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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Xbox 360 Sales Chart, August 19th

Very excited to do this chart. Madden was rather close to what I felt would happen. And hardware is up, as well as significant software boosts as well.

This Wk Last Wk Name Wk Sales  Total Sales% Drop  Wks in ReleaseExpected LTD 
 #1 --- Madden 2008 889,072 889,072 --- 1 2,000,000
 #2 #1 Guitar Hero 2 33,381 1,122,781 +12.5% 20 1,500,000
 #3#2  NCAA 2008 FB 20,528 558,858 -28.4% 5 ~1,000,000
 #4 #3 Rainbow Six Vegas 18,219 1,081,446 +30.9% 39 1,300,000
 #5 #4 Gears of War 16,506 2,875,022 +20.4% 41 3,500,000
 #6 #7 Forza Motorsports 2 8,567 488,119 +1.1% 12 650,000+
 #7 #6 Overlord  8,360177,106  -10.8% 8 245,000
 #8 #5 Nascar 2008 8,348 118,438 -37.2% 4 175,000
 #9 #11 Ghost Recon: AW2 8,225 622,244 +7.8% 24 750,000
 #10 #9 POTC3 7,916 179,697 0.0% 13 250,000

#11-20:

This Wk Last Wk  Name Wk Sales Total Sales % DropWks in Release  Expected LTD
 #11 #8 Lego Star Wars 2 7,684 368,853 -5.0% 49 400,000
 #12 #14 Dead Rising 7,598 792,840 +16.9% 54 850,000+
 #13 #12 Fight Night Round 3 7,340 1,053,039 +5.7% 78 1,200,000
 #14 #15 Saints Row 7,294 837,385 +17.7% 51 900,000
 #15 #17 MLB 2k6 5,866 582,261 +3.5% 25 625,000
 #16 #10 All Pro Football 2k8 5,695 101,775 -27.3% 5 150,000?
 #17  #13 Transformers 5,640 184,451 -15.2% 8 215,000
 #18 #19 TES: Oblivion 5,254 1,234,425 +6.1% 74 1,500,000+
 #19 #16 The Darkness 5,251 221,382 -14.6% 8 250,000
 #20 #20 Call of Duty 3 5,114 1,108,509 +6.2% 41 1,200,000

 I'm going to add the next 10 sometime soon, but a few notes:

Not only is this one of the largest (if not the), largest weeks the X360 has ever had in software, overall sales were up from last week by a small percentage. As you can see just from the top 10, budget games and killer-apps are the order of the day. Despite NCAA2008 decreasing, it's within 50,000 units of last year's entire LTD. Very good numbers, considering NCAA08 should stay in the top 10 for a few more weeks.

#1 Madden did phenominal. It saw almost a 20% increase (ala NCAA08) from Madden 07. What does this mean? If it winds up with a 20% increase, M08 should hit around 1,920,000 units LTD, or more. This is very good news for EA, and the X360, as the X360 has taken the lion's share of every sports game made this generation thus far. (except maybe for Tiger Woods Golf).

Outside of this, every other title did very well, GH2, RSV, GOW and GRAW2 saw increases all around. Forza 2 also saw it's first increase since the drops. This doesn't bode too well for FM2, as it means that it would be contunuing to drop rather quickly if it wasn't for the drops - however, it is still $60.

Outside of the top 10, budget games such as Saints Row, and Dead Rising did rathter well on the week. More data to come. But lets discuss:

With Madden 08 being so overly dominating (almost outselling every other version combined), how will EA work with the X360, as it's obviously EA's big moneymaker? Hardware was up for the week (13%+), can it stay at that level and increase with Bioshock and Blue Dragon in the following weeks? IMO, these numbers do bode well for the next few weeks. New consumers are rapidly adopting X360 software after the pricedrop.

And finally: how low will M08 go next week? It's obviously going to be insanely frontloaded, but by how much? We'll probably see M08 drop to 150-250k next week, but should we be worried if its lower?

