"Middle-Earth: Shadow of War" has cast a big shadow in its success, as the game is currently doing well in commercial aspects, with nearly one million copies sold in just a week.
Developer Monolith Productions and publisher WB Games, have published the estimated sales number of the action-adventure game in its first week of release. "Middle-Earth: Shadow of War" has now sold 911,000 copies both digital and physical in just a short span of time. Sales are expected to grow even more in the coming months.
Unfortunately, this was not enough to best its predecessor, "Shadow of Mordor's," week one sales numbers, which clocked in at 1.03 million copies across all of its release platforms back in 2014. This means that the game may be underperforming slightly compared to its predecessor given the sales. This was despite the crowning and improved features of the game such as the reworked Nemesis system, better graphics, and interesting Orcs.
Hardcore gamer suggests that it may have been due to the slew of microtransaction options which plagued the game. These came in the form of loot boxes, which is a questionable feature in a single-player game. The said feature was not included in the predecessor, and while it still had microtransactions to a certain degree and in the form of cosmetics, they were not as aggressively implemented compared to "Shadow of War."
Still, the game is well-received, particularly on Steam, where 77 percent of its 8,520 reviews are positive. It should be noted, however, that the user reviews still mention the unnecessary loot box structure of the game. Some claimed that the changes are minor compared to the predecessor, which may not be necessarily a bad thing.
"Middle-Earth: Shadow of War" is an open-world adventure game where the story of Talion and his alter-ego/possessor Celebrimbor is continued, as the two make an effort to weaken the dark lord Sauron and his armies. The game is out now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows.
