14 DAY TRIAL // Video game pre-orders for the Nintendo Wii U home console saw a great increase in the wake of this year's Gamescom conference, according to Amazon.
The company has revealed that, following the game industry trade show in Cologne, Germany, the interest in Nintendo's Wii U was far greater than in either Microsoft's Xbox One or in Sony's PlayStation 4.
Gamescom, unlike its North American counterpart E3, is open to both the press and the public, thus having a much greater reach among consumers.
According to the figures that Amazon has released, Wii U game pre-orders rose by 9 percent following the European convention, while those for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One trailer behind, at 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
This is a pretty surprising fact, especially because Nintendo was the only of the platform holders not to hold a press conference during the event.
The biggest spike in pre-orders was registered by Project Cars, Bandai Namco and Slightly Mad Studios' upcoming racing sim, which experienced a 42 percent boost, followed by Holiday season 2015 Xbox exclusive Rise of the Tomb Raider, which saw an increase of 30 percent in pre-orders.
This also comes as a surprise, especially when taking into account the backlash that followed Microsoft's announcement that the upcoming action adventure video game from Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix would be exclusive to its platforms.
There has also been no word on whether the revealed percentages accounted for the presumably canceled PlayStation 4 pre-orders for Rise of the Tomb Raider.
PS4 exclusive Bloodborne, Wii U exclusive Hyrule Warriors, and Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break also received a boost in overall player interest following Gamescom, translated into considerable increases in the level of pre-orders, showing that platform exclusives still matter a great deal.
Some notable titles missing from the list are the upcoming military first-person shooter from Activison and Sledgehammer Games, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, along with other blockbusters, which again comes as a surprise, especially since publisher Activision announced during Gamescom that pre-ordering customers would get a full day of early access to the game.
A likely factor is the fact that these are just percentage increases, and it's very likely that the biggest gains were made on titles that had much lower starting positions than the heavy hitters, and would definitely explain some of the puzzling numbers.
Here is the full top 10 pre-order list on Amazon, for the week following Gamescom:
1. Project CARS (Slightly Mad Studios) 42.3 percent increase 2. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix) 30.25 percent increase 3. Bloodborne (Sony) 16.08 percent increase 4. Hyrule Warriors (Nintendo) 11.77 percent increase 5. Quantum Break (Microsoft) 10.77 percent increase 6. Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft) 9.53 percent increase 7. Assassin's Creed Unity (Ubisoft) 9.44 percent increase 8. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Warner Bros) 9.03 percent increase 9. Battlefield: Hardline (EA) 8.81 percent increase 10. Super Smash Bros for 3DS (Nintendo) 7.56 percent increase
