@dunno001

I dunno..see what I did there? To cut the cost of developing games will - as you pointed out, eradicate some of the "wow" factor, but that is the very marketing that MS and Sony sold their consoles on.

Ours is more Powerful, we have 20 processors, our graphics is better than yours: all phrases this HD console war was and is based on. For the first two years all we heard about was the specs - we still do now.

In doing this they have created a whole generation of graphic whores who - again as you pointed out - will not be impressed with the full potential of their console being deliberately held back.

Which makes next generation very interesting. When promoting PS4 and X720 super duper specs, gamers will again want a massive leap in graphics.

The situation now (and mainly the next gen) is pretty much catch 22...almost.

Save money by releasing less impressive games therefore pissing off hardcore graphics purists and probably lose sales OR lose money by carrying on as present.

After all that I  agree with you.

@Squill: Yeah good points and I agree with you too.

When you state "The real question is how the game publishers are going to better monetise their high selling games so the idea of pay to play multiplayer and DLC comes into play."

The problem with these "high selling games"  is that apart from pokeman all the games in that list are violent, shooty mature type games.. and worst of all, they are all franchises. The same old stuff rehashed. Nothing new really.

I am making this point because I really don't want this to be the future of the industry blockbusters.

Which brings me to the comparison with movies. I am glad you saw the "problem" in comparing films to games but I just want to point out that at least with movies you can get kiddie aminations, Sci -fi, fantasy and a romantic film among any given top ten, catering for all sorts of preferences therefore enlarging the market and giving directors and producers more freedom of choice. They are also franchises but new stuff thrown in for a balance.

It just seems that (more so the  360) the biggest grossing games needs a gun.

Just my rant...nothing to do with nothing really.

people are pre ordering more 

especially Americans, they pre order the most and the results are that xbox has the biggest week one

Black and White will almost certainly make that list

Yes, it should take the third spot for single-platform games, actually.

(It sold 1 million more in Japan than Diamond/Pearl did. As long as it doesn't sell 400,000 less in Europe/Americas, it'll take the third spot. It needs 500,000 more than D/P to topple Modern Warfare 2 on the X360.

Thats also something interesting to note, game purchasing habits are changing. Sales are becoming less spread out, and more bulked into the first week. Gears of War 2 for instance saw nearly 2 million sales week 1, while Gears of War 1 only saw 900k, but both games will end up with similar lifetime sales.

Also, you don't have Pre-PS2 weekly sales, so we don't know how well more classic games did in week 1, but I bet openings were smaller, and sales were more widespread.

I suspect next gen will be bigger than this one, but I doubt the rate of increase will be as big as it will end up being from last gen to this.

Balls to that.

I think there should only be one listing for any game, not a listing per platform on these all time best seller lists (std lists can stay per platform). MW2 sold almost 9 million opening week; Black Ops sold over 9 million. Simple. That way there's more room for more variety of games to make the top 10 / top 20 list. This top ten is so boring, being dominated by 3 franchises. Never thought I'd say it but thank the gods for Pokemon (and Japanese gamers) for introducing a bit of variety into such a dull list.

The new list doesn't end up being that much more interesting.

1. Black Ops - 9.1 million
2. Modern Warfare 2 - 8.2 million
3. Grand Theft Auto IV - 5.8 million
4. San Andreas - Around 4.4 million
5. Halo Reach - 4 million
6. Halo 3 - 3.8 million 
7. Pokemon D/P - 3.5 million
8. Halo 2 - 3.3 million
9. Pokemon HG/SS - 3 million
10. Final Fantasy XII - 2.8 million 

So instead of 4x CoD, 3x Halo, 2x GTA and 1x Pokemon, you get 3x Halo, 2x CoD, 2x GTA,  2x Pokemon and 1x Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy will be kicked out by Pokemon Black and White whenever that launches outside of Japan. So you end up with just the same 4 franchises.

Call of Duty wasn't that major of a franchise before Modern Warfare, and Halo/GTA only formed what they are now, last gen. Do you think the next gen will have a new mega selling franchise, and what type of game will it be? RPG, Sandbox, Shooter, or something new? Do you think it will be a new IP like Halo and Pokemon were, or a re-invented one like GTA and CoD were?

For lifetime sales, I think it's going to stay quite close to how it is now. The more simple games like platformers, shooters and simulation games are the ones that are doing the best. The days of RPGs being the one of the biggest genres are long past; they're too advanced for the majority of the audience.

I think next generation of home consoles is going to be roughly as even as this generation in terms of hardware sales. None of the companies will manage to get a much bigger installbase than the others. They're most likely all going to hav to settle at sub 100 million or around 100 million levels. As a result, the next generation of Ps3/X360 games are likely to sell about as much as the Ps3/X360 games did. In other words: few games beating the 10 million barrier, with perhaps 5 or so games beating 15 million on the two combined. (This is assuming that next gen, Sony and Microsoft's machines are relatively similar, and Nintendo's is quite different. If S&Ms machines are very different, I doubt more than 1 or 2 games per machine could come close to 15 million.

 As the Wii's successor will get far more competition from third parties, I'd expect close to none of that machine's games to end in the 25 million range (as at least 6 of the Wii's games will). Still, a fair bit of Nintendo's games should beat 10 million. Say, 5 or something.

But the 3DS, that's going to be an even bigger success than the DS. I expect that's where the main sellers of the next generation are going to come from. I wouldn't be surprised if it became the first machine to see 10, or even 15, titles sell 10 million .

Essentially, I'm predicting a bit of the same as this gen, just less huge games for the consoles, and more for the 3DS.

Among the big hitters (10 million ) on the 3DS, it's going to be 70-30 Nintendo games to non-Nintendo games, I'd guess. The games are likely to mostly be "non-games" (Nintendogs, Brain Training) and relatively simple games (Mario games, Pokemon), possibly with one or two more advanced games.

The next Wii should see it's top titles be Mario Kart, a Mario Platformer or two, possibly Zelda and Smash Bros and an equavalient to the "Wii series". This is Nintendo we're talking about, apart  from the Wii series, they've hardly ever come up with a huge surprise on the software sales front.

The Ps3/X360 ones are the hard ones to predict. Every generation, the "most popular" genre from last generation has seen a bit of a hit. RPGs in the SNES era, and racers in the 6th era are the most obvious choices. Now, I'd expect something of the same to happen with shooters. We're either looking at an industry that's headed towards being "shooters and Nintendo games", or headed away from shooters. I think the latter is far more likely. There should still be some major shooter sales next gen, though, just not quite the same as this gen. There will also be more shooters (most likely), so each game should also sell less.

As for what will replace the shooters, I really have no idea. It depends on how Microsoft and Sony play it. I'd guess they might be headed down the casual road, so more Wii-style games from them too is a possibility.

If you're looking for the biggest openers, then that's essentially the same as above, but just ignoring the ones on the Wii's successor.

Fun fact: The Wii might end with 7 games in the 20 million range, but just 1, or possibly none, within the 10-20 million range.