This is an honest question.   I was looking at the sales of PSABR and realized just how truly bad 2012 has been financialy for Sony 1st party games. The following are Global sales totals. 

Twisted Metal:  0.57 million

Starhawk:  0.18 million

PSABR:  130k opening weekin NA

LBPKarting:  0.13 million

As you can see theres been some very dissapointing sales this year.  What caused it?  Lack of quality?  Too much competition?  PS3 gamers just werent interested in the games released?

This year was pretty bad, there were simply no heavy hitters. TM could've done better but was a bit of a disaster and we have yet to see long term sales for PSAS, but I doubt they'll be too spectacular.

GT5 has sold much more this year than those games.

Next year with TLOU, GoW:A and Beyond should be much better.

Combination of marketing (what marketing? exactly.) and uninteresting games, I'd guess. There definitely wasn't too much competition this year.

Well, this game did great in Japan:

Last appearance on the charts:

29./17. [PS3] Tokyo Jungle (Sony Computer Entertainment) {2012.06.07} (¥4.980) - 4.241 / 195.035 (-16%)

Since the second place for 1st party games this year goes to Starhawk with 19k LT, I guess it's a MAJOR hit there. There's also Hot Shots Golf this year (which will probably take the first place from TJ) but it's also on Vita.

Is Sony's marketing, the only way people could ever find out these games exist is by walking into a game shop and finding them.

Unfortunately some of our first party games, namely the 4 you mentioned, get almost no advertisement and publicity. Sony seems content on showing endless ads on Black ops: declassified right now, which bugs me. I wish they would support the games that are actually good.

Tank! Tank! Tank! Is a wii u game or a PS3 game?

Wii U.

Third party games were better. People don't just buy exclusives. They buy good games. When Sony brings it, their games sell. When they don't, people buy something else. Sony didn't bring it this year.

Ya this was a very bad year for ps3 exclusives. The only one of those that I bought was twisted metal and I have yet to even finish you. The others just didn't appeal to me. Can't wait for next year though.