Since ioi has finally added good old charts for old(er) games, I decided to put this list out for next-gen (mainy X360) consoles.

 Okay, just before I get into the lists, there's a disclaimer/warning: it's mostly X360 titles. Why? I wanted to pick older titles that either aren't in the top 200, or are atleast as old as late 2006. Because of this, most games are X360, as it only covers the Wii/PS3's launches, and their top-50 games, therefore the PS3 isn't well represented (3 games).

They are organized by genre, so we can get a good look at a few of the differences between genres. Action/Adventure is obviously the largest, and most bland, as I had to put about 5 kinds of genres.

Nevertheless, the charts!

 RPGs. Doesn't include Phantasy Star (X360)

Shooters (TPS/FPS)

Sports Games (Football, Baseball, Basketball, Racing, ect)

Action/Adventure/Ect

 Anyways, we see a rather hugely varied list, thus far of multipliers. Some games were escewed (PS3 games, most notably) due to low adoption rates @ launch, then strong sales afterwards. Nevertheless, we can see a general pattern with the shooters, as a "typical" tier ratio seems to be in the 4.0~6.0 area for most general games. This number, interestingly enough, is totally inclusive of every kind of opening - small and large.

Multipliers will just demonstrate how 'anticipated' a game was ...

Consider Brain Training in Japan, it's first week sales were 46,590 and has sold (after 113 weeks) 3,599,891 for a multiplier of 77.3; at the same time Dragon Quest VIII sold 2,267,827 the first week and 3,609,295 after 69 weeks for a multiplier of 1.6

Shooters probably have lower multipliers because they're tareting the 'Core' gamer who is probably aware of upcomming games (and will likely buy it early on) whereas a puzzle game targets more 'Casual' gamers who require something or someone to inform them that the game exists.

LOW multipliers may demonstrate how anticipated a game was, or how many hardcore fans there are of that particular game.
Perhaps HIGH multipliers are connected to positive reviews for the game? It would be interesting to check these against Metacritic ratings (or perhaps it would make more sense to check them against ratings from the five or so most popular sites/magazines).

Going just by those RPG and Shooter games, perhaps a multiplier of under 4.5 corresponds to bad/mediocre reviews?

Actually, lots of other non-shooters are far more frontloaded...Look at the updated chart(s) once I get them up. Not all, but on average, the multipliers aren't as varied (and semi lower).

Also, to Shina, I would argue it doesn't correspond with low reviews.

Most, if not all, of the low(er) ones on the lists were reviewed with scores of 80%+ on Gamerankings.com The most atrociously-low multipliers goto time-sensitive games that are big IPs like the EA Sports series for numbered sports (NFL, NCAA 06/07, except for launch Maddens for Wii/PS3).

Seriously, it'll be alot better when we can farm more data for Wii and PS3 titles that are in the various genres.

But it seems like an average (good/decent) multiplier is:

RPG Tiers: 4.0-5.0
Shooter Tiers: 4.0-6.0
Sports Tiers: 4.5-5.5
Action/Adv: 3.5-4.5

You have Twilight Princess labeled as a 360 game.

Either I'm overlooking where you mention it or some numbers are off because are these supposed to be US sales only? I know rayman has sold over 1 million worldwide along with Red Steel. Since you specifically mention some games with no 2007 data, I can assume they're not only based on 2006 sales.

Nice way to look at things.

Will comment that this is skewed significantly at the "launch" of a console, as hardware is limited. The first week figure for several titles will be incredibly low, yet it may keep selling indefinitely (i.e. WiiSports in Japan is probably like this?).

...

I was considering drawing up a bunch of "sales graphs" (cumulative sales over time), then normalising them to say, 100k in first week (or first month).

You end up with a bunch of differently "shaped" graphs. We could then identify the factors that puts a game into one of these categories, and we can use it to estimate lifetime sales of any title once it launches.

(but I don't have time now - maybe a project for later...)

Basically, the reason I did this was to identify key factors in what makes a game (on average), have a certain kind of leg, and I think the charts show that.

In the case of PS3, no software sold @ launch (since the tier rate was combined 1.0), which eschewed their data hugely, whereas the X360 and Wii launches saw great software sellthrough, to give most games, normal legs.

Also, having said this, we can see the majority of games, regardless of format, fit into 3.5-4.5 legs. Even Zelda:TP almost fits into this. Obviously, there are tons of variations, and tons of games that beat this (like Wii Play, already).

There are a few games that have no 2007 data, but I KNOW there is 2k7 data on the games at some point - I just haven't found the data yet, as ioi only shows the top 200 games of the year (hey ioi, mind changing that?).

And finally, we can see that some games, ie Madden and NCAA08, are going to have abysmal legs. This will certainly help us to extrapolate final sales.

But like you said, creating a graph for various games, would be a good idea. I actually have a chart of millionsellers for the X360, and the charts are pretty neat.

Nevertheless, I probably will re-do those charts, factoring in PS3 and Wii US/NA millionsellers (Zelda:TP, Wii Play, R:FOM).

Realilistically, for any game to go into a certain multiplier, you only need about 4-5 weeks of data to give a near-exact end total, because by then, you can understand where it's trending toward - games like Wii Play and Guitar Hero show a totally different sales curve vs. Mario Party 8 and Crackdown.

I'm surprised how well Call of Duty 3 has sold on all 3 consoles. I mean most people considered it a disappointment in the series... that series is so freakin' popular.

COD 4 should kill the charts with all the hype it's getting now... I think it will easily be the 3rd biggest multiplatform game on 360/PS3 after GTA and Madden this year, except maybe if Assassin's Creed exceeds expectations.