thismeintiel said:
You say not many noteworthy releases, which means you admit there were some. Off the top of my head I can think of UC, KZ2, R&C, and GT5:P. Again, take those out completely, and the promise of new 1st party games, like GT5, GOW3, and UC2. If you honestly think the PS3 would still have beat the 360 without that, there is nothing to cure that level of willful delusion. Sure, Japan may have sold a few million more than my hyperbolic estimate, but it would not have made up for a close race in EU and a severe beating in NA. |
Uncharted - 1.37m
Killzone 2 - 1.07m
Ratchet & Clank - 1.10m and 0.55m
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue - 1.83m
Gran Turismo 5 - 4.87m
God of War 3 - 1.36m
Uncharted 2 - 2.22m
These are the lifetime figures in Europe for the games you mentioned. LittleBigPlanet, Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm reached 2.01m, 1.72m and 1.61m, respectively, but they were pack-in games for extended durations which is why their sequels didn't get anywhere close to the same numbers.
19 third party games released during 2007-2009 exceeded 1m units, including all the yearly releases of FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer and Call of Duty. The combined sales of these big third party titles outsold Sony's games by a ratio of roughly 3:1.
So yes, the PS3 would have topped the 360 in sales in Europe even without Sony's games, because the biggest hardware movers were third party games. It wouldn't have happened as soon as by the end of 2009, but it would have happened nonetheless, probably by the end of 2010.
The PS3 bestseller list in the USA was also dominated by third party games, just as the 360's was, so first party software didn't have a big impact during that generation.
This just leaves the question of global console sales, but would there have been a lot more people to skip the PS3 if it hadn't been for Sony's games? I doubt it, because familiarity with the brand and multiplatform games remaining on PS was a big enough draw for the vast majority of the audience, plus despite Sony's blunders there remained a clear advantage in Japanese third party software for the PS3, making the console more or less unskippable for gamers who prefer Japanese games. The PS3 also had free online multiplayer.
"The only reason I'd buy a PS3 instead of a 360 is Sony's first party output." - That's something that won't have applied to a lot of people during that generation, and that's why I consider the impact of first party software to be very much overstated by the PS fanbase.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV (360+PS3) would outsell SSBB. I was wrong.
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