Red Dead Redemption 2 was certainly a big release for PCs this year. However, some recent numbers released by Neilsen SuperData suggest its sales performance on PC was somewhat lacklustre. Could it be due to the restricted launch and involvement of the Epic Games Store (EGS)? That hypothesis doesn't seem to hold much water as Borderlands 3 sold 1.78 million units in its debut month on EGS.
RDR2 was probably one of the most hotly anticipated PC titles this year. The platform missed out on the first instalment, so some thought the sequel arriving on PC was another pie in the sky rumour. However, a year after heralding RDR2 on consoles as the second biggest entertainment industry launch ever (behind only GTA V), it confirmed a PC release was on the way. Then, a month later, it was available to purchase and play on PCs.
SuperData says that RDR2 sold 408,000 units on PC during its first month exclusive on the EGS "paling in comparison to other exclusive launches like Borderlands 3, which sold 1.78 million units in its debut month". However, there are some important differences between the launches to note.
The first difference between RDR2 and BL3 launches is that from the outset PC gamers knew that RDR2 would be releasing on Steam just a month later. BL3 is a timed exclusive on the EGS for a much fuller period - 6 months - until April 2020. This difference in timed exclusivity periods is significant.
Secondly, we must remember that RDR2 wasn't released an EGS 'exclusive' on PCs, it could rather be described as an 'anywhere-but-Steam' release. Other stores where you could grab RDR2 pre-Steam were; Greenman Gaming, Humble Store, GameStop and others. Furthermore, Rockstar pushed hard to gamers to buy RDR2 direct from its own new PC store, the Rockstar Games Launcher. We don't have figures for sales of RDR2 over all PC stores at the time of writing.
In other chart news, it is worth checking out the SuperData top grossing titles for Nov 2019, above. In total gamers spent $9.5 billion digitally across all games in November. You can see that RDR2 failed to register in the PC top 10 during the period.
