Brink has sold "more than 2.5 million worldwide"

[Slimebeast]

Barozi said:

Slimebeast said:
First of all, shipped 2.5 million. Brink is still at the bottom of bargain bins which indicates there's still hundreds of thousands of copies unsold on retailer shelves. Sold-to-customer number could be less than 2 million if we exclude PC sales. So it's not undertracked by much by VGC.

Second, the Splash Damage guy says $120-140 million revenue simply because he naively assumes each copy is sold for $50-60. The true number is much lower. The guy most likely isn't lying, he simple doesn't know how much publishers are paid for shipments etc.

Anyway, I am very happy it shipped 2.5 million copies because I love Splash Damage thanks to them making Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and ET: Quake Wars.

But I doubt that the first shipment was 2.5m and as far as I know it hit the bargain bin very early, so why did retailers order even more copies when there are still lots of them in the bargain bin ?

Why do you doubt it? Brink is the typical game that only gets one shipment. For all we know it could be around 2 million shipped console copies, then add 300K PC sales and they round it to 2.5 million when they talk to media.

2 million initial shipment ain't that strange for a renowned publisher and a fairly big game. Also, remember that the distributor part of the chain push their shipments into retail without the retail having any good idea how much a particular game will sell before it's released.