Joe Danger 2 struggling to find audience on XBLA

Author: by Eric Caoili, Ryan Langley

Though Hello Games' stunt racing game Joe Danger is popular on PlayStation Network, the indie series' latest edition is having a tough time gaining traction on Xbox Live Arcade despite its timed exclusivity there. Joe Danger 2: The Movie was the second-best reviewed new title on XBLA last month (average Metacritic score of 81) and had the publisher backing of Microsoft, but leaderboards data for September 2012 provided to Gamasutra shows that the game sold around 6,000 units across three weeks last month. That's even fewer units than the original Joe Danger sold on XBLA during its opening week last December, which was over 8,000 downloads -- and that enhanced port released a year and a half after the PSN edition. Joe Danger 2 was also believed to be an exclusive for XBLA until late September (three weeks after the XBLA release), when Hello Games announced a PSN version with extra content coming out in October. For comparison, when the first Joe Danger game released on PSN in June 2010, it had more than 68,000 players after its first month on sale. It's worth noting, though, that Joe Danger faces more competition in the motorbike stunt game genre on XBLA from RedLynx's popular Trials franchise. Looking at other highlights from September 2012's leaderboards data, Harmonix's multi-platform music game Rock Band Blitz sold over 116,000 copies on XBLA, most of that coming from its first week of availability, when it had no other new releases to compete with. And Klei Entertainment's stealth-based action title Mark of the Ninja, the only September release with a higher Metacritic average (91) than Joe Danger 2, also performed well, moving over 50,000 copies in its first month. Its second-week sales actually exceeded its opening-week numbers. As for previously released games, Mojang and 4J Studios' Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition continues to sell plenty of copies four months after its release, adding a little less than 100,000 players each week on average throughout September. Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve's multi-platform August release Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also sold well, bringing in 106,000 new players last month. Gamasutra contributor Ryan Langley has made more charts and analysis for XBLA's September 2012 sales available here.