Hyruken said:
So you got GT5 which will do very very well. It is a 1st day purchase for me. If we look beyond the AAA titles the 360 has games which have done well in the past i.e Mass Effect2, Fable 3, Splinter Cell Conviction,Crackdown 2 etc etc. Where as the PS3 beyond GT5 and GOW3 gets weak in its line up. Now i don't think you have to be biased or intelligent to figure out that generally sequels tend to do better then 1st time ip's. To use your game you mention as an example. Resistance 3. I think it is pretty likely that game will be announced this year. But the franchise is another game that for some reason people think is better then it really is in terms of sales. The first 1 sold 3.6m which is a huge number for a new ip. But the follow up has only just past the 1.5m barrier. That is not great for a sequel. In comparison to say Gears of War 3 which will also obviously be announced this year the first one sold 6m and the 2nd one thus far has sold nearly 6m too. In half the time of the 1st one. You would have to say it is pretty likely within the next year that gow2 will outsell gears of war 1. So that is my opinion but i base it on actual sales, things that have happened. That is what an analyst does. The same is with my orgional figures for the gap. Looks like i was right as the gap as predicted is decreasing each week. If that gap falls further and further and we get to E3 and Natal and the price drop comes in making the 360 reach that magic £99 barrier and the PS3 remains as it is then im sorry but i seriously do not see how people can expect the PS3 to beat that? We have here a total mirror image of what happened in 08. The PS3 went into that year beating the 360 and everyone was saying the exact same thing you have said. But the gap got closer and closer and then 360 drops price and they make back the numbers the ps3 had gained on them. The exact samething will happen this year. |
Mass Effect 2 has already launched. Splinter Cell Conviction isn't a 5 million seller. Just look at the trend for the last 3-5 Splinter Cell games, they have gotten lower and lower sales. Crackdown 2, likewise, isn't the sequel to some massive seller (the original sold 1.52m). Fable 3 could be pretty big, but probably not bigger (by much at least) than God of War 3.
First off, that would be your opinion. Secondly, FF Versus XIII is slated for release this year and is still exclusive (may change, but hasn't yet). The Agent is slated for release this year (though I expect it probably won't come out in 2010). Then there's The Lost Guardian, Modnation Racers, The Agency (you mentioned Mass Effect 2, which is also on PC, so I'm mentioning The Agency), DC Universe Online (platform exclusive), FFXIV (platform exclusive). We can also expect Resistance 3. You mentioned that Resistance 2 "only" sold 1.5 million (1.82 million actually), but it outsold Crackdown (and you mentioned Crackdown 2 as a "game which has done well") by 300000 units (or roughly 20%). There will also probably be more titles releasing in late 2010 that we haven't heard anything about yet.
In software sales, sometimes (a lot of sequels end up with slightly reduced sales as opposed to growth). But we're talking about PS3/Xbox 360 hardware sales. Generally, sequels do not push that much hardware (just look at Mass Effect 2, it bumped Xbox 360 sales by what, 20k or so?). If you expect Mass Effect 2's bump (a sequel) to be bigger than the likes of God of War 3 or GT5 (first entries on PS3), the general forum consensus would probably be that you should put down the wacky tobacky.
Again, this is software. What you said there has no relationship (well, a very, very small one) to hardware. We're not discussing which system will have better software sales (overall or per title), but hardware sales. Gears of War III (if it releases in 2010) isn't going to push much hardware, so it has no place in this conversation.
Firstly, you are speculating there. I would be very surprised if the 360 hit £99 with Natal packed in. Just 2 lines above you mentioned doing what an analyst does ("base it on actual sales, things that have happened"), yet now you are speculating (with things that aren't that likely to happen).
To summarise: We're talking hardware sales, not software. Bring in discussions about how sequels sell better than originals is pointless, it has no bearing on the conversation (plus the fact that a lot of sequels under-perform when compared with originals). Also, you can not state as fact that the Xbox 360 has a better line-up, because that is your opinion. I could just as easily say "Xbox 360 has no hardware selling games, because they are all sequels", but that's not true. Both system have established hitters (GT5 and God of War 3 vs Halo Reach and Fable 3) as well as new IPs (Heavy Rain and Modnation Racers vs Alan Wake etc).
Edit: Also, about you saying God of War 3 isn't that big. Halo Reach and GT5 will likely end up with comparable sales, 2 or 3 years down the line. You say God of War 3 is not an AAA game, but I'd bet you 6 months sig control it ends up over 90 on Metacritic (which is what most people class as AAA). So, if GT5=Halo Reach, and God of War 3 isn't that big, what Xbox 360 game do you expect to be bigger than it. If none, then we can just as easily say that the 360 only has 1 big franchise coming out this year, which certainly doesn't sound like a stellar line up. See how easy it is to spin? Fact is, both system have good line ups, but PS3 has the momentum at the moment, while also having games that are more likely to be system sellers (new IPs and first entries on the console).
