Xbox 360 Sales Chart, July 15th (depressive edition!)

[albionus]

I'm not sure about the summer drought bit. I was always under the impression that sales dropped off around this time of year though I can't really see any trends from previous years on this site since the info is limited. I could very well be mistaken on that.

I would guess if the drop off is unrelated to any natural industry trends that it's caused by two special circumstances. The first is the plethora of new games in June compared to the paucity of new games in July. That would effect overall software sales ratios. A quick count shows 25 new games on the 3 next gen consoles in the 5 week June period started in the top 50. That compares with 2 so far in the first 2 weeks of July. This was the driving force between the sharp jump in software attach rates in June. For the 360 its per 100 software attach rates for May/June/July(monthly) are 24/39/22. For the Wii, taking out Wii Sports and Play, they are 27/57/24. July isn't that much lower than May, it just looks terrible after a mega June for game sales.

That doesn't explain title specific drop offs of course. That I think is caused by the systems being in their first years. I have no hard evidence but it would seem that since consoles are primarily owned at this point by people who are either A) very hard core, and/or B) without many games or new games from which to choose, that sales would be more front loaded than normal. I checked the average decline of 5 games (SPM, MP8, Forza2, RE4, and Dirt, GH2 was included but the supply shortages ruined the data although it is trending almost exactly like SPM) and it seems the declines are Week 2- 50% (45-60), 3- 40% (30-45), 4&up- roughly 25% (15-35) unless/until it levels out or some outside event causes a sales resurgence.

Tying in cause 1, most of the games on your list fall in 2-7 weeks LTD due to the huge month we had in June, so most of those games are right in the heart of the "was doing well last week but now falling noticeably fast" part of their sales curves. With the exception of the already noted oddball GH2, the rest, especially the Japanese sales, are small enough that I would think the margin of error precludes any definitive conclusions about smallish sales trends (ie 0-20%). Without any new games to light up the charts and with everyone who wanted those games buying them quickly (again either because they buy every game or they just need anything to play) the normal counterbalance that more or less hides those declines is absent.

BTW, I know using only 5 games reduces the accuracy of my analysis but it's all I could do on short notice. One of these days I'll have to look at a much larger and more representative selection of games to see what the sales declines tend to be for different types of games. I'm surprised at how smooth and similar the curves for those 5 games are, though they are somewhat similar being major titles for their system. So they may not exactly sync up with the games on your list.