Ubisoft: From Dust Marks Company's Fastest Selling Digital Release

Ubisoft said today that first day sales for last week's Xbox Live Arcade release From Dust have outpaced those for all other digital releases from the company. The company said day one sales for the downloadable god game were 45 percent higher than the company's previous best-selling XBLA title. Ubisoft's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World title sold over 70,000 copies in its first week on sale, according to a Gamasutra analysis of leaderboard data, making it one of the service's most successful game launches. From Dust is the first title from celebrated Another World creator Eric Chahi since the late '90s. Critics gave generally positive marks to the game, which involves rearranging a world full of sand, water and lava to protect primitive villagers. Speaking with Gamasutra last year, Chahi said the game's direction was determined largely by the technology behind it, which allows for real time interaction between different types of matter for effects like erosion and land creation. "At the origin, it was a strategy game, but there was a background with the world, with a lot of erosion, [the characters have] some knowledge to preserve, and you are are giving power to your people," he said. "The fact arose that the simulation was really malleable -- it drove us to direct interaction with the terrain."