In-Depth: PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, January 2011

[GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley examines PlayStation Network's debuts and successes during January 2011, using leaderboard and chart data to analyze their sales and downloads.] The PlayStation 3's digital service saw only seven new releases for January – a far more common number than the volume released during December. We were only able to follow two of the games in any depth, and one of them accidentally allows for both full and trial players to be added to Leaderboards. Along the way, we take a look at some of the newer titles like Modern Combat: Domination, as well as older titles like Castle Crashers in this slightly late analysis. Combat Gets Modern Richochet HD was one game we could follow, but it seems to have very low numbers – only 1,770 players on its Leaderboards. The game was only announced the week that it was released -- which hasn’t really worked out well for other games -- and was published by Tik Games, who seem to be making a habit of porting older, casual PC games over to the PlayStation Network. The other game was Gameloft’s Modern Combat, which does have Leaderboards, but also includes people who play the game with the free 30 minutes online. So anyone who played it, trial or full, was instantly added to the list. For the two weeks it was available in January, 291,816 people downloaded and at the very least played the demo. Not bad, considering the price of $7.99. We can compare that to the two free titles released on XBLA in January – Doritos Crash Course and Harm's Way. The numbers are actually very close to Harm’s Way downloads in a similar timeframe (257,803), but much lower than the more casual Crash Course (964,903). The other games didn’t have Leaderboards at all, or had a limited scope that we couldn’t track. Other Titles Please note: The stats in green are games that we only checked for the latter half of the month, rather than the full month. Apologies as this was out of our control, so those stats will be lower than they should be. Castle Crashers continues to sell well, now with over 200,000 players on the PlayStation Network. So does Tetris, though I would have expected more from the classic puzzler. Marvel Pinball has done well, now at 31,786 players, though this is only a little more than half of the sales of the XBLA version. Shatter On PlayStation Plus Back in December, Shatter added 49,296 players to the Leaderboards, as it was free for PlayStation Plus subscribers in America. In January Europe followed with the same deal, and the game added an additional 39,832 players -- including any non-PS+ sales. It was also available for half price in America for a few days at the end of the month. Onto February There are plenty of big titles that have come to the PlayStation Store in February -- Explodemon, Tales From Space: About A Blob, Plants Vs. Zombies and Stacking, but a lot of them include no Leaderboards, so we’ll do what we can.