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wholikeswood on 10 April 2010
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ImJustBayuum said:
wholikeswood said:
CGI-Quality said:
It's possible. Then again, this gen has proven time and time again that userbase doesn't always dictate the end result. This is the first Gran Turismo (full title) of the gen and it's been immensely anticipated since 2005. Whether or not some of those people gave up waiting remains to be seen.

God of War III & MGS4 are just a few examples of userbases not being any final indicator of potential sales, or lack thereof. I think GT5 will sell a good 1.1-1.5mill first week and end off with a modest 9-10mill.

1.1mil is too conservative, considering Prologue did almost 700k in its first week without including digital downloads.

GOW3 managed 1.1mil in its first week, and Kratos doesn't command anywhere near the same power as the GT franchise. Moreover, GT5 will release in the holidays vs GOW3 releasing in March.

@ Bayuum: it's worth considering several things...

  • it's the first full Gran Turismo of this generation and that always a huge plus (CGI pointed out two good examples, and there plenty more, where a franchise's first release on a new generation defies expectations)
  • install base isn't all that important - it's the first 20-30 million that contribute most of the purchases of hardcore or flagship franchises; think of it as a graph where the line suddenly curves steeply upwards - the install base might take off sharply from 40mil to 100mil, but this doesn't affect the sales of a title like Gran Turismo proportionately... not even close
  • the simple fact that Prologue has sold ~4.5 million copies (inc. digital downloads) in 2 years... that's an expensive demo achieving an 8% attach rate... crazy...

Bolded: so 90% (30mil) of current PS3 userbase are the buyers of hardcore/flagship franchises.

-i didnt question GT5's success (6-9mil is pretty much guarantee base on your 1st/3rd point), I was merely questioning the long legs required to reach previous iterations LTDs by considering the current characteristics of this generation.

-The only HD games that seems to have extremely long legs are the FPS titles

-This generation, the racing genre have plenty of "GT quality" games available now & after the GT is released.

 

 

Sorry, I jumbled my second bullet because I was trying to relate back to the PS2 era so much:

I meant to say it's the first 20% of your install base that does most of your hardcore software purchasing (i.e. for the PS2, it was the first 20-30mil owners). Apologies for not making that clear at all the first time around.

So, if we just take ~40mil for the PS3's install base at the end of the year, we're looking at the first 20% making most of GT5's purchases - i.e. a significant proportion of those first ~8mil users will buy the game, and then the rest will be made up by a small part of the remaining 80% of the install base (purely for example's sake, say 5mil of the first 8mil PS3 owners buy GT5, and then 4mil of the next 32mil PS3 owners buy GT5).

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Prologue hasn't shown legs? It's a 2 year old demo yet it sold 15k physical copies last week (and perhaps a thousand or two digital downloads), so it's selling the same weekly as some big titles that came out in late 2009.

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What are all these games that are "GT quality" then? I can only think of Forza 2/3, and even then they won't match GT5's critical reception. That's all ultimately irrelevant though, because it's not just Gran Turismo's quality that the franchise has going for it - its greatest weapon is its brand strength.