A Completely Scientific GOTY: Using Sales Figures

Throughout this week, we’ll be examining how to take make choosing a Game of the Year a simple task, using SCIENCE!  Well, let’s put that another way: we’ll be taking a completely sarcastic look at choosing a GOTY, using methods that are generally nonsensical and farthest from efficient.

The second completely scientific method we’re going to employ for selecting a true Game of the Year revolves around sales numbers.  Sure, we can rate a game as a 7.5 all we want, but when it outsells nearly every other game available then perhaps the real mouth of that we should listen to in choosing the Game of the Year is the consumer’s wallet.

Sales dictate the longevity that a product remains in the spotlight, and in the case of games these figures are how we gauge the actual success.  Brick-and-mortar sales have always been a great indicator but this year, though, downloadable gaming really took off, causing us to re-evaluate how game sales are tracked.

Luckily for us the NPD, digitaltrends, and VGChartz have come to our rescue and collected that information for us already.

The iPhone’s App Store changed how we purchase games, much like how Facebook changed how we access casual games.  The quality of new games on XBox Live, PSN and WiiWare were also at all-time highs, and the consumer spent this economic turnaround year buying software left and right.  Theoretically, purchases would equate to popularity (read: hype), which would lead us to choose a top ten based on consumer feedback.  Here’s the list of what our pockets thought was the Games of the Year.

10. Gran Turismo 5 (4.1 Million) – PS3

09. Kinect Adventures (4 Million) – XBox 360

08. Pokemon Black / White (4.5 Million) – DS

07. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (5.5 Million) – Wii

06. Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver (6 Million) – DS

05. Halo: Reach (7 Million) – XBox 360

04. Fifa Soccer 11 (7 Million) – DS, Mobile, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, XBox 360

03. Red Dead Redemption (7 Million) – PS3, Xbox 360

02. Call of Duty: Black Ops (14 Million) – DS, PC, PS3, Wii, XBox 360

And the GOTY is…

01. Angry Birds (50 Million) – iOS, Android, Mobile

Angry Birds was everywhere this year.  Even though the game technically launched in December 2009, it didn’t take off until January of 2010 after the holiday rush began.  With the massive amount of downloads on Apple devices alone, the feather-swine war is easily the top-selling game of the year.  Thus, it takes our crown for the Scientific GOTY on sales merits alone.

[Sources: VGChartz, Wikipedia, NPD (Subscription required)]

*It should be noted that the sales figures examined were through the beginning of December, with true numbers not actually known.  It is difficult to accurately track sales numbers, with each of the outlets reporting different counts.  For the final two weeks of the month, games may have shifted more units and the final numbers might be slightly different.  We’d like to think that Deadly Premonition sold 13 million copies during that timeframe.  Also to note: these numbers were based on worldwide sales, and Pokemon was only just this March released in the US.