No, man. I said "those platformers in question". Which means if you want to hold your argument up, you will have to go ahead and name all those 11 minutes long games, so we can discuss in detail whether they are full games or not. Additionally, if you want to hold your silly counterargument up, then you'll have to list all those 40 hours long platformers that are available on the PS3 and 360.

I don't want to attack other places that do estimates, but....Gamasutra's methodology behind tracking Sonic is flawed. They are using leaderboards to track a game that cannot be tabulated via leaderboards. Leaderboards for Sonic 4 are only updated in the event that a user actually checks the leaderboards themselves - which not everyone will do. I can't pull it up right now, but Sonic 4 led sales on Major Nelson's Top 10 for its debut week, which beat out titles like Dead Rising: Case Zero which sold very well in October (>60k), so that gives you a minimum threshold for what Sonic did.

For the argument of promotions - you can argue that the games are performing well only due to Microsoft's promotion. I can understand that, but it doesn't change the argument that other non-MS promoted platformers have done very well like N , The Maw, and Cloning Clyde which all sold well over 100,000 units (N did over 300k and had no promotion by MS). Super Meat Boy was never promoted by MS as a marquee title, like LIMBO or Braid, so it should be a good example of sales. It has sold 160k on XBLA and over 250k on Steam.

As for your argument about sales fizzling - that does not happen on XBLA. Braid never fizzled. It still sells very well, relative to its first month on market. Every title on XBLA still sells well, relative to their release, which is why LIMBO will reach great heights. Very few games ever provide major outliers in terms of long-tail. That is, every XBLA, PSN or WiiWare title is an evergreen title, unless they had abysmal sales their first month.

Put it this way: the average Xbox Live Arcade title, 2 years after release, will still be grossing approximately 5% of its first-month revenue every month, and will continue to do so, indefinately. Braid still sells about 5-7% of its first month. So does Shadow Complex, Mega Man 10, and so on. A few titles are well above this like Castle Crashers and Trials HD, but in general, the rule of thumb is 5% forever, as the game almost never gets de-listed. Since LIMBO was the marquee title of Summer of Arcade 2010, it is likely to reach higher numbers due to popularity, and should still be selling 7-10% of its first month sales, 2 years from now (or about 25,000-30,000 copies per month, every month).

 Really facinating stuff on the digital sales, I was going to question some of the stuff said earlier about Wii's DD platformers selling so amazing but figured there'd be no figures :P. I think WiiWare sales are typically going to be hampered for any game - compared to XBLA / PSN - the service just isn't as well made for selling software, it's lack of online focus will limit the userbase that bothers and storage limitations on the console mean no one's going to be too download-crazy.

 It is a shame that outside of Sony's minimalist efforts (LBP and R&C) and RARE, the genre is pretty much confined to the digital space at the moment on the HD consoles. In truth though, I don't think many companies have really been making a plethora of platformers since consoles went 3D in the N64 days, except for er, Nintendo, Sony and Rare lol. Were there actually any reknown platforms made by anyone else last gen? Or even the generation before... I'm sure someone will give me a list but I'm struggling to think of one :P.

 Also on the topic of SEGA losing retail sales on Sonic 4, I've always assumed the strategy to be something like made 2-3 episodes on the DD services and get $45 off of people for them, then bundle the 3 together at retail with some bonus content and stick em on store shelves for $50 so the non-online people can get it. At least SEGA are idiots if that's not what they do :P.

 Also rumour has it Neversoft are rebooting Crash Bandicoot, so with any luck that might be a decent 3d platformer on the HD twins (As well as the Wii, I'm sure). No idea where I read the rumour, or it's legitimacy though, so er, take it with a bucket of salt :P.

I should've read closer, GamerBytes indeed mentioned the difficulty for correctly measuring Sonic 4E1 due to the nature of it's scoreboard process.  I'm curious what metrics you're using to arrive at sales though?  The "minimum threshold" based off Case Zero's 62k October sales is pretty faulty given Sonic 4 was only even available for 3 of those weeks.  By it's 4th week (in November) Sonic 4 was outside the XBLA top 10 even according to Nelson, and well below Case Zero.  Speaking of which, Nelson didn't post the top Live activity lists in October at all due to his schedule... can you kindly link me to where exactly he posted Sonic 4 leading it debut week?

Honestly, I looked all over Major Nelson's blog. I swore he had lists for October at some point last year. I am wondering if he may of removed them. As for sales metrics - that is proprietary. I can't explain too much, because the methodology gives me a job and edge to ensure that reliable data is produced for the market for clients. However, I can say that the method tracks actual users buying real titles on Xbox Live Arcade, among other services I work with.

