What is your honest opinion on the Forza Franchise? Compeditor to GT?

[Michael-5]

Carl2291 said:

Michael-5 said:

If you add the sales of Forza 3 during the time of those bundles, Forza 3 sold about 3.5 million units (2 for ODST bundle, 1.3 for Alan Wake). Forza 2 sold 1 million units in the 3 months before it was bundled. If Forza 3 sold as well as Forza 2, that immediatly bring the number of bundled sales down to 2 million, but since Forza 2 was a July release and Forza 3 was October, I severly doubt that. Realistically Forza 3 sold 1.5 million units in the first 3 months on its own. As for the Alan Wake bundle, before and after Forza 3 was selling 20k weekly. Assuming it held those sales, and didn't go up in sales due to the holiday period, thats 400k natural sales. However holidays do boost sales, and an "Ultimate Edition" was released, where sales doubled the week of release. So realistically 600k or so units were naturally sold.

Do this math, Bundles actually added less then 1 million sales, but I was being lenient knowing most people would heckle me if I said otherwise.

Using the car analogy as well. Does it matter that Forza sells half as many games at GT? Is the Lotus Elise not a compeditor to the Porsche Boxter just because it sells less cars? What about the Masaratti Quatroporte compared to the Porsche Panamera, or the Aston Martin Rapide? Sales don't justify quality if you ask me.

Bundles really didn't add less than 1 Million to Forza. Seriously. Look at the actual charts, it's obvious and plain to see. When the Forza 3 Holiday '10 bundle was released, sales were spiked massively. 1.5 Million units added while that bundle was out, when the bundle stopped... Sales dropped again.

The ODST bundle. Again. Sales were spiked. It went from selling less than 20k weekly to hitting highs of 70/80k. It stabalised at around 30k for a few Weeks, when the bundle stopped... It dropped off the charts completely, selling less than 12k, if I remember correctly.

Forza 3 was hugely bundled. The bundled sales are somewhere between 1.5/2 Million units.

As for your analogy, if that's the case and we're just using it in a competing sense because it's another racing game... Then yes. It's a competitor. Just as ModNationRacers is on the PSP.

But sales didn't spike. They did jump, but Forza Motorsport always had strong weekly sales. In January this year, when the bundle was long over FM3 was still selling 2/3rds as well as GT5, a game 1 year newer. I've looked into it, for the Alan Wake bundle, sales grew from 3.3 to 4.6 million sales, and I doubt FM3 sold less then 500k in that 4 month holiday window, especially since sales spiked (and yes, they spiked here) when the Ultimate Edition released. A similar story goes for Halo 3: ODST bundle, if FM2 can sell 1 million on it's own before bundles in a quieter time, FM3 can sell 1.5 million.

It's not like you claim for FM only sells when a bundle is released, of course it sells higher, the bundles are limited time holiday bundles, but in the weeks approaching fall 2010, FM3 was selling around 20k weekly, not much less then GT5 is now.

I looked into this, just trust me. FM2 was heavily bundled (half or slightly more sales coming from bundles), but FM3 really did a lot of it's own leg work.

If bundles were 2 million, that would mean that FM3 sold only 500k of it's own sales during both holiday windows, that doesn't make any sense because that's how well the game sold in spring 2010, and a bit longer into 2010. How can holiday sales be the same as spring sales? You know sales inflate during the holidays for all games right?

Mod Nation Racers is a compeditor to GT and Forza? Wouldn't Mario Kart be more appropriate? Mod Nation is a...fun racer, not a simulator. Just like a camry is a boring family car, and a mustang is all sports, can't compare those two.

Either way, sales aside, what's your opinion? Compeditor or no?