| Jay520 said:
1. Doesn't matter. We were discussing profit. More profit is more profit. If you want to discuss "profit relative to outside factors beyond intrinsic popularity", then fine, but that's a different topic since we weren't talking about that. 2. A game's "bigness" doesn't remain stagnant throughout it's entire lifespan. It changes. Mario was a smaller game on the gamecube. Call of Duty was relatively small on the PS2. As time went on, they grew to be bigger. And as they grew, then it made sense to call them big. It makes no sense to say Call of Duty was always a big game on the PS2 merely because it was big on the PS3 and 360. Similarly, it makes no sense to say GT is bigger than Halo solely because it has potential to become bigger. Furthermore, your argument that GT has more potential to grow bigger is flawed. Just because something reaches more types of people doesn't mean it has more potential to grow. For every market that GT could grow in, there's a market that Halo could grow in. You could say GT could become stronger in America, but one could use the same leap of faith to say Halo could grow in Europe. There's no advantage that GT has ove Halo here. Secondly, GT sales have been almost completely stagnant since it relased; so the likelihood of it fullfilling its potenial is not so high. 3. My point was not about brand power, it was about audience size. And if Halo 4 outsells Halo 3, then it's safe to say it has a larger audience size. You can believe Halo 4 will begin to track under 3 if you want, but the numbers are against you. 5. They are about even in terms of unique users. |
1.) You're the only one discussing profit. Profit is minimally relative and cannot be used to determine. Consider the example, I sold 10 items for 1,000,000,000 dollars each. The other guy sold 100 items at 10,000,000 each. Who was more profitable and who was more popular? There is a difference here and this is why profit is a faulty use here. So when I talk about a variety of outside metrics, I'm very much talking about this dynamic.
2.) Call of Duty was never big title prior to this generation. It didn't 'change' in popularity, it just wasn't popular until 2006 and beyond. It's r eally that simple. Mario had strong numbers in NES/SNES/N64 days. Had a complete tail-off comparatively during the GC era. Then went gangbusters when the Wii came out. Did Mario decrease in popularity? Ofcourse not. The specific factors relating to a Mario game purchase changed and therefore the consumers purchasing habits changed. As I said, you could have tried to float an argument during the GC era that Mario was in the 'decline'. Which obviously would have been entirely wrong.
The ability for a game to reach all demographics is huge for the long-term market and popularity. Fads change, Halo already isn't the most popular FPS in North America. If the next Xbox isn't the top console, Call of Duty could EASILY eclipse it on multiple platforms even more than it already has, The most popular Halo has sold around 4 million copies everywhere outside of the United States. The most popular Gran Turismo has sold around 8 million copies outside of the United States. To put that into perspective, Halo doesn't even have THAT type of gap within the United States over Gran Turismo and I think we all could agree that Halo is more popular than GT in North America.
Are you being intentionally obtuse or dense? The last three major Halo releases combined (Selling to probably the same 1.8 million fans) doesn't even add up the total number of sales that Gran Turismo 5 has this generation. The leap of faith is only on the Halo side, not the GT one. Halo has only sold well in the United States and UK.
3.) The impending release and eclipse of a console soon to be completely un-supported completely does support me though.
5.) You know this because? What about owners of the PS1/PS2 versions that didn't get a PS3 this generation but still really enjoy the series? That's the problem trying to say "X game is popular now and Y game is just dead!!". We're back to the whole Mario on the Gamecube argument.
