Darksiders II moves 247,000 units in US during August

A notable bit of info has made its way out of last month’s NPD report: The software division’s chart-topper Darksiders II moved just 247,000 units during the period.

The NPD Group passed the revealing figure onto GI.biz late last week. It points to how comparably weak the retail market is currently, as well as potentially spelling more trouble for publisher THQ—who was heavily relying on a successful launch for the game to keep things afloat.

Analyst Michael Pachter chimed in that at the moment global numbers should be much higher than the US figure, but that the game is still likely looking at falling short of breaking even.

"I think that the sales are below what they had hoped for. I presume it sold around 500,000 globally in the first two weeks (the NPD cutoff was Aug 25), so it’s probably over 1 million now, but my understanding is that breakeven is greater than 2 million units, so it’s not likely to get much higher than that," Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said. "We should probably give it another month and see if it’s tracking better."