WoW dominates the greater PC retail landscape in 2007

I don't know whether we should pretend to be surprised or not, but according to a report by the NPD group peeped by Gamasutra, which tracks game sales in retail outlets in the United States, World of Warcraft stood triumphantly on top of the PC Gaming pile for the year 2007, taking the number one and two spots on the list by a wide margin. Burning Crusade clocked in at #1 with 2.25 million and vanilla World of Warcraft came in second with 914k. The next highest contender was the Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack which clocked in it a relatively paltry 433k units sold. The PC game industry in general took in revenue of $910.7 million in sales, though that figure was down from $970 million last year. It's unclear whether this general downturn was due to a lack of good games compared to consoles or the relative untraceability of digital downloads, or what, but regardless the dominance by WoW is striking.

No other MMOs managed to crack the top 10 (nor did we really expect them to), but it'll be interesting to see whether the twin terrors that are Age of Conan and Warhammer Online can join WoW at the pinnacle of PC gaming success this time next year. If Blizzard can generate sales for their original game (which, by the way, launched in 2004 for crying out loud) that eclipse the next highest competitor two times over, you have to assume that Funcom and Mythic are hoping to grab at least a piece of that sweet, sweet NPD pie this year. Whether they choose to use the revenue to buy four wheels of fury is their own prerogative, however.