Worldwide UP 17th September

[binary solo]

Reasonable said:

binary solo said:
PS3 only a few weeks away from being under 3 million behind 360. Will be interesting to see whether the gap keeps narrowing all the way through to the new year or whether 360 will widen the gap back out to over 3 million.

I'm glad R3 managed 100K this week, though it's not really all that great news. Dang at Dead Island. There's obviously pent up demand for a zombie game. There's not really been anything of this sort since L4D2 has there? And that wasn't for PS3, so PS3 has been pretty short changed for zombie killing FP games.

I do hope R3 legs it out past Dead Island (on PS3). But both really need to make hay now before the big FPS boys come put to play. Otherwise wait until next year. I have a feeling that some PS3 gamers have gone with Dead Island for their time filler until either MW3 or BF3 because the differences are greater than between those games and R3.

VGC vs Media Create for Japan

MC
3DS 58,837
PS3 36,061
PSP 25,122
Wii 15,406
DSi LL 2,869
DSi 2,234
360 1,295
DS Lite 78

3DS and Wii higher on VGC. PS3, 360, PSP and DS lower on VGC. If VGC numbers for Wii had matched Media Create, Wii would have been below 100K for the week.

@ Reasonable: I guess it depends on what you consider decent in the context of the opening performance of games like Rise of Nightmares and Gunstringer. I imagine they'll crawl along to 100K, which is decent for games with sub 30K opening weeks. But by any general standard of sales success for games this generation 100K is not really decent sales. Kinect has a 10 million install base now, 100K isn't all that decent for a 10 million install base with a fairly limited number of available game titles.

Agree.  I'm not sure about Rise/Gunstringer yet.  Joyride I believe has moved past 500K for example so I'm going to wait and see how these two perform.

Overall though I think Kinect based titles at retail aren't looking good right now, with only a few seeing truly respectable sales.  I love the tech of Kinect and the PC mod stuff but I'm still unconvinced that Kinect offers a broad, fun experience.  It is great with dance/fitness but for me all other games such as table tennis or bowling feel better on Wii/PS3 with their motion control schemes.

I'm of the view that titles like Gunstringer and Child of Eden seem live XBLA titles rather than retail titles, and it feels like MS is pushing these titles to retail to have an onshelf presence for Kinect even if it doesn't suit the titles well.

Of course it could simply be that the demand for such stuff still remains more with the Wii and MS (and Sony too) may have to simply accept being second fiddle in this space for the rest of the gen.

Ithink there are some lingering doubts about Kinect's utility in the more traditional game genres. Whereas Move has proved itself very well in the shooter category, and it'll be interesting to see how Move integrates with inFamous 2 in the somewhat more action (but still very much shooter as well) category. I'll be playing inFamous 2 using Move initially. Move also proved itself very well with Heavy Rain (I definitely enjoyed playing it with Move more than using just the DS3). I also thought Move functioned quite well in R.U.S.E. So Move has shown a versatility in many traditional gaming genres that Kinect has yet to do.

Personally I'd quite like to have Kinect, but not so much for gaming. More for voice activations and "touch screen" PC control without getting dirty finger marks on the screen. The rise of tablets and multi-touch smartphones means people are getting into gesture based controls for electronic devices. And there Kinect is a good option for various devices, and better than a touchscreen in many cases. Kinect can also get rid of the keyboard. You just need a stencil outline of a keyboard on the desk and Kinect would be able to see what you're typing . Lots of cool uses for Kinect outside of gaming. I'd even go so far as to say Kinect is wasted on gaming. So hopefully gaming is merely the catalyst which leads to a much broader application of the technology.