Will Microsoft have a lineup of games to kill Sony’s momentum of exclusive first party titles?
Microsoft really does not have a big lineup of first party titles coming out in this 2009 fiscal year. On the other hand Sony is about to drop big first party exclusives but, I still believe the Xbox 360 will still do well overall and give the PS3 a run for it’s money. Xbox 360 only has like 4 exclusives (from my knowledge) that will have the 360 consumers just shooting right to the store and pick up the games day one, while on the other hand PS3 owners love to hype a game but then decide not to purchase the game when released . The whole thing is that you have a little bit more of dedication on the 360 side while people on Sony’s side, tend to hype up games but don’t wanna buy it and make Sony look like they didn’t market the product properly.
Xbox 360 got Halo Wars, GTAIV: The Lost and The Damned (DLC), Halo: OSDT, Ninja Blade and supposedly Alan Wake. Now Killzone 2 and Halo Wars will be released a week apart from each other, which one you think will sell more? Even though Halo Wars is a RTS instead of your regular FPS Halo, fans are still going to buy the game because there are tons of fans that follow the series and then you got the fans of the 360 that just purchase games because of excellent marketing done by Microsoft. Also you got GTA IV: The Lost and Damned coming out as well as these other two titles and it’s being promoted as a full alleged disc based game in GameStop stores! GTA IV sold extremely well day one across both platforms, but who still outsold the other?
Now with just those two games I talked about they will more than likely sell 2 times more than Killzone 2, even with all the hype that is going behind Killzone 2. I didn’t talk about Ninja Blade coming out, which to me and many other people that either played the Japanese demo or just seen game play think the game is incredible and I think it’s a sleeper hit. Then you got the anticipated Alan Wake, which more and more stories are starting to surface again.
Now don’t get me wrong, the PS3 sold 726,000 units during the holidays with a high price. The 360 also did real well selling over a million units this December thanks to Gears of Wars 2, Fable 2 and the price drop. Now if the PS3 was to have a price drop it would sell a lot better than what it is doing at the moment, but it would still be out sold by the Xbox 360 because of the magnificent marketing skills. Sony needs to just stick with the same price for the time being and work on more marketing skills. Market the hell out of everything coming out and then when the time is right, drop the price around the same time Uncharted 2 comes out and let it lead into the holidays. Until then Microsoft is going to maintain a steady lead during the console war and weather Sony’s little momentum.
