Pretty big week for the 360 in the US, and interesting week in Japan (for no new releases).

New releases smothered the charts this week. I am rather unimpressed by the Darknesses first week. Some of us were saying 250k+, and I figured around 170k would be right. However, we could see TD wind up having some decent legs. 250k is guarenteed, and could reach 400k or more, if legs were good.

#2 Overlord, atleast to me, is rather impressive. Overlord seems that it's a title thats less 360-centric (atleast to what assume the core 360 base is), and Overlord could easily wind up with 250k, or more by the end, passing even LOTR:BFME2. #3 Transformers also did good, atleast to me. We should see it next week how well these 3 new ones hold up.

#4 Dirt held as expected with a 50% drop. 250k in NA is what it should land at.

#5 and #6 Guitar Hero 2 and Forza Motorsports are impressive for the week. FM2 lands a great sub-15% drop, and GH2 increases. GH2 has rarely sold below 30k, and this shows that GH2 could wind up with 1.5m or more before everything's done. Forza 2 should hit 600-750k easily. We still need around 3-4 more weeks of solid (sub 15% drops) to know for sure. However, FM2 could easily pass 1m if it held well, and found a strong holiday with a price drop.

#7 Teh Bigs is kinda weak as well compared to MLB2k7's opening (of 100k+). It'll drop out of the top-10 easily.  #8 Tenchu Z suffers a massive drop. Just when I thought it'd survive, and do 250k over it's lifetime, it drops so severely. 200k is now in question even.

#9 GRAW2 gets a jump. It's been oddly hanging on to 10k+ per week. It might end up with 750k before it's gas runs out.

#10 Hour of Victory bombs hard. 25k lifetime. Count on it (also, one of the worst-reviewed 360 games ever).

Other notes: Movie games Ratittoule and Harry Potter bomb hard. Rainbow Six Vegas hits 1m and is still going strong. FNR3 will reach 1m next week. Armored Core 4 hits (after adjustments I believe), 100k. Outside of this, nothing amazing.

 For refference, the 360 had a very good week overall. It was the 6th biggest week for 360 software sales of the year. Without any 200k selling title, it was actually very very good, as the other weeks that beat it involved GH2, GRAW2, MLB2k7, Crackdown and Lost Planet's debuts.

Now to the land of the rising sun:

Both Western titles, which debuted last week had pretty horrid drops. However, this isn't unexpected for W-games. My prediction of SR's 17.5k LTD should be just about right.

#1 Trusty Bell had a strong drop. My question last week was if it'd have a sub-50% drop this week, and it has. TB should start getting some legs, and have significant increases next week, in terms of % drops. If it can manage above 2200 units next week, that'll be a good sign.

#3 Dead Rising has a strong(er) drop, as it had a near 60% drop last week. 80k is still guarenteed.

#4, #5, and #7, FM2, Blue Dragon and Viva Pinata have good drops from last week. FM2 could hit 30k, BD will hit 200k by Sept, and VP might wind up with 18 or 19k by it's end. Next week, #9, Crackdown hits 30k.

Mousou Orochi has been announced and it's release date, set in Japan. Mousou Orochi hit near 400k first week in Japan on PS2, and it should help 360 sales out when it releases. It's launch? Sept 13th. The good thing is, each month in Japan will be bolstered by games that'll keep 360 sales afloat, and easily above 2k or even 2.5k indefinately. August has GRAW 2, MLB2k7 (which should both get ~20k), and Oblivion (which could provide a H/W boost to 5k for the week, and s/w should hit atleast 75k), Sept has Mousou Orochi and H3, October is uncertain, and November has AC6.

Next Week Questions:

For the Darkness I expected bigger sales, but it does have lackluster multiplayer which probably turned a lot of people off.

Overlord did better than I expected, but I think there will be a big drop next week for it.

Guitar Hero II is going to end up the best selling 360 game of the year outside Halo 3 it seems (Mass Effect 2007 release is in question).

Forza has longer legs than I could have imagined meaning word of mouth from player to player is driving sales.

Glad to see Hour of Victory flop as it is a horrendous game in a genre that is already packed with too many games (WW II shooter).

As expected, Eternal Sonata is gonna have better legs than the average 360 game in Japan and Saints Row was adopted by the hardcore base but will probably fade away.

Eternal Sonata is upto 21% of it's opening week's gross, btw.

If Forza Motorsports 2 had -15% drops the rest of it's life, and never had an increase once, it'd wind up with ~625,000 units.

If WOM for Overlord is good, it could see C&C3-esque drops over it's lifetime, which would be pretty good for it IMO.

This is all interesting info, but isn't the biggest story/surprise of these stats that major bombing of the Harry Potter game? It didn't even sell 10,000 units. I was beyond shocked by how poorly it did across all the platforms.

I'm amazed at how well Guitar Hero 2 is selling, especially considering the price. It'd be interesting to see the sales weighted by the cost of the products.

Legend, if that were the case, then there'd be no such thing as a top 10 software sales. It'd be like Nintedomination in Japan. GH2 sells @ 80% higher than typical Wii software, and 100% above Wii Play.

So...GH2's revenue (a key factor) is somewhere around $79,200,000.
This is compared to the #1 game of 2007, Wii Play @ $57,822,680.
Gears of War? Assuming $60 a unit, it's at $167,280,000.

As you can see, if pocketbooks were all that matters, the 360 software is in awesome shape, and the hardware is doing good (but not great). That's why I've advocated a 360 pricedrop since November last year - the revenue desire is there (360 sells around $16m of hardware a week, whereas the Wii is at $22.5m/wk)