Did you realize I tried to explain why I compared GT5 to MGS4? You did not get it.

In order to have legs, on a very large IP as Gran Turismo us, you have to have a solid amount of hardware being sold each week. That's why GTIII did so well, as the PS2 sold 18m in the year after GTIII released), and why GT5 will have a tougher time, since the PS3 may be lucky to do 65% of that after the launch, with a slightly higher install base.

My argument in likening MGS4 and GT5 is as follows:

• Prior title saw declining sales vs. the sequel prior (MGS2>MGS3, GT3>GT4)
• Worse hardware sales, both current and after launch
• Should see very robust sales on 1st week, with much lower legs than previous iterations had.

Even if you want to argue the GT series has legs (which it does. But GT4 had much smaller legs), a lot of that has to do with both current install base, and projected install bases. We're talking about a game that people are arguing will do 2-3x the next best seller on the Playstation 3, while maintaining an atrocious attach ratio and slow hardware sales. I just don't see those as being golden factors when people are trying to project GT5 sales. Will it be big? Absolutely. Will it be the Playstation 3's biggest seller? Absolutely. Will it reach GT4's sales? No. How could it?

And that's the crux of the arugment: How is GT5 going to exactly reach prior sales given the fact there are so many less consoles out in the wild to sell the game to? How can it have legs when the PS3 is moving roughly half the consoles per week the PS2 was when GT3 or GT4 launched? Those are critical factors we need to take into account, lest software sales cope with the fact that Grand Theft Auto IV on the PS3 sold much worse than the PS2 iteration.

People saying low PS3 userbase = low Gt sales

look at MGS4.....it will sell more than MGS3
_____

GT5 -- 10 Million

Forza 3 -- 3.5 Million

@RPG

I got my Ps2 through a GT4 bundle in UK

@stickball

but Mgs4 will outsell MGs3 my the end of this gen!

Forza 3
---------------
NA = 1.5M
EU = 2.0M
JP = .25M

Total = 3.75M LTD


GT5
----------------
NA = 3.0M
EU = 5.5M
JP = 2.0M

Total = 10.5M LTD

Doesnt mean Forza 3 WONT sell more and it doesnt make either game bad no matter how bad or good they sell.

This goes back to Halo 3, the 360 to my understanding has not done PS2 numbers or even half that however the game had great sales and legs so the "solid amount of hardware each week" is silly. PS3 numbers are no here near good but most definitely not terrible. We cannot see into the future as well as there is no knowing if PS3 sales increase near the release of the console, if a price cut comes etc.

MGS4 is from an extremely hardcore franchise which is the reason it was so front loaded but GT is both for casual and hardcore