I didn't separate the Wii and DS third parties, nor will  I claim to have totally error free calculator technique on long list of numbers but I'm sure that I checked it over enough that I don't think that the differences will change the interpretation in any significant way. Yes that could be a typo between 21.7 and 23.7. I don't type particularly well.

Well I wasn't questioning it until I decided to seperate the two consoles... but I could be in the wrong here as I am not certain which VGC data you took data from.

I assumed you used the current weekly charts (Americas and World) but you could have used the old weeks if this thread is old enough.... which would explain why I found the figure of 17 third party titles in the world weekly, compared to your 13.

Or actually... I think I figured it out, for the number of titles (world weekly) you did use the most recent week, but you didn't include the 3 new releases for DS, and also because Mario & Sonic is published by Nintendo in Japan, it gives that as the publisher on the World charts so that was miscounted too.... which brings it to 13.

Thanks for the clarification, I was confused by who was supposed to have published Mario and Sonic.

Great job Grampy! I didn't realize just how long-term a lot of games managed to hang in there for.

And if you're interested, the link to the graph I posted is
http://www.edge-online.com/features/edges-top-20-publishers-2008

The rest of the article has some other valuable data and insights, even if that graph was the peice d'resistance. For example, the profits/losses graph becomes even more interesting when you look at the revenue split.

Makes you wonder where some of those folks are spending all their money...

And I nominate your last sentence in the OP for Sentence of the Month.

I just wanted to point out that the reason take2 is showing a 5 million dollar loss on that graph is that the effective dates on it are from April 1st 2007 to March 31st 2008. I full four weeks before GTA4 even came out.

Your analysis of GTA dropping off teh charts is good but you need a newer graph to compare the two properly.

Indeed, It's an interesting situation, especially with the Wii.

VGC is full of people who enjoy the here and now, to see how big of a splash a title can make on its first week. It's more exciting because it's instantly gratifying (on that week's sales charts).

We've had plenty of "flops/poor sales/etc./etc." on a title's first week, only to see it end up selling extremely well down the road (Ninja Gaiden II and Boom Blox come to mind).

So, I suppose that in the end it's all about total sales for a developer/publisher (I know, thank you Captain Obvious), and while first week/month sales are nice, they're only used for bragging rights.

The revenue chart was just a point of departure that raised the question that was the main point. Why are these games so short lived. It would be easy to update their revenue , just add their first month sales and you would be close because there isn'tmuch after that, the question is why.

Haha... I didn't even notice that, brilliant sentence.

Actually it's through the end of April... which includes the first few days (released 29th?) of GTAIV.... or approximately half it's current LTD sales.


http://www.edge-online.com/features/edges-top-20-publishers-2008?page=0%2C10

"for the 12 months ending 30 April 2008."

I understand. I just meant that there was plenty of other good stuff to sort through in addition to that chart. Sorry if it sounded like I was trying to hijack the thread, though.