Electronic Arts is now trumpeting Red Alert 3 as “going platinum” and selling over one million copies. Fans of the series are gobbling up this bit of EA propaganda proclaiming the franchise is stronger than ever. EA’s promotional machinery discusses the number of million sellers in its library to entice additional investor dollars. Obviously, we have some groups of people motivated to put a positive slant on all things Red Alert 3.
Before we all run out and start practising micro on Bank Of Montreal ATMs let’s take a closer at how the Red Alert 3 million seller occurred. The million sales includes games made for three major platforms AND its expansion Uprising. Uprising is a stand alone game selling for $20 as a PC download; EA counts this as a Red Alert 3 sale. Six weeks after its release EA discounted the main Red Alert 3 game by 35% on PC and XBox360. Finally, in April, EA managed to put the game over the million mark by including the XBOX360 version in a group of its titles offered for $10 USD at retailing giant BestBuy. So we’ve got four versions of the game combined with heavy discounting early in its sales cycle. Even with discounting, the game probably generated more than 40 million dollars USD in revenue.
Any way you cut it 40 million dollars is a lot of cash. The game itself is fun to play. The developers naval game play innovations breathe new life into an all time classic without ruining what made previous versions great. The Command & Conquer franchise is alive and well. Its latest incarnation, Red Alert 3, although popular, is not the “unprecedented commercial success” previous versions have been.
