jarrod said:
That's... quite the drop for MM10 actually! MM10's been hard for the usual sources to track on XBLA due to no leaderboards, but it's weekly placing has always been fairly terrible (launch week it only managed 4th place even, though that was partly attributed to it launching a week earlier on PSN and WiiWare), so I'm not sure if those numbers entirely add up even. Capcom's also been dead silent on it (unlike MM9, which they were pretty vocal about being a success). I really think Capcom & inti would've been better off doing a SNES styled MMX9 instead. I also don't see MMU doing all that well in the future, it's visuals have been pretty divisive/panned, which is often the death knell for new-retro oriented titles. Sonic 4 has been almost universally critically panned, I think Sega & Dimps would've been much better served killing the Episodic DD release in favor of a "full" retail title. I think rather than 500k, they could be looking at 5m if it were a real "return to form" at retail. Even a flawed retail product could've done better though I think, cutting out retail I have to imagine also cuts out a significant portion of the reliable Sonic fanbase (especially on Wii). This is going to be a perpetual problem for bigger brand titles on DD versus retail imo, for the foreseeable future. GameBytes estimates also put the XBLA figures really, really low (like under 50k territory so far, lower even than Sonic Adventure on XBLA), so I'm a little curious about your 450k overall estimate if XBLA really is leading? I know Limbo's done amazingly well, it was heavily promoted as part of Summer of Arcade, it's gotten seasonal discounts and it got a significant amount of industry press attention. Last I saw (Gamerbytes estimates in Sept/Oct I think) put it near 600k, and still doing 30-50k monthly iirc. Braid was a similar success story a year earlier, and I think Super Meat Boy will continue the trend. Still, there seems to be an elevated level for all these games, especially above the Indie games doldrums where you'd normally expect this sort of content were it not hand selected by Microsoft to go elsewhere. It's another problem with XBL for smaller and independent developers, there's no even playing field; you get hand picked and highly promoted, or you get tossed into the Indies "3rd world" and mostly ignored. Wiiware seems to have almost the opposite problem, everyone gets the same treatment, it's just shitty for all. :/ I think it's pretty strong words to predict Limbo will gross more than any VC Mario though. Mainly because VC is almost guaranteed to graduate to Wii 2 (continuing sales to a likely more online oriented machine), while Limbo's post 360 sales are very much a question (as are it's sustained sales... Braid eventually fizzled and Limbo may as well). In Limbo's favor though, it's pricepoint is 3 times higher than a VC NES title... to outsell SMB1 for example, it only has to sell a third as much (at full price). |
I don't want to attack other places that do estimates, but....Gamasutra's methodology behind tracking Sonic is flawed. They are using leaderboards to track a game that cannot be tabulated via leaderboards. Leaderboards for Sonic 4 are only updated in the event that a user actually checks the leaderboards themselves - which not everyone will do. I can't pull it up right now, but Sonic 4 led sales on Major Nelson's Top 10 for its debut week, which beat out titles like Dead Rising: Case Zero which sold very well in October (>60k), so that gives you a minimum threshold for what Sonic did.
For the argument of promotions - you can argue that the games are performing well only due to Microsoft's promotion. I can understand that, but it doesn't change the argument that other non-MS promoted platformers have done very well like N , The Maw, and Cloning Clyde which all sold well over 100,000 units (N did over 300k and had no promotion by MS). Super Meat Boy was never promoted by MS as a marquee title, like LIMBO or Braid, so it should be a good example of sales. It has sold 160k on XBLA and over 250k on Steam.
As for your argument about sales fizzling - that does not happen on XBLA. Braid never fizzled. It still sells very well, relative to its first month on market. Every title on XBLA still sells well, relative to their release, which is why LIMBO will reach great heights. Very few games ever provide major outliers in terms of long-tail. That is, every XBLA, PSN or WiiWare title is an evergreen title, unless they had abysmal sales their first month.
Put it this way: the average Xbox Live Arcade title, 2 years after release, will still be grossing approximately 5% of its first-month revenue every month, and will continue to do so, indefinately. Braid still sells about 5-7% of its first month. So does Shadow Complex, Mega Man 10, and so on. A few titles are well above this like Castle Crashers and Trials HD, but in general, the rule of thumb is 5% forever, as the game almost never gets de-listed. Since LIMBO was the marquee title of Summer of Arcade 2010, it is likely to reach higher numbers due to popularity, and should still be selling 7-10% of its first month sales, 2 years from now (or about 25,000-30,000 copies per month, every month).
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
