Has the Xbox 360 accepted defeat in 2009?

[Seihyouken]

Anyone arguing that the 360's lack of currently announced upcoming exclusives doesn't matter because the 360 didn't have a ton of exclusive releases around this time last year and are hoping that Microsoft will just churn out the games this E3 needs a reality check.

Here are the facts of the matter.

1. Between June and December 2008, 360 had 29 exclusive and console exclusive games released for it around the world.
2. We knew about 20 (69%) of those 29 games by this time last year.
3. Those 20 games we already knew about accounted for roughly 85% of the combined sales for those 29 games as of today.
4. Not a single one of the 9 games we didn't already know about by this time last year has sold 500k as of today.

So not only did we know about almost 70% of the games released from June to December none of the ones we didn't know about were anything close to huge sellers. Now let's look at this year in comparison. Last year at this time we knew of 20 games upcoming for that 7 month period. This year we know of 9.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Alan Wake
Champions Online
Divinity 2: Eco Draconis
Dungeon Hero
Halo 3: ODST
Ninety-Nine Nights II
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction
Venetica

Of those 9 games, Champions Online and Halo 3: ODST are the only ones with solid release dates. All the others are simply TBA 2009 and any number of them could possibly be delayed until next year.

So we know that Microsoft's lineup is already shaky, particularly in comparison with last year but E3 is just a couple of months away, surely Microsoft will announce a ton of great games there, right? Well, yes and no. Last year, 5 games were announced to be exclusively coming to 360. Those games were Lips, Scene It? Box Office Smash, You're in the Movies, Naruto: The Broken Bond, and Namco Museum Virtual Arcade. Not exactly the killer list everyone would have hoped for, and as I stated earlier, not a single one has sold over half a million as of today.

Now I very much expect that Microsoft will have both more and bigger new game announcments for us this year such as Forza Motorsport 3, Scene It? 3, Naruto 3, and probably a new game from Rare, but anyone deluding themselves into thinking that Microsoft is going to be able to magically announce a slew of million selling killer games that we didn't have any clue were in development is setting themselves up for huge dissappointment.