Hello everyone.

I have some very unofficial information, but through extrapolations, and such, I have determined we should be hearing from Turn10 or Microsoft that in around 2-3 weeks (after the fact), that Forza 2 will be hitting 1m units sold through very shortly.

My information is entirely extrapolated, and entirely unofficial, thus why it's on the MS forum, not the sales forum.

Anyways, as many know, I use Mygamercard.net alot to track various titles, and their preformance on the total charts. When C&C 3 charted so high on VGC, due to MGC numbers, I refrained from predicting too high, and ended up being totally right. MGC isn't a tool to entirely determine be-all-end-all numbers. However, it has proven quite often that it's right.

Here's the information: For a game on MGC to ever hit a very high place on the top 5, or overall (total cards to have a various game on it), it needs to hit a certain number of cards. MGC has over 1.5 MILLION gamertags on it - that's about 33% of every person online.

At any rate, I cross-indexed recent 1m sellers to figure out some sort of mean figure. Older games typically have higher card attach rates, as many games end up staying on someone's tag, despite selling it and someone buying a used copy, so older games can be invalidated (to a degree). Gears still has a 2:1 advantage over most every game, like it does in real life.

So here are some pertinent MGC numbers (, and the VGChartz numbers for various 1m games this year, and some other recent ones that should help extrapolate pertinent numbers:

  Forza 2                    N/A                 221,158 

Now, what was the point of this? As you can see, I am correct in stating older gams have a lower ratio, as there are (chance-wise), that there are more copies that have been sold as used (therefore not counted), or rented more often. Each game that was made either early this year, or late last year, has around a 4.0 multiplier. Now, there are games that buck this trend. As we can see, Crackdown's multiplier is very low (quite possibly the lowest). However, the reasoning for this is due to the Halo 3 beta. When it released, there were many many new cards (rented or used, most likely) that hit MGC, padding the data. Likewise, some very very heavy online games such as Rainbow Six Vegas (not listed) have low multipliers as well (RSV is around a 3.0).

 Nevertheless, the newer a game is, sufficive to say, the higher the sales to card multiplier is, as the MGC servers aren't instant, and can take time to update.

Despite this, however, if Forza 2 continued the trend of middle-of-the road (not too online heavy), it should have around a 4.0 to 4.5 multiplier. Why so high? Few renters and most likely no used copies have been bought yet.

So provided this is the case, which I highly think it is, I believe that Forza 2 is around 884,632 to 995,211 copies sold. Again, look at the newest million seller, Guitar Hero 2, which still has a 4.0 ratio (despite me thinking that it's just as online compatible as F2 is).

 I hope that someone finds this relevant, as I do believe MGC is a fair tracker of sales ratios, and should be a welcome addition in extrapolating sales figures. There are very few anomalies, as most older games seem to settle around 3.0 to 3.5, and newer ones around the 4.0 area.

Feel free to check the lists at MGC's site at www.mygamercard.net  If your wondering, Command & Conquer 3 (one of the higher games I can think of that's new, and has sold somewhat well), is at 95,000-ish cards. Extrapolated, that'd be around 400,000 units.

Also, please note, I'm using the worldwide data for worldwide data both from MGC, and VGC.

Very Nice. Interesting site.

Ultimately, I am sure that with WiiConnect, and Home coming out, we'll probably be able to, at one point, devise a much better system of extrapolating numbers and play rates quickly.

IE, when Super Mario Strikers had 500k connects (if I remember right) in Europe it's first week. I believe that once that kind of data is more regular, and we have a few weeks, or months of data available (in MGCs case, we have more than a year of data, as I've been going to the site since last April or so), we can start trending Wii Connect and Home data at a very viable rate. In the end, I think this can start trumping NPD data, and assisting ioi's figures, albiet only in small quantities.

Wow. Crazy way to figure things out Mr. Ball. Good on ya. I'm sure Forza 2 will outsell it's predecessor quite handily.

IMO, I think Gears was just at the right place at the right time under the right conditions.

Gears had major post E3-2006 (basically MS's #1 game, in-game gameplay made critics/reviewers say it was going to trump Halo 3). This certainly gave the game huge buzz, as everyone was just raving for the next 6 months.

Then when it came, it had very weak competition against RSV and CoD3, and was certainly the stand out title and the must-have title for the 360 of November and December. Gears didn't have insane 1st week sales. It took it about 2 weeks to hit 1m, but 2m and 3m quickly fell once word got out that the game was actually as good as everyone said, and hit 3m by December. Gears hasn't been, or wasn't frontloaded like other blockbuster games such as Halo.

Not only this, all of the other uber-360 titles have done well, but most of them (IMO) were early on in the 360 lifespan, or very US-centered games. TPS's are very popular in Europe, and Gears has, or nearly has, outsold Halo 2 there.

