Americas Pre-order Chart 21st August

[Doobie_wop]

Hyruken said:

psrock said:

RaY_Z said:

psrock said:

I love how every week some people come to say how disapointed they are at GT5 pre-order in America, just funny. Look at LBP2, those numbers worry me, that game has no buzz, none.

Not really, its pretty dissapointing really. I've been waiting for GT5 preorder numbers to jump, but they have just been dissapointing week by week. Im just hoping the game will be good, because I'll be geting it for the go karts at least =)

This America's pre-order, GT is really popular elsewhere, if you expect halo, Call of Duty for this game in America, then you want to be disapointed.

Thought i would just point out in europe the biggest selling exclusive game this gen is Halo 3. The biggest selling overall game this gen in europe is MW2. If you look at the biggest selling games this gen in europe your see both platforms have fps games making up the vast majority of the top 10. With football games and a couple of racing games making up the rest. What does that tell us? It tells us this gen the pattern between US and Europe is pretty similar and that fps games reign supreme in terms of sales.

People such as yourself defend GT5's numbers with this whole "it sells great everywhere else" thing when really if you look at GT games numbers your see US plays a huge part in the total sales. Japan is the smallest region for GT games.

What is to say this trend is not happening in europe too? To give an example of how things have changed there when GT4 launched there were 7.5m PS2's in UK alone. There were no competitiors pretty much. Now there are just 3m PS3's in UK. That means there are over 50% less consoles to sell a GT game to in that region. UK is the biggest region for racing games. If you think that won't make any difference on potential GT5 sales then you must be loco.

GT5 will sell well in europe. But for it to be a game to get beyond 10m sales it needs to sell in all regions. The reason Halo does well is because Americas and Europe buy it on mass. For GT5 to compete with it the game has to do the same. These pre-orders show that in one region it is not doing that. It is easy to say "well it will be selling xyz in europe so it doesn't matter". But the truth is it does matter. If these numbers continue GT5 will not get anywhere near 10m sales, and that is dissapointing.

Someone already pointed it out, but Gran Turismo 4 only opened with 770,867 in the US. Judging from the current pre-orders, GT5 is looking to follow that same path. It also only sold 2.8 million in the US compared to the 6.5 million in Others with an opening of 1,078,304. The world wide opening was 2.5 million and over the years it went on to sell 10.5 million (only 2.8 in America). Now obviously Halo is more accustomed to having a larger opening, but it's actually similar to Gran Turismos situation. Halo 3 sold 8 million in America and then sold 2.9 in others (Japan was only 130k), so in the end it ended up pulling a Gran Turismo except the region sales are swapped over. 

So just a recap: Halo 3 was 8 mil (Americas), 2.9 mil (Others). Gran Turismo 4 was 2.8 mil (Americas), 6.5 mil (Others), 1.1 mil (Japan). So do you get what I'm saying? The only reason people are  in disappointed GT5's pre-orders is because we are only tracking it's weaker region and the series has also been known to have ridiculous legs (weirdly similar to that have certain Wii titles). If GT5 can do 2 million lifetime in Americas, then I think it's going to do fine.

P.S. I thought your 'Halo is the best selling exclusive in Europe this gen' comment was weird when you consider how many of the Wiis heavy hitters outsold Halo 3 in Europe, Sony are releasing their first heavy hitter, so I don't see why Halo 3 can't be knocked down a couple of levels.

I don't like sales talk, just thought I'd give it a shot.