After E3's edition of this feature, I imagined that we'd have a major drop in points, seeing as how E3 is sort of the biggest event of the year. Imagine my surprise when we had a drop of well under 10%.
This month, three platforms dominated, with over 20% of the point share each: the PS3, PS4, and Wii U. Of those platforms, the PS4 and Wii U had less points than last month, but the PS3 actually gained a respectable 38 points. As for the other platforms, the handhelds each had a modest increase, as did the PC and 360. The Xbox One, however, lost over half of its points, giving it only about 7 or 8% of the PS4's total.
The real story was, as always, the games. Unusually, three games closely competed for the top spot: Pokemon X/Y, Final Fantasy 15, and Grand Theft Auto 5. Pokemon led with segregated skus, making it the first Nintendo game to do so in quite some time. Grand Theft Auto, however, got more points with combined platforms, thanks to the entirity of the 360 point share being devoted to the game. FF15 had a major fall since last month, losing over a third of its points.
Nintendo generally had a good month, despite a minor fall from the July edition. Even that fall can be largely attributed to the European release of Pikmin 3. In total, Nintendo had eight Wii U games in the 10-Points+ range, guaranteeing the platform a place in the limelight even with minimal 3rd party support. Although only two 3DS games reached the same range, these games, Pokemon and Zelda, dwarved the rest of the platform.
Sony's six 10+ games were evenly split between the PS3, PS4, and Vita. However, it should be noted that none of these games scored extremely well, with Infamous: Second Son coming in a mere eighth place even without combining platforms. In contrast, Nintendo had three of the top 6 skus. The other three top skus may have been PlayStation ones, but they were third party.
Square Enix should be a bit worried that hype for FF15 and KH3 is already winding down a bit. Other than these distant releases, the company has little going for it, with the only other games of note being HD releases of PS2 games.