This Wk Last Wk Name  Wk Sales Total Sales % Drop Wks in ReleaseExpected LTD 
 #1 #1 TES: Oblivion 5,178 63,649 -15.3% 4 100,000
 #2 #2 Trusty Bell: Chopin's Dream 813 68,481 -16.5% 10 75,000
 #3 #3 Ghost Recon: AW2 660 16,745 -11.9% 6 19,500
 #4 #4 Blue Dragon 431 195,897 -8.1% 37 205,000
 #5 #7 Viva Pinata 386 18,925 +0.7% 32 20,000+
 #6 #5 Saints Row 356 17,302 -18.9% 9 17,500+
 #7 #6 Forza Motorsports 2 324 27,484 -17.8% 13 30,000
        
        
        

Although there wasn't a huge change in sales due to Obon, Oblivion is the exception. VGC undertracked sales for Oblivion by around 1,500 units last week, and sales remained very, very strong this week. Having a 15% drop, despite being western is just amazing for Oblivion. Right now, Oblivion is tracking stronger in it's 4th week than ANY non-holiday release. Oblivion is also about 4,000+ units ahead of Trusty Bell for the same week, and just 5,000 units behind DOA4. If sales continue, Oblivion stands a good chance of beating DOA4's sales of 103,000. Oblivion's 3rd and 4th week sales are 3,000 units ahead of DOA4's pace for both weeks. From this week on, DOA4 sold another 35,000 units. However, again, Oblivion sold 5,178 to DOA4's 2,020 4th week sales.

How is this possible that Oblivion, a western RPG of all things, is so handily beating Japanese games? I present 3 reasons:

#1. Oblivion is the 2nd highest rated game on the X360 (just below DOA4, and matching Blue Dragon's 38/40 score).

#2. There are few other major titles available for sale on the X360 (we're in a sales slump. People have to buy something, right?)

#3. Unlike Trusty Bell, and other games, it isn't suffering from the "Dragon Quest Swords" effect. Due to the length and replayability of Oblivion, I do not believe many used copies are available. With this being the case, anyone wanting to purchase Oblivion have to buy a new, not used copy. This is why US games like Oblivion, Dead Rising, and Fight Night 3 are selling so well: lack of competition and decent length of the game.

Outside of Oblivion's magnificent 4th week, other Western games did poorly, while Viva Pinata and Blue Dragon continued their great runs. MS really has a winner in Japan with Viva Pinata. Despite horrid 1st week sales, the hold for VP has been stellar. Hopefully MS greenlights a VP2 and puts it in Japan.

 



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

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Why do you estimate Madden will only do 2x NCAA?

NCAA dropped almost 30% once Madden was released. Some football fans may buy both games, but I have a feeling a big part of the NCAA crowd is made up of football fans just looking to play ANY football while they wait for Madden to arrive.

As far as being frontloaded, I assume it will be less so than last year because the quality of the game is much much higher this time around. 08 will probably have positive word of mouth whereas 07 may have had negative word of mouth. But then again, some people may avoid Madden this year based on the lousy version of Madden they bought last year.



We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

Congrats Microsoft...EA keep up the games on the Xbox 360...To me its not a battle between Wii, Xbox 360, PS3. Its a battle really against the PS3 and 360. I really want to see this outcome of this battle. Everyone knows that the Wii won this generation but knowing that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are really next-gen with the graphics and cool online play now thats going to be a battle worth watching. And the 360 is doing a fine job of it. Sales are going to continue to increase and decrease just the simple fact those RRoD are still there, but when Microsoft brings those Falcons out its a totally different story. I'm so happy to here that Madden 360 version is the only ongoing, selling version!!! CONGRATS 360!!!!



Great work mr. Stick

Looks like eventhough the Wii took the hardware krown they still have a ways to go for the sofware krown which should be more important for game devs. Also the 360 is making it hard for the competition to catch up fast concerning game library, with the excepion of casual games (and some others) the 360 is constantly improving its dominance in many areas, I think reforming the core to arcade is microsofts way to appeal to casuals, lets hope this works out and they get some great new arcade games in their lineup.   



 

 

 

Ok, the X360 sold 59,000 last week, in it's first full week with a minor price drop and the release of Madden 08.

If you look at last year, the X360 went from 50,000 weekly in august into the fall season with 60-65,000 per week in september. We had Madden then and we have Madden now, but this time we should see a slight boost from the little price drop of the X360 and the effects from games like Bioshock, Blue Dragon and MoH: Airborne (not system sellers per se, but they will contribute to the "massive library"-effect that has been discussed on the forums recently, and to the buzz that the fall line-up of great games finally is here).

So, starting from next week (Bioshock week) we'll see the X360 start selling 70,000 per week and it will hold on to that rate until the big day of Sep 25th...



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IMO, if X360 can start doing 60,000-75,000/wk, that'd be very very impressive before the uber-game comes out.

Having said this, there are rumors that the NPD sales of X360 actually increased vs. June. If this were true, we could see the X360 numbers even higher than they are now - even in the 70,000 area for the week. But we'll have to see.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Also, about my NCAA08 vs. Madden 08 prediction(s):

When I said ~1,000,000 I meant that the max value for NCAA08 would equal around 1m. Whereas with Madden 08, I expect no less than 2m, and 2m is a very safe bet for the end total of the game.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.