It's the week we've all been waiting for: Price Drop Week. It's here, and it did move some systems. The X360 had a 50% increase in hardware. And for software?

With a top20 chart, we can make a few observations about sales:

Although hardware is up significantly, software didn't change as much as I figured it would. There are, however, some big winners in software. Major titles, and budget titles saw a great increase in the week. Guitar Hero, RSV, GOW,FM2, POTC3, FNR3, GRAW2, DR and SR all saw increases, or minimal decreases compared to former weeks. This shows that most of the new X360 addopters were desiring either budget titles, or used titles.

Outside of this, APF 2k8 and NCAA08 saw decent drops compared with former weeks, and are starting to slow down their respective plummets.

Guitar Hero 2, after 19 weeks, re-emerged with the X360 software crown. Don't expect it to live past this week, as Madden is now out and probably ripping holes through sales charts.

Speaking of Madden 08, one cannot underestimate, what potential sales for the perennial powerhouse can be. If your reading the charts and aren't American, Madden 08 is to the US as what a main-series Final Fantasy is. Last year, Madden 07 sold 1.8 million copies in 2 days. With Madden 08 and the full week for the price drop, expect good (10-20%) increases in hardware. Also, it's almost a guarentee that software will hit 1,000,000 software units sold for the week. I will go even as far as saying Madden alone could hit 1m for the week. It's entirely possible. NCAA08 had a 20% opening week increase (from 290k to 360k). Madden 08 had a 750k o/w. If it had an NCAA08-esque increase, we should see 900,000 for it's expected opening week - therefore, 1m isn't too far off.

A few notes, before the *major finding*:

Oblivion had a pretty large, but expected drop from last week. However, Oblivion's sales were adjusted down about 1,200 units from last week - to mirror Media Create sales. Expect Oblivion to continue to have similar drops to Trusty Bell. However, at this point, Trusty Bell was selling about 200 units less/wk. If Oblivion has a similar 30% drop, expect around 2400-2800 units next week for Oblivion.

Also, my initial prediction of Saints Row's sales was nearly dead-on. When it sold 12k first week, I stated it'd sell 17.5k. With it's rapid drop off, 18k is about where it'll end - only 500 units away.

Viva Pinata continues to impress me more than most any other title. MS really did well with making VP, and putting it in Japan (also, why they're going DS). 30 weeks after it's launch, it's still charting despite a 1,500 unit opening week - it's sold over 10x it's initial launch sales, and still selling at about 25% of it's first week. I wonder: had VP launched in December near Blue Dragon, could it of sold more? I think it could have.

Also, my *major finding*: GEMIN, a Japanese website released the "Famitsu 500" as stated on this website. Famitsu reported that as of December 31st, Blue Dragon sales were at 135,240. VG Chartz numbers? At 125,000. This represents a 10,000 unit, or an 8% discrepancy. Assuming this is the case (which it seems), then the actual Blue Dragon sell-through rate is between 205,000-210,600.

So that means Blue Dragon is even more impressive, and is inline with the fact that MS/Mistwaker stated that sell-through had already reached 200k a few weeks ago.

I think it would have moved a lot more if it had been a FULL week for the price drop. The fact that it increased that much without being advertised on retailer ads is very good.

Next week(this week), Full week of price drop effect AND Madden.

Yea should definetly help that 360 and Madden are being advertised together. Could suppress Wii, PS3, and PS2 versions at first to help push some hardware but only for the first couple of weeks.

Updated with the top 20.

I think I might do a top 20 next week if there's enough software increases to warrant it.

Is it yours expected LTD or where did you get those figures from?

My personal expected LTDs.

Basically last week the console sold 7500 consoles per day compared to 5000 per day the week prior. Making the assumption that the pending price drop did not drive sales down. The first three days accounted for 15,000 units sold. That would mean that 35,000 were sold in the last four days at 8750 units per day. Were we to follow that line of thought the 360 should move just over 61,000 units in its first full week. That is conservative math. That would be closer to a sixty percent increase in sales.

My personal opinion is that the console probably at the very least moved 9000 units, and probably closer to 9500 units per day after the price reduction. Obviously there is no data to support this. However with the high end purchase, and the online capabilities I will assume a larger portion of potential consumers would be aware of the imminent price drop. Then again my predictions could end up being equally valid due to the weekend effect. I suppose we will never know unless we get a breakdown for daily sales.

My personal expectation is that the console probably will have seen in its first full week at the new price a increase of 80%-100%. Ignoring the numbers and just taking into account a full weekend makes this seem like a plausible and realistic assumption. That is a pretty solid boost almost an increase of double a corresponding previous week. I guess people really did notice the drop in price. Even without a major marketing campaign.

Dissappointed, had higher expectations... hopefully it will reach 75k with the release of Madden

I think the number look good when considering that the price drop was mid/late week.

This week should be VERY interesting with a full week of price drop and Madden, which is apparently noticably better on the 360 than any other platform:

USA Today: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/14/usa-today-picks-madden-for-360-over-ps3/

mr stickball. The overall software sold are down from 365,829 to 310,896 so i wouldn't think more hardware didn't help a lot on the software front.