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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Could someone explain it to me ? (Ps2 sales)

BuckStud on 21 June 2014
Sleepyprince said:

People, 

According to vgchartz, PS2 sold approx 140 millions units. If I look at PS2 most iconic games, a lot of them sold 3 to 6 millions. But the market was 140 millions owners. 

So, can we consider "flop" god of war 1, DMC 1, and other games that sell alike ?

Part of it is that a lot of PS2's were sold maily as DVD players.  While Sony fans love to say that the PS2 was the best selling video game system ever, in reality, it was the best selling DVD player ;)



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binary solo on 21 June 2014

Do all games have to sell to at least 5% of the install base to be considered not flops? That's an interesting criterion if so. And if so that means >90% of games are flops right? Any Wii game



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

veritaz on 21 June 2014
BuckStud said:
Sleepyprince said:

People, 

According to vgchartz, PS2 sold approx 140 millions units. If I look at PS2 most iconic games, a lot of them sold 3 to 6 millions. But the market was 140 millions owners. 

So, can we consider "flop" god of war 1, DMC 1, and other games that sell alike ?

Part of it is that a lot of PS2's were sold maily as DVD players.  While Sony fans love to say that the PS2 was the best selling video game system ever, in reality, it was the best selling DVD player ;)

But it also has a high tie ratio and almost 1.7 billion software sold. That's a defense mechanism people use to downplay the success of PS2. 



binary solo on 21 June 2014
RolStoppable said:
gergroy said:
This is what happens when you have one dominant system. The game library gets so saturated that the ceiling for game sales is lowered... basically, too much competition in one console ecosystem will hamper the potential for all games in that ecosystem.

Apparently that didn't happen to the DS.

Lack of innovation is the real culprit, because you aren't going to create new consumers for your games by giving existing consumers more of the same; in such a case you will have to rely on expansion into more countries, if you want to see growth.

It did. Actually it was worse for DS, because Nintendo pretty much sucked out all the oxygen. 24 of the top 30 games are all Nintendo published. Highest selling non-Nointendo published game was Cooking Mama at 5.5 million. Compare to PS2 where the top 2 selling games are 3rd party (GTAs at 20 and 16 million) and 25 of the top 30 games are 3rd party.

Also 6 of DSs top 30 are Pokemon, and 7 of the top 30 are Pokemon.

And aside from the top top selling games PS2 did better in individual game sales. PS2 had 38 games sell over 4 million. DS had 21 games sell over 4 million.

So the picture is really no different for DS, and is arguably worse.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

fluky-nintendy on 21 June 2014

To be honest, me and my friends at the time that also had one, never cared much for the DVD aspect. I can count with my fingers the number I used my PS2 to run DVDs, but I had mine in 2006 only.



...Let the Sony Domination continue with the PS4...
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fluky-nintendy on 21 June 2014
RolStoppable said:
binary solo said:

Why does a distinction between first and third party software even matter?

You've basically shifted the goal posts to a point where the PS2 could come out on top.


IMHO PS2 had a major impact on the 3rd parties, helping new/old companies evolving. I think with Nintendo strategy in milking its studios first and foremost, only Nintendo would survive, so the industry has to be thankful for Sony and then MS for keeping things balanced over the years.



...Let the Sony Domination continue with the PS4...
binary solo on 21 June 2014
RolStoppable said:
binary solo said:

It did. Actually it was worse for DS, because Nintendo pretty much sucked out all the oxygen. 24 of the top 30 games are all Nintendo published. Highest selling non-Nointendo published game was Cooking Mama at 5.5 million. Compare to PS2 where the top 2 selling games are 3rd party (GTAs at 20 and 16 million) and 25 of the top 30 games are 3rd party.

Also 6 of DSs top 30 are Pokemon, and 7 of the top 30 are Pokemon.

And aside from the top top selling games PS2 did better in individual game sales. PS2 had 38 games sell over 4 million. DS had 21 games sell over 4 million.

So the picture is really no different for DS, and is arguably worse.

Why does a distinction between first and third party software even matter?

You've basically shifted the goal posts to a point where the PS2 could come out on top.

But where is all the innovation that has lead to large amounts of sales of new and interesting games for DS? It also matters that 6 of the top selling games are more or less the same game but with slight variations (Pokemon). And many of those Mario games are merely continuations of franchises from previous generations (mario kart, NSMB DS, Super Mario 64). And there's DQ IX, which if I'm not mistaken is the 9th game in the franchise.

There's really no evidence to show that new and innovative games fared all that well on DS, apart from a handful of exceptions, compared to how PS2 games sold. The vast majority of great and excellent games sold <3 million on DS and PS2. So there's no real difference and DS isn't a special snowflake because it has a large number of amazing innovative games that sold 10s of millions of copies, or even a large number of amazing innovative games that sold over 5 million.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

think-man on 21 June 2014

More like approx 155 million



 

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Nintentacle on 21 June 2014
vivster said:

People need to learn that software sales don't scale linear against hardware sales.





archer9234 on 21 June 2014
veritaz said:


Everyone I knew at the time didn't know it and when I found out it did I thought it was pretty cool. So yeah, I will go with it because the majority of the younger audience had a very high chance of not knowing. 

how would you know they didn't know if you yourself didn't know about it to ask them?   Again, your anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal.  I could share the fact that every young or old person I knew that had a ps2 knew it was also a dvd player, but would it mean anything?  probably not.  However, looking at the historical trends and the way dvd sales flew off the charts when the ps2 came out, it is hard to deny that the VAST majority of people that bought a ps2 knew it was a dvd player.  

I found out by accident and asked them afterwards. You're right about it being anecdotal though, not much I can say about that. I just have a hard time believing the huge software sales for PS2 has anything to do with it also being a DVD player. Seems like it should have been an opposite reaction. 

You're not putting yourself in 2001 mindset. No streaming, no one cared about hd resolution, no DVD-R burners, no cheap hard drives, 56k modems dominated still, no heavy file sharing, DVD's were brand new and phased out VHS, and no portible devices that could play videos. Then the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player for a few years.