Gears should pick up massive sales when Halo 3 launches for a few reasons:
#1. The price: At $30-$40 when H3 launches, the price for a top-tier uber-shooter will be very attractive to new owners of the Xbox 360 (the numbers, we can argue, but there WILL be an increase, and for shooters, COD4 would be next in line, with Gears proceeding it, IMO0.
#2. The hardware: Gears has been selling almost in lock-step with X360 hardware sales. Since the X360 has hovered @ 35k, so has Gear's software sales. I'm going to love to see where Gears ends up if the X360 was selling ~50k hardare a week.
#3. The Christmas. Yes, Christmas 2007 will be huge for Gears (atleast for a year old game). A great example of succuesful games way past their prime: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter sold around 150,000 units at Christmas. Very good numbers. Thing is, Gears has sold more than twice that. If we saw ~300,000 at Chirstmas, that would just be amazing for the game, and the IP.
As shams said, Guitar Hero is probably going to recieve a huge bump. If there wasn't a GH3 and Rock Band coming out so soon, the sky would be the limit (2.5m+) for Guitar Hero 2. Since there is so much DLC for GH2, though, sales should remain strong.
I'll be adding Japanese numbers tommorow. Nevertheless, I am very excited for X360 Japan numbers. Oblivion is the only X360 game thus far to stay in the top 50 (or even top 30) for 2 weeks. Very impressive. It's already tracking @ or ahead of Trusty Bell despite a ~5k gap.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