Having said this, it clearly shows that Gears dominated so well considering Gears has basically locked #1 on MGC since November. I check the site regularly, and only Forza and Crackdown have beat Gears for 1 week each since Gears came out. Despite this, we can see that games like RSV are doing well, since they aren't selling in the shadows of Gears anymore.

Going back to Gears, it sold around 1.1m units in November (I won the GoW prediction league back when it started). Then dropped to 850k-ish in December (again, very good), sold around 250~300k in January, and has been selling well since. Any game that can sell 1m copies in a month + nearly another 1m in another month (even in December. FFXII sold nearly the same in November, but dropped to 300k or so in Dec.).

Games that'll beat Gears? Halo 3 will, obviously. Outside of this, I really don't see anything upcoming that'll beat Gears, as it sold on the Halo-beater vibe. I do think, however, that Mass Effect and Lost Odyssey have a great chance, as both should sell real well outside the US, and if they did good here, would have a good chance at getting near 3m each.

That's not to say that other 360 games haven't had great runs. Call of Duty 2 was a beast when it came out, and sold to 70% of every 360 owner @ launch (I was one of the few that didn't buy it at launch), and kept a 70% attach ratio for around 4 months. It sold 100k+ every month for nearly 6 months, and sold well for a whole year. FNR3 is obviously great, and GRAW + Oblivion have both had great runs. RSV continues to have great holds, and now Forza and Guitar Hero 2 have chances of breaking the 2m barrier.

IMO, at the end of the year, the 2m barrier should be shattered by quite a few games. H3, Madden 08, Mass Effect, Forza 2, Guitar Hero 2, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey all have great chances of breaking the 2m barrier. Madden and H3 could do 2m+ in the US alone (Madden 07 had 1.6m sales in the US, an improvement of 1m copies vs. Madden 06).

Also, I do think GTAIV should see Gears-like sales in the US for the year (ie, strong sales throughout the holiday), but have much better legs, and far superior sales in Europe.

sweet... except i haven't figured what a "my gamer card" exactly is. is it something that's only pertinent to 360 games?

this ratio seems like a good way to measure the % of hardcore gamers who bought a certain game, neglecting rentals, which are probably still negligible anyway.

Gears did come out at the great time. People call it the Halo-Killer. I say no that's nonsense.

A better name for Gears was the halo-filler.

Actually, if you're right then ioi's numbers are off quite a bit. It hasn't even done 400k in the Americas which is by far its biggest userbase. Maybe the game is relatively more popular in Europe, but 885-995k WW sales seems very optimistic at the moment.

Mygamercard.net is a place that tracks Xbox 360 gamercards. A gamercard is what every person that has a 360 has. When they are online, the gamercard information is submitted to Microsoft's servers.

What does the gamercard have on it? It contains gamerscore information (achievement details, when it was unlocked, total scores, ect), as well as the list of your most recently played Xbox 360 games.

This information is then given, or user-submitted (by letting MGC know your gamertag name), and the information is formed into what games are being played on a weekly basis by every Xbox 360 owner on the website. Since many X360s are always, or almost always online, the information is constantly updated, allowing us to see how many people have played a game in the past week, and the total number of cards that have played a particular game in it's history.

I've been working awhile on trying to compensate the VGChartz data with MGC, and I think the 4.0~4.5 multiplier works for new(er) releases.

Actually, Forza 1 in Europe outsold it's counterpart in the United States and Canada, so it's not unlikely that FM2 has done the same in Europe as well. MGC has around 100,000 of the 221,000 gamercards associated with the US.

Lets put it this way:

Countries with the most cards associated with it:

United States: 811,000 unique gamercards
United Kingdom: 202,000 unique gamercards
Canada: 77,000 unique gamercards
France: 46,000 unique gamercards

UK has 25% of the US's totals, Canada has just under 10%, and France has 5% of the US's totals.

However, with Forza Motorsports 2:

United States: 96,000 unqiue gamercards
United Kingdom: 42,000 unique gamercards
Canada: 12,000 unqiue gamercards
France: 10,000 unique gamercards

Assuming the numbers are correct (which they are fairly close), despite the UK having 1/4th the install base of the 360 versus the US, it has 43% the cards associated with a UK gamertag vs. the US. Therefore, the attach rate of FM2 to a UK 360 owner is nearly twice that of a US owner. These numbers are mimiced in Chart Track numbers as FM2 has held #1 for 3 weeks in the UK in the overall charts. Likewise, despite France having 5% of the total install base vs. the US, it has more than 10% of the userbase of FM2.

Likewise, even in Canada, it has almost double that of French cards, but the cards associated with FM2 are almost the same. Quite the contrast, eh?

Therefore, the average attach rate of Forza to any given gamer in the UK and France is TWICE that of it in the United States. This shows that FM2 is far more popular in Europe than the US. Will it translate into twice the sales? I am unsure, but it does trend to show that it could be pretty huge there.