Pretty much as expected start for R3 I'd argue, given it's status relative to the franchise. R2 drew a lot of heat after a fair bit of initially positive hype, with both it's SP and MP aspects heavily criticized. The only element everyone seemed to like was the totally separate coop element.
R2 also threw the franchise out of sync vs Resistance 1 by committing a number of (in hindsight) bloody obvious errors:
- changing core gameplay from what most seemed to like about the first title (old school FPS, long SP campaign, variety of weapons and gameplay) linked to a pretty fast and fun MP to an obvious Halo/CoD clone. In particular I'd note that when a key USP for your franchise is the crazy weapons and lots of 'em limiting the player to two is simply self defeating
- abruptly and with poor explanation changing a lot of the feel of the Universe which clearly threw off a lot of people who found the alternative history setting a real USP for the franchise
- being too rushed with obvious flaws vs what the first title delivered (although I have to admit at least Insomniac where endearingly open about this in behind the scenes videos, etc)
Coming after that, R3 was bound to be somewhat muted. The reviews have been decent but not great and while it does capture what was popular in the first (TBH its almost a re-telling of the first really just based in US this time) it lost the one thing R2 added everyone liked, the crazy separate coop.
Word of mouth seems positive so I expect it'll slowly trek to OK numbers, but R3 would have needed to be perfect to recover from the damage R2 did to the franchise IMHO.
Pretty good start for Dead Island though - player preferences cutting through critics views as easily as a Transformers movie. Patches incoming to keep that baby going I'd imagine given it looks like being a bit of a sleeper hit.
HW pretty much as expected.
Only other thing of note for me is Rise of Nightmares - unless it sees a big boost for holidays it's going to tank. I remain unconvinced with Kinect as a platform for big sales currently (Adverntures doesn't count as it's bundled and outside that it's only supported a few solid hits so far). I'm assuming MS are planning to market Kinect heavily for the holidays, and TBH I think they're going to have to as I'm not sure it has enough momentum to do anything like last year without special pushing unless some of the upcoming titles (maybe Star Wars) click with families.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
