from 1up.com:

The creators of the Half-Life series at Valve have been responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed videogames out there, but it's never been totally clear how much that praise has translated to actual sales. Though the company remains tight-lipped on the number of units sold through their wildly popular digital distribution network Steam, they've decided to divulge their retail sales numbers to Game Informer in the November 2008 issue (via Gamasutra). Even with the notable absence of Steam's contributions, the nearly 33 million games sold in stores still manages to be a pretty astounding figure on its own.

Unsurprisingly, the original Half-Life is Valve's all-time biggest seller, with 9.3 million copies sold in the ten years since its 1998 debut. Holding down the fort at second place is Half-Life 2, which has moved 6.5 million units following its release in 2004. Valve tallies 4.2 million copies sold of the multiplayer mod Counter-Strike, followed by last year's Orange Box collection, which has already reached the 3 million sales mark. Rounding out Valve's top five sellers is the quasi-sequel Counter-Strike: Condition Zero at 2.9 million units.

Other noteworthy sellers include Counter-Strike: Source at 2.1 million sold, Half-Life: Episode One with 1.4 million, and the Half-Life expansion Blue Shift at around 1.1 million units. The recently released Left 4 Dead's sales figures are still unknown, but the cooperative zombie shooter boasted significantly higher preorder numbers than the Orange Box did last year. Valve's early predictions for the game have it pegged at roughly 3.6 to 3.9 million copies.

As impressive as these numbers are, they're still ignoring the over 15 million people that use Valve's Steam client to download and purchase their games online. Digital distribution has increasingly become a major part of Valve's business, and the direct connection to their customers results in a higher profit margin for the company. It would be quite fascinating to see how this retail sales data compares to the amounts Valve has sold via Steam over the last few years, especially considering the ridiculous bargains that the service frequently plays host to.

a tip of the hat to valve for making awsome games.

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...your resident NintendoJuNkEe...

wii #: 1744 3826 2661 3976

"i hope mickey dies. i do, i hope he god damn dies. i hope he gets ahold of some tainted cheese....and dies lonley and forgoten in the dumpster of a soild parking lot of a resturant in a bad neighbor hood...with his hand in goofey's pants."

-george carlin :(

TIME FOR THE KIRBY DANCE!!!!!!!

<("<) (^"^) (>")>

please excuse any spelling errors i have made in this post. i blame WoW because WoW is lame. yes i said it, WoW is lame!

--- (Edited on 12/4/2008 10:15 am [GMT-0500] by The Nintendo JuNkEe) ---