I just checked out the PS3 Mass Effect 3 thread and some people seem to be pretty adamant in their stance that PS3 fans didn't buy the game in force because it's too much of a shooter and PS3 fans don't like shooters.  I'm sure there's more to it than just that but that appears to be a popular belief.   It got me thinking.  Over the past several years, Xbox 360 fans have been labeled as fans of shooters and this is why games like Halo, Call of Duty, and Gears of War sell so well on them.  At the same time, PS3 fans have been labeled as having much more diverse tastes and this is why certain games don't do as well and other games seem to do better on the PS3.

Where does this come from?  I didn't do any super extensive research.  I picked a few games for multiple genres that were multi-plats and compared the PS3 versions sales to the 360 versions sales.  In almost every instance, the 360 version outsold the PS3 version, regardless of the genre.  Sometimes, when the PS3 version would win out, it would be exactly what the game sold in Japan (where the PS3 rules and the 360 is pretty much non-existent),  I'm aware that the 360 has the bigger userbase in the Americas (the biggest market) so that may be why 360 games tend to sell better. 

The bottom line:  If 360 fans are only fans of shooters and PS3 fans are so diverse in their tastes, I want to see some proof.  If not, can people PLEASE stop using the "PS3 fans like a bigger variety of games" excuse for why game A didn't do well or why game B is such a success?

Games I looked at were:  Dead Rising 2, Street Fighter 4. Tomb Raider Underworld, Final Fantasy XIII, Batman Arkham Asylum, BioShock 2, Dirt (series). Smackdown vs Raw (series), Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Dead Space, Silent Hill Homecoming, Resident Evil 5, Saints Row 2, Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing, Lego Star Wars. Dragon Age Origins, Prince of Persia (series), Castlevania Lords of Shadow, Dante's Inferno, Nier, Ghostbusters, and Bayonetta.

Well it isn't any excuse, Mass Effect 2 sold so poorly because the franchise didn't have much of a following on the PS3, it was released well after the XBOX 360 version and WRPG's (Mass Effect 2 is not a shooter) generally sell better on the XBOX 360.

As for more shooter fans on the XBOX 360, I think that's very true. With XBL and the fact that most XBOX 360 exclusives are shooters, it's not surprising. Just look at the top 10 most sold games on XBOX 360, Kinect Adventures and GTAIV (both of which are in the list for all the wrong reasons) are the only 2 games stopping the XBOX 360 top 10 from consisting entirely of shooters.

I'm guessing they mean PS3 has more diverse exclusives? I would say that's true. Multiplats almost always have sold better on X360 till now.

Fighters, racers, sports games and Japanese games sell better on PS3. Shooters and WRPG's sell worse.

I wouldn't say that's because PS3 fans in certain region are much more diverse than the same fans in the same region (though they have somewhat different tastes, like how FF will sell better on PS3 even in America). I'm thinking it's more a case of PS3 sales being more evenly distributed in the world, whereas the X360 is mostly strong in English speaking countries.

Fighters and racers are popular in Europe and Japanese games in Japan.

I can look for examples if you want.

I totally agree with the bolded part.

Hey brendude, I know it's been done before but I figure you can find one more quickly than I can.  Would you mind posting a list of the top 10 or 20 360 games as well as the top 10 or 20 PS3 games?

One could go and compute the "games sold per console" number for each of the games for each console (one could even include the Wii for the rare game that it's on all 3 platforms), then present the results in a bar chart format with the similar genre games grouped together. One then could do this for each region separately, to have a picture of player interests per region/console/genres.
Not me.

I can't deny that, either.  Of course 360 has exclusives like Banjo Kazooie, Halo Wars, Viva Pinata, Lost Odyssey, Crackdown, Fable, and Kameo in its portfolio but it seems like Microsoft is content to throw Halo and Forza at us and leave it at that.  Sony does seem to want to mix things up a bit, lately.  My belief is that if Microsoft released games like Heavy Rain, God of War, Infamous, and Little Big Planet (and the games were of similar quality), the games would actually find similar success on the 360 platform.  I think that Microsoft just doesn't feel confident in releasing games that are of good quality but only sell a couple million.  Microsoft seems to want to "swing for the fences" and only release blockbuster games that are sure to sell.  They let third parties fill in the gaps.  That doesn't mean that 360 owners don't want games like the PS3 exclusives.  We can only buy what gets released or buy PS3's.

I am thinking the same thing (bolded). The world is a diverse place and the more diversity you have the wider the spectrum to encompass more variety of games.

Demographics are a big part of it and with NA being the current biggest sales region the console with the biggest software support (X360) shooters dominate, hence grab the headlines.

I am not sure about american sports games like NBA and NFL but I am sure there are good x360 sales with these games although they can't compete with the shooters... the same way soccer dominates in europe.

Sure.

X360:

For comparison's sake:

X360 TOP 50:

Shooter: 16
WRPG: 9
Sports: 7
Sandbox: 5
Music: 4
Action-Adventure: 4 (included Lego games here, not sure)
Racer: 3
Platform:1
Motion control: 1


TOP 50 PS3

Sports: 10
Shooter: 10
Racer: 6
Sandbox: 5
Stealth: 1
Action-Adventure: 5
WRPG: 3
Platform: 2
Hack n' Slash: 2
Fighter: 2
JRPG: 1
Music: 1
Interactive drama: 1
Motion control: 1

X360 has 9 categories, PS3 14.
X360 has a 32% shooters, PS3 20%.

So I would say it's true that PS3 owners have more varied tastes, though as I said much of this can be attributed at the PS3 having a more evenly distributed install base.

Thanks for posting.  Looking at it, it does look like the 360's top 10 is overrun with shooters but really, it just looks like Halo, Call of Duty, and Gears sell so well on the 360 that there's not much room for anything else.  I mean, look at Assassin's Creed.  Both Assassin's Creed 1 (4.99 million) and 2 (4.63 million) outsold the PS3 version.  The reason it didn't make the list is because so many other series sold better.  So, in reality, more 360 owners liked the sandbox series than PS3 owners.  In fact, I'd go as far as to say that every game (except FF13) in those lists that was available on the 360 did better on the 360.

360 fans are a diverse bunch, too.  We don't just buy shooters.  We just want good games, the same as PS3 gamers. (Of course, I'm a PS3 gamer, too!)