In somewhat surprising news, the gang at Shacknews has found that sales for Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 are substantially lower than we’d have predicted.  Apparently Crysis has only sold 87,000 copies while UT3 sold only 34,000 units as of last month.  Considering the huge success of UT2003 and the cult classic that was Far Cry, both of these sales results are very troublesome for a PC gaming industry that has seen the console creep up on it for years. 

Some people were predicting low sales for UT3 though based on the LOW amount of gamers actually playing it online.  In fact, more people are playing UT2004 and the original UT online than the latest Unreal Tournament 3.  Sad…

For comparison, Call of Duty 4, sold on consoles and the PC, sold over 1.5 million copies last month.
When November industry sales datawas released this week by tracking firm NPD, the PC platform was notably absent from the list of top ten best-selling games despite the release of high-profile titles such as Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament III and Crytek’s Crysis. Now, according to NPD data released by market tracking site the simExchange, it seems both games kicked off with disappointing initial sales–neither approached 100,000 units.

The report shows Crysis as selling 86,633 units at retail since its November 13 release; the game’s potential audience has no doubt been limited by the game’s notoriously steep system requirements. Meanwhile, Unreal Tournament III saw considerably flatter sales, tallying 33,995 since its November 19 release. Prior to the release of this data, many gamers had predicted low sales based on the game’s sparse player count; at the time of writing, its current online player count is actually below the single-player-oriented Crysis.