Superchunk, that's really debatable. One could say the same thing about when Halo2 came out. One could figure that H1 sold to everyone that wanted a Halo game, or that when Halo 2 came out, no one would buy the console for H2 when there was already one halo out. The problem with that logic is that when Halo 2 launched, the Xbox had the highest November for an MS console (850,000 units) and beat the Playstation 2 out by about 150,000 units. Sony also had their lowest sales for a holiday for such a strong system in about 7 years (there was only a 200k margin between the Xbox and the PS2). Also, the game purchasing tendencies for the 360 crowd is a bit stronger to the non-shooter genre of games than the Xbox was. Sports games are stronger on the 360 (ala PS2). Madden 07 outsold any Madden on Xbox. Fight Night 3 sold better than any other FN. Most of the sales are more spread out to the "non hardcore" as much as the Xbox was. Project Gotham is the only game that did outsell the 360 version. Will everyone that bought Gears of War buy Halo 3? Most likely. However, there is a huge untapped market of about 3 million other people that bought Halo that didn't buy Gears of War. That's 3 million people that might buy a 360 this Christmas for Halo 3. Thats in addition to anyone that might buy it for a Grand Theft Auto game (GTAs have sold in the 2m w/w range with both the VC/LC double pack and just under 2m for GTA:SA), and the discrepancy of RPG players that bought KOTOR 1 (still leads Oblivion by 350k units), or even Fable (leads closest RPG-esque game Oblivion by 1 million units). So theres a rather large area between just Halo owners and RPG owners for the 360 that sales haven't been reflected in. Overall, 360 owners are buying more sports games, more shooters (atleast with what we have for the 1m sellers for the 360). Again, to reiterate: There are 3,900,000 people that bought a copy of Halo 2 that didn't buy a copy of Gears of War. I feel this needs to be addressed by asking where they are before saying that the 360 won't sell. IMO, after studying, the 360 is due for one absolute killer Christmas. You'll have the 3.9m old Xbox owners that haven't got a 360 (if you considered 100% of people that bought GOW that also had an Xbox + Halo, which is virtually impossible), as well as whatever other owners did not own a copy of Halo. GTA could bring quite a few out of the old Xbox woodwork, as well as much stronger sales for people that will buy GTA that haven't invested in either a PS3 or X360. Which could result in very strong European sales (as GTA is huge over there). But that's only theoretical. I am sure that GTA will sell either equally on both PS3/360 in Europe, or a slight advantage to the PS3. However, it should certainly benefit both systems incredibly.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
