Europe's largest video game maker Infogrames/Atari said on Friday that its new "Enter The Matrix" game sold more than one million copies in the first week of its launch.
“Enter the Matrix” launched on May 15 is “the No. 1 selling video game worldwide selling more than one million units in North America and Europe in the first week of availability,” the company said in a statement.
Traders said there was relief negative reviews of the game had not hurt sales and analysts said the strong debut must be confirmed, especially as the game will face competition from another potential blockbuster, Eidos’ “Tomb Raider 6,” slated for launch next month.
Breaking even
Analysts have said that “Enter the Matrix,” the company’s biggest budget game yet, is key to Infogrames’ future, the more so since it faces bond repayments over the next two years.
North America made up 60 percent of the games sales and Europe 40 percent, an Infogrames spokeswoman said.
Infogrames has shipped 4.0 million copies of the $50 game to retailers across the world and analysts say that the game, the video game companion to sci-fi thriller “The Matrix Reloaded,” must sell all four million copies just to break even.
Gamerankings.com, which amalgamates reviews from across the Web, showed scores of between 70 and 80 percent for the game. Top games regularly exceed 90 percent.
AOL Time Warner is the parent company of CNN and Warner Bros., which produced “The Matrix Reloaded.”
Source: CNN
