Tomorrow will mark a full week since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released and we will have our first weekly view at worldwide sales. So far "Skyrim" has became the year's second fastest selling videogame behind, ofcourse, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. "MW3" smashed all sales records on the first day and became the highest-grossing entertainment launch ever, totalling over $400 million in the first 24 hours alone. Skyrim, on the other hand, sold over 3.4 million copies at retail - which does not include digital sales - on the first day and that number is closer to 7 million now. The vast majority of sales were on consoles as only 14% of sales were on the PC platform. So, how good are these for PC figures? It's difficult to measure success as a game on the PC because of the sheer amount of piracy, and digital sales often don't immediately contribute to initial sales figures. However, online activity has been promising with Steam publishing that Skyrim set a record with over 280,000 concurrent players, blowing away all of the competition.

Despite the relative success in sales, there is another side to the story. Modern Warfare 3 broke all sales records despite poor reviews and widespread criticism. Many reviewers claim that the latest instalment in the Call of Duty franchise is a step backwards, offering nothing we haven't seen before and more of the same - explosions, linearity, crass humour, explosions, weak story, repetitive and more explosions. PC Gamer said in their review: "Modern Warfare 3 is linear, badly written and one note. It’s still, from a certain angle, regressive." Many see it as a glorified DLC and there have been some circumstances of player's noticing entire structures copied & pasted from previous titles: source. MW3 is currently scoring 80/100 on MetaCritic but it's worth noting that the User Review box shows a score of 2.0.

And as for Skyrim, despite it undoubtedly being a magnificent game, developer and publisher Bethesda Softworks has largely ignored the needs of the PC platform, rushing out a poorly optimised console port, complete with clunky controls and unintuitive menus. Some have claimed that Skyrim boasts "the worst screen in the history of User Interfaces". It's a shame really, considering that Bethesda's early success came on the PC platform and by releasing such a shoddy port they are ignoring their loyal fanbase. Jim Rossignol from Rock Paper Shotgun perhaps summed it up best when he said:

QuoteHell, Oblivion's awkward interface was bad enough, but at least it allowed you to see almost everything at a glance. And sure, Bethesda, take away my stats, but at least allow me to see what I am wearing and equipped with inside the menus? The bonuses I have? Anything? No? And so I have to exit the menu system to look at my character? And I also have scroll through everything just to see what I am carrying? And even when you are clicking about in the menu there's a huge margin of error with a mouse, that most precise of pointing devices? Come on, Bethesda, this is not the future of RPG interface design we were promised.


There is a much wider debate to be had here, but the facts are that the two most successful games of the year have glaring flaws which the mass consumer market evidentially no longer cares about.