Actually we don't know if the Lightning ed PS3 is releasing in the west yet, although I doubt it will. FFXIII-2 isn't releasing in the west until February.

The marketing effect (or lack of it) on Skyrim never crossed my mind. What should they have done to increase sales of PS3 version?

About the X360 sales, yes the NA market becomes proportonately bigger at this time of year but just in general, as an Xbox fan myself I have a hard time seeing where gamers see the value in the Xbox 360 compared to PS3, when the PS3 has free online, better games, bigger BRAND (remember that argument? ) and has a very attractive price now.

I'm enjoying Skyrim very much. Kinda suffering from fatigue right now. I want to play constantly but my mind is tired and slow. Weekends are so short and workdays so long. :(

How did you end up buying 2 copies of the same game??

Yes it truly is amazing. And for half of consumers (just guessing) the console is $300, for them a HD-less console is not an option. And these guys know very well that there's not been a drop in years while they've seen the PS3 go from $400 to only $250 in the same time. And yet they choose the X360. I always hated the argument of "look, the 360 is only $200" when most gamers want the version that still costs $300.

Also let's not forget that there's a market demand for $149 consoles too or else the Wii hadn't dropped to that price and all those consoles in the last gen wouldn't have dropped to $149 (or even less).

Outstanding 360 numbers............

And MW3/Skyrim sales on 360 trounced the competition.

No, I know. The Special Edition version of FFXIII-2 wasn't announced in the US until quite recently, so there might still be an opportunity for SON¥ to rectify. Even if it doesn't count towards this year, that bundle might give the PS3 a nice head start for 2012. Thing is, they didn't even entertain the idea of releasing a custom bundle for any of their exclusives this year, at least in the West. They would just cram a standard black PS3 with the game, inside a pretty box. SON¥ sees little point in making custom consoles for the likes of us.

Anticipation raises hardware. There apparently is no enthusiasm for another easy handheld Mario game.

Awesome numbers 360, still a chance to steal 2011 from sony!

T

Japan 3ds sales:

2 weeks before Mario....74,883(+36%)

1 week before Mario.... 66,647(-11%)

The week of Mario....

I was ordering a few games with 2 copies to give the second as a gift and accidently included Skyrim in the list.  Lucky for Bethesda my kids want it on console rather than PC so I've agreed to swap the second PC disk for console rather than return it.

As for marketing the error I see is that Bethesda made no effort to specifically push the game to PS3.  This I believe is a mistake.  Valve showed you don't lose any 360 sales by making a big push on PS3 with Portal 2, and I really think more developers in Bethesda's position should do this.  It's about making it clear there is no favourite platform and making sure both titles are equal.  Instead Bethesda developed on 360 and ported, left the market with the impression 360 would likely get DLC first and generally didn't do anything to make the title more appealing to PS3 owners.

As a result while the title saw the stellar 360 (and PC from what I can see on Steam) numbers it deserves the PS3 version is below what I believe a better marketing effort would have delivered.  Not that PS3 numbers are bad (just under 1 million after all) but they should have been at least around 300 to 350 K higher IMHO going by install base and more recent ratio splits of similar titles.  Still, great numbers whatever.

Unless MS are marketing wizards (which they might be) then yes the MW3 deals would have cost them money.  Activision has no need to favour MS and would certainly have made them pay for the advertising favouritism while retailers/Activision would almost certainly have got MS to vendor fund bundles.

I suspect a fair number of the MW3 bundles went to existing 360 owners.  Not all but a decent amount.  This is normal for special editions which target existing fans.  Given Sony do this well in Japan I'm always amazed then seem somewhat flumoxed in West about doing the same thing.  But kudos to MS for good targeting of special edition bundles in West.

I think both spend all year round but I do feel there is a situation where Sony spends a bit more all year round and MS focuses more on certain time periods.  Given MS main install base is countries with big seasonal spikes in demand this makes sense whereas Sony at the moment has a more spread install base for PS3 geographically and tends to lean towards more regular advertising to maintain brand visibility.

Overall I think MS advertises better than Sony in the West,particularly in the US, although both do a good job overall I guess.