Looking it up, Braid went from ~326k sales it's first full year to ~64k it's second full year (GB estimates).  That's still pretty decent in terms of legs, but doing just 20% of it's first year sales in it's second isn't exactly stellar given it's one of the high watermark XBLA success stories, and not even uncommon at retail for high volume sellers (indeed the top retail games are doing significantly more than just 20% YOY).  Braid didn't even make the top 20 XBLA sellers for 2009 (yet even titles like TMNT1, Marble Blast and Puzzle Fighter did), I'd say that's fair game for "fizzled".  It's first week sales according to Blow himself were 55k, and 1st month was "over 100k" which puts the year two ratio (on average) just slightly above 5% monthly of that too (and that's best case, if Braid did over 106k, it drops below 5%). Digital still has a shelf life, it's different from retail in many ways, but it's still a shelf life with promotion, media coverage, word of mouth, accessibility, competition, sequels and other factors weighing in on the long term success of the product (including the potential for delisting or future platform incompatibility).  If Braid only barely manages your month 5% average of 1st month figure, and it's inarguably one of the services sales highlights, I very much have to question the validity of your figure at all.  And Limbo did 323k it's first full month... 25-30k monthly into perpetuity is a nice dream, but looking at the above figures, it seems it'll only be ever that. ;)

To be fair, the other aspect of Braid is that it did get launched on 2 other platforms - PSN and Steam, so it has quite a bit of other ways that it can and indeed does, sell. Braid sold 132,000 copies in December alone on Steam, which I would argue is a pretty reasonable argument as to why it may be seen as 'fizzled' on XBLA - more competition from other services. It has also sold ~100,000 copies on PSN which was launched more than a year after the XBLA release (November 2009), in You throw all 3 platforms together, and Braid sold very well in 2009 and 2010. It has sold ~750,000 copies between all 3 services. I'd consider that pretty good for an initial launch of 100,000 units on XBLA by two guys.

Comparatively, the other games you listed are XBLA-only. Do not forget that the ARP also comes into play for some titles you mentioned - in 2009, Braid was still a $15 title. Marble Blast and TMNT were both $5 titles, so Braid could of been #21 and still greatly outsold both titles in terms of revenue (I think it was #25 or so). And finally, TMNT and Marble Blast have outsold Braid as well, so they should indeed be higher ranked by Nelson.

I also feel the need to correct you on "Microsoft promotions", while titles like N Plus, Super Meat Boy, The Maw and Cloning Clyde weren't part of the summer of arcade promotions, each title did get significant dashboard visibility, repeated promotional discounts and the last two were even published by Microsoft.  In fact, Team Meat went on record saying that their tie up (for promotion and positioning on Live Arcade) with MS even prevents them from doing a PSN version of SMB, ever.  This is actually part and parcel of Microsoft's divided kingdom for indie devs, even getting on "Arcade" rather than "Indies" is considered a promotional service in itself between Microsoft and small developers.  Do you think any of these games would've sold even a fraction as much on the latter tier service?

N has never recieved a promotional discount. Nor has Cloning Clyde. Indeed, Team Meat did get some concessions from Microsoft due to publishing, but that is only one of the mentioned titles. Twisted Pixel never had any major concessions for The Maw, except for one sale, which many games are starting to get, now that the new head of Xbox Live Arcade seems to be far more pro-active with helping the service via discounts.

Furthermore, dashboard visibility is usually derived from the quality of the game. Good games get more visibility, as XBLA ranks games 3 ways: release date, user rating, and popularity. Therefore, if a game is good, it usually leads to being more visible, regardless of how Microsoft promoted it. Finally, many developers simply do a poor job of promoting their own titles. Its a heavily recirpocating system - a good game gets buzz, which boosts it on the charts, which more people see, which leads to more sales, which leads to a higher position on their promotional lists.

Fair enough, I can respect and appreciate that for business reasons some methodology needs to remain undisclosed. But all the same, I hope you understand that's going to put your Sonic 4 figures into question in my mind, especially after the specious Case Zero reasoning.  Nelson however didn't remove the October figures, he never posted them according to the comments in November's first week, due his schedule around Kinect launch.  Sonic 4 leading it's debut week wouldn't surprise me at all though.

Certainly fine. You don't have to take my word for it.

In regards to Braid, maybe I should take a step back and say I think the game has had exceptional sales, and I doubt it really could've done any better if released by any other means. I personally love it too. My only only issue is your claim that XBLA is some magic sales utopia, where games on average can expect sell 5% of first month sales monthly basically forever... the truth is obviously a lot more complex than that, which your butbutbutSteam/PSN backpeddaling here sort of belies (btw, NONE of the other 3 games I listed are XBLA only).  Braid was just one title I picked since it was already in conversation, and makes a good comparison to Limbo due to genre and context, but it even barely made that cutoff (and might not even have really).  I know you're going off the cuff and not looking at the specific figures, but when you're admittedly coming from a place of authority, I tend to expect a higher standard.  The likelihood of Limbo selling 30k a month in two years is so remote going off the available data, I'd say it's a bit irresponsible on your part to even throw that out there.  We all know it's not going to happen.

My argument of 5% of sales over 24 months is based on a long-tail analysis of over 200 unique Xbox Live Arcade titles that have released since November 2007. You don't have to just take my word for it, Microsoft also published information about this a few years ago:

As for my argument about LIMBO selling 25,000-30,000 2 years from now - both Summer of Arcade leaders are selling in that area every month. Castle Crashers is 28 months old, and Trials HD is 16 months old. Both average between 25,000-30,000 units on any given month. So I would say that its reasonable to expect LIMBO to as well.

I know for a fact N Plus had at least one promotional discount in 2009 (to 400 points) because that's when I bought it.  A cursory google search supports that and even leads me to another earlier sale for the game (560 points, deal of the week promotion).  Likewise, a quick googling for Cloning Clyde leads toseveral sales (and even a price reduction, same week as Braid actually).  Super Meat Boy is barely 3 months old and has already had two promotional sales.  This information isn't hard to come by.

You are correct, my apologies. Some of the games we have discussed did have one week sales. But please understand that one sale for one week doesn't usually equate to massive, LTD-defining patterns. Most games on XBLA that see a 50% off sale see a 200-300% increase in unit sales for that month, then return to whatever their original pattern was. Because of that, it usually makes up a small portion of Life to Date sales. Super Meat Boy is certainly a major exception, as it launched at $10.00 USD (800MSP), then went to $15.00 USD (1200MSP), then back on sale to $10.00 (800MSP) during December. However, no other game in the history has exhibited such a sales pattern. In the case of Cloning Clyde, I forgot that they did reduce the price on it. However, it still saw strong sales prior to the price drop.

And Twsited Pixel most definitely had to make exclusivity concessions for their titles, hell Microsoft even published them.  Now that their newest platformer (Comic Jumper) basically bombed though, I'm curious if they'll start looking at other avenues versus the increasingly crowded and competitive (and restrictive) Live Marketplace?  I think Cloning Clyde and The Maw were both pretty average games, that really good a lot of goodwill sales for being among the first of their kind on the service.  'Splosion Man was legitimately pretty good though.

I wouldn't call ~50,000 units its first month a 'bomb'. However, I get your point. 'Splosion Man was their only bona-fide big hit on the market place. However, the cost of development on XBLA is so low, I would imagine that The Maw bankrolled both 'Splosion Man and Comic Jumper.

Now, if you want to talk a bomb, talk about the Comic Jumper-like title Unbound Saga. Now that's a bomb.

And you're wrong on dashboard coverage.  It's not simply user driven, deals are most frequently worked out for dashboard visibility and promotion ahead of time, and ultimately Microsoft selects what goes up and where.  The only "rise to the top" component of it is the "most popular" column, which tends to already reflect the most heavily promoted titles anyway.  It's a pretty far cry from the App Store, visibility is really one of the major sticking points indie devs have with XBLA (and something all the console DD services need to seriously work on imo, though MS does better than Sony or Nintendo). 

Ah, but you missed my comments on promotion. I argued that a lot of the promotional tendencies come from the developers and publishers, not just Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft does a great job when they have a special sale like the Block Party, Summer of Arcade, or The Games Feast. However, if you have access to data like I do, you start to understand that the picture is a little different: If you promote a title properly, it does well even outside of what Microsoft does with the title. For example, you never really saw Deadliest Warrior: The Game being heavily favored by Microsoft. However, it was by Spike TV, which led to incredible sales. The same can be said for Dead Rising: Case Zero, which was after the Summer of Arcade promotion. Despite it releasing the week after, on an abnormal date (it is the only game in XBLA history to release outside of Wednesday, AFAIK), it was the best selling title of 2010 on XBLA. Again, it had massive coverage outside of Xbox Live Arcade, which fueled sales.

When you correlate them together, you find that external promotions have a far greater impact on Xbox Live Arcade than you want to give credit to. If a game has hype/notariety prior to release due to buzz, good reviews, ect, people will buy the game instantly without Microsoft promotions. When this happens, it usually results in higher placings on the 'Most Downloaded' chart, which is 1/4th of the potential retail space for the title (with the others being popularity, new releases, and finally the A-Z library). Therefore, it can correlate a bit better than if Microsoft promotes it on the dashboard.