to unwind with.

I've played it. It's dull, and I like puzzle games.

I have a friend who spent five hours in the early morning playing this. He said its more like Gary's Mod than anything else, except obviously not for the PC. He has the patience of a saint, though, and I guess if you're not willing to stick with it (or even a puzzle fan) then it may put you off.

It may be a decent game, but I think the expectations of Spielberg's attachment ran way too high. Consider this: The man might be a great movie director, but would any of us expect him to be a brilliant musical composer because of that? Or an author? A painter?

So why is there this apparent assumption that he'd be some kind of amazing game designer?

L.B. Jeffries:
I may be alone on this one, but when I hear the name Spielburg I think epic action adventures with a bit of soul / incredibly depressing World War 2 stuff.

Finding out that he was making a game about a bunch of anthropomorphic jenga blocks made me lose on the enthusiasm front.

Spielberg has also done some pretty awesome kid-themed stuff in the past, such as Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures.

I've heard mixed reviews for this from my local gamer crowd, but I have heard a couple people say they doubted it but found it surprisingly fun.

<--Not surprised.
Speilberg saw the gaming industry as just another way to cash in on his fame. He fails.

Does anyone know how much Speilberg actually had to do with this game?
I suspect very little.
Not that that's a bad thing, guys only made three decent movies after all, but I just got the impression that slapping his name all over Boom Blox was just a marketing ploy.

Anyway - it a great game and this is another sad day.
Yet another original IP dies a death at retail... at this rate I'll be playing Wiiware/XBLA far more than any 'proper' releases.

Problem highlighted in the first paragraph:

Full Price Puzzler.

Who's ever paid £50 for a puzzle game, however imaginative it may be.

Judging from the cover, Bloom Blox looks like a budget game that you would buy for $10-$20. I think people are hesitant to pay $50 for something that looks like a casual 3D Tetris game that they could play online for free. I hear the game is a lot deeper, but it doesn't look like it from the cover or the screen shots.

edit: fix-the-spade beat me to it.

Suprise, suprise. Another third-party game sells like shit on the Wii. Unless your game has insane amounts of hype around it (Guitar Hero 3) or has a Nintendo mascot plastered on the front of the cover, consider your game to sell like crap on the Wii.

Malygris:
It may be a decent game, but I think the expectations of Spielberg's attachment ran way too high. Consider this: The man might be a great movie director, but would any of us expect him to be a brilliant musical composer because of that? Or an author? A painter?

So why is there this apparent assumption that he'd be some kind of amazing game designer?

I think anyone I'd care to call intelligent would have been suspicious of The Spiel's game-making talents.

Shows how good the marketing has been for it, as I hadn't even heard of it until right now.

fix-the-spade:
Problem highlighted in the first paragraph:

Full Price Puzzler.

Who's ever paid £50 for a puzzle game, however imaginative it may be.

My thoughts exactly. I'm actually pretty interested in Boom Blox, but it's more like a $30 CDN title. The price will drop very soon, I anticipate, and I'll be one of the first to buy it when it does. There are a lot of great casual-style games that hit the market at the right price. Endless Ocean launched at $30. Zack & Wiki was $30 at most stores on launch. Boom Blox was priced at the greediest selling point possible... so it's no surprise. The people responsible for pricing the game were a bit clueless with this one.

I didn't see much advertising out side of game sites for Boom, and if you want to make it as a 3rd-party title on the Wii, you better make sure everybody knows about it.

shame about that one, its agood game, the 50 dollar price point is high, but it was definitely worth the purchase. i bought it and itas great

60,000, that's even less than average in terms of XBLA sales.
On the Wii, it's pathetic.

Stop spreading lies. SERIOUSLY. In truth, the game sold nearly 200K worldwide in the first month alone, and it over that mark already. And that's before it's even came to Japan. In reality, the way this game is tracking, it will sell over 500K by year's off. It's doing just fine. And considering it's price it's raking in a ton of money. I expect it to be around for a long time to come.

By the way, you can check the real sales figures here:
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=13684

So please, CHECK YOUR facts first before making these posts.

"I think anyone I'd care to call intelligent would have been suspicious of The Spiel's game-making talents."

Considering that games are a visual medium and Spielberg already had a major success creating "The Medal of Honor" series and co-launching Gameworks, I'd say that you are pretty closeminded. The game also got raves reviews from many critics. Check gamerankings.

Most interesting, VG chartz claims 120K copies for the USA alone, instead of 60K. So who's full of it now?

This article implies that Riccitiello didn't seem to disagree with the 60K figure.

Rankings don't mean much, since you can find cases where games get good ratings, but sell badly (BG&E, Rez, Okami in Japan iirc).