Update: Vgchartz staffer Keith Jackson has informed me that while High Voltage Studios had not yet heard how the game has performed, Sega is "very happy", and Game Spy, which handles Wii online servers apparently was pretty impressed with the traffic of the game on the servers calling it "hot". Apparently, The Conduit online traffic was higher than Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Mario Kart Wii (presumably over an initial period).

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The early word from several of our retail sources is that The Conduit from High Voltage Studios is performing similarly to a game in a completely unrelated genre - Punch Out!! which released in mid May. Punch Out!! actually was not even the biggest new Wii title of that May week because of EA Sports Active. Punch Out!! sold about 100,000 units on Wii week one, placing fifth for the week in our weekly chart. We have been informed that The Conduit should be at 100,000 or so week one, even though it may end a little lower in the top ten ranking then Punch Out!! did due to a larger number of high profile games releasing this week. 

For the week ending June 27, it looks like number of titles sold well. Fight Night Round 4 (360/PS3), Transformers (360), and Overlord II (360) at least in this early data - look like they have sold similar or greater volumes than The Conduit did. Wii Fit, and the PS3 version of Transformers may have also outsold the game, but probably came in several slots below. Nonetheless, even though The Conduit will likely end up charting in the bottom half of the top ten list overall, we believe it was one of the three best selling Wii games of the week.

Assuming The Conduit sales do end up at around 100,000 week one in the Americas, the game will likely end up finding an audience of over 300,000 gamers on Wii lifetime making it a moderately successful new IP. With good legs and a decent Euro launch it can get signficantly higher than that. If development costs for the game were under $5 million the game will probably get a sequel.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com