Is It Possible For GT5 To OutSell Halo Reach Lifetime?...I Think So!

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BMaker11 said:

c0rd said:

Alright, time to crush this attach rate argument here...

The obvious problem with comparing GT3's attach rates (now) with Halo 3's attach rate, is the massive amount of PS2's sold after GT3 was no longer being bought. To solve this, I'll show you specific dates in which GT3 had already sold most of its copies (with not too many PS2's sold):

Week ending August 19th, 2001: Japan's GT3 sales at about 1.7mil with 5.5mil PS3's sold, or a 31% attach rate. That's close enough to the current userbase of the PS3, so if GT5 is a hit / still popular there, we can expect at least 1.5mil from that region.

End of March 2003 (see page 31): Over 11 million copies of GT3 were shipped by the end of March 03. Since under 2 million were shipped to Japan, we know that at least 9 million were shipped outside Japan, so... That's over 9 million GT3 copies shipped to ~35 million PS2 consoles sold (VGC), likely close to a 25% attach rate in the west.

Attach rate really doesn't tell us much, since there are too many outside factors (like PS2's extremely fast rate of consoles sold), I don't think it's worth putting that much weight on.

As for other factors:

While people have mentioned Halo's popularity has constantly been increasing, the same can be said for Gran Turismo. Although the second title per console always performs worse, the first of the console (GT1, GT3, soon GT5) performs well. The exception here is European sales, which increased with every release besides GT2. Expect GT5's Europe to be nearly on par with Halo in America.

The increased competition (such as Forza 3) may mean less GT sales, but the same can be said for Halo. CoD is surely the bigger franchise out of the two, yet people think Halo will still do fine. I think the same will probably happen for GT5.

Bundles. I have no idea how many American copies of GT3 were sold due to bundles, so this could hurt the past sales' arguments for GT5 by quite a bit.

As for my prediction? I see GT5 selling at least 1.5mil in Japan, 3 million in America, and 5.5 million in Europe, which would clear 10. I just don't know how far it can go after that, though.

#threadkiller 

I still think this is over-simplsitic.  Just as Halo has even the casuals buying it since it has a reputation as being one of THE games to get for a new Xbox owner, so did GT3 back when it launched.  I had people who NEVER would play anything remotely as hardcore with that game in their collections.  I just don't know that Gran Turismo is going to pick up those people now, the way that a Halo or Mario or COD all do.  

Remember that a good chunk of PS3 and 360 owners at this point in the gen never played a PS2 or original Xbox.  You've got a whole generation of gamers who have been playing fewer than the five years GT has been absent, which is clearly the downside of NOT iterating your game every other year at most.  Those consumers need to be re-won.  That's a tough battle for any franchise, especially a driving sim, these days in that there's just so much big-name, high profile stuff in the stream now.  We're spoiled with getting great title after great title on all the systems, but it's that much harder to really carve out that blockbuster space.  Look at how rare it is to even hit 5 million on any one console.

GT5 looks like it might deserve 10 million in sales, but I think it's going to have a hard time getting there.  Driving games as a whole are not as popular, and there's a whole lot more competition.