Aaron Greenberg, head of marketing at Xbox, reveals in an interview that Rare Replay and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition have exceeded their intended sale goals. He went on to say the two games’ success really surprised them. According to AR12gaming, “Greenberg said he expects Rare Replay will enjoy a long sales tail into the holiday season and beyond.”
Rare Replay is a compilation of 30 of Rare’s games to celebrate their 30th anniversary of being a game studio. It also has over 60 minutes of behind-the-scene interviews and footage. According to Amazon Rare Replay has “700+ hours of gameplay.” Please remember that the collection has thirty games for $30 or less, depending on were you look to purchase it. I can see why it sold so well, especially because in the collection there are games like Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, and more.
Rare Replay is such cool idea for a game company to do, and if I owned an Xbox One I would buy this collection in an instant. Even players that have only played a couple of Rare’s games may buy this, and fall in love with games they never played or knew existed.
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is the original Gears of War game remaster, and for a limited time players will have access to the other Gears of War games till December 31st 2015. The game also comes with a beta for the Gears of War 4. Although, Greenberg said Gears of War: Ultimate Edition sold better than expected, he didn’t share the sales figures.
Honestly, I think it’s a little wack that the Gears of War: Ultimate Edition only gives players access to the other games until the end of December. The game was released on August 25th 2015, and it does gives players the time to play the other games, but that just doesn’t sit right with me. That’s like if I bought the Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, and I only owned one of the three games the collection allows me to play.
In an interview with Kinda Funny Games, Greenberg stated, “We actually, even the first week at retail, we were sold out, so we had to restock. It’s not usually a problem you have where games are stocked out at retail anymore; it used to be that way. So that kind of surprised us. It’s doing really well both in physical and digital.”
When Greenberg was asked if they would release any more compilations like Rare Replay, and he responded “as far as other compilations, I would say this is pretty unique,” Greenberg went on to say, “So we’re not now going to go run off and create six other things. This was something special for Rare. And I think it will be a product that I think will do really well long term as kind of an evergreen product.”
Greenberg suggests that players who bought the physical copy are less likely to trade in their copies because the collection is ” represents a piece of history and legacy for gamers.”