Spielberg's Boom Blox Sees Low Wii Sales Debut

Despite critical acclaim, EA LA and Steven Spielberg's physics-driven puzzle action title Boom Blox (Wii) only sold 60,000 units during its first month at US retailers,

sales-tracking firm NPD informed GameDaily.

In all, the title was only purchased by a paltry 0.6% of the 10.2 million US Wii owners.

The news marks the latest blow for third-party Wii developers, which have typically seen much lower sales than first-party Nintendo efforts. While eight of May's best-selling games were Wii games, only three of those were not produced by Nintendo.

While the figure appears low, developer and publisher Electronic Arts was adamant that the game's performance matches estimates. "It has met our expectations internally," EA CEO John Riccitello said at the William Blair Investor Conference today, as relayed by MTV Multiplayer.

"It's continued to sell well. It did break into the top 10 for the Wii, and the advertising is doing exactly what [our] team expected to: drive sales."

NPD analyst Anita Frazier, meanwhile, blamed the game's low sales on market "noise."

"It's still really hard for new IP to breakthrough the noise in the market, and there has been a lot of noise so far this year," she explained. "The game was really well reviewed so I'm suspecting the marketing just didn't break through the clutter to the extent that they were hoping for."