How poorly did Wolfenstein fare? According to NPD numbers obtained by GameSpot, the 360 version sold just over 59,000 units, with the PS3 edition barely clearing 30,000. Add in the PC iteration's 17,000 units, and Wolfenstein sold only around 106,000 units in the five days from its August 25 launch to August 29, when NPD's monthly reporting period ended. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/returntocastlewolfenstein/news.html?sid=6217169

Wolfenstein is a high profile franchise name that should have gotten better sales then it did within its first week. Activision did responded in disappointment to the low outcome. The article above does list the total amount of box sales within its initital week of sale. Futher reading the article, it does not explain or make any kind of presumation to why it did so poorly.

Batman was released for the consoles on Aug 25th, about one week after Wolfenstein. According to VGchartz.com, 900,000 retail boxes were sold within its first week. Its may be possible that Batman may have contributed to the low sales of Wolfenstein, as people were to just wait one week. We are still in a recession, because of this people would decide on limiting down to one game per month instead of two or three. Adam Sessler did mention on his video blogs about how publishers are becoming more selective on which dates to release games to increase the likeihood of success.

Wolfenstein was only offered on the retail box, it was not avaliable through Steam of Direct2drive. This is a mistake that could have led to low sales for the PC. There are alot of people who will only buy PC games via digital distribution and by Activision not putting Wolfenstein on a download service, they would be ignoring alot of potential consumers. Any publisher ignoring digital distribution as a method to sell more games would be completely idiotic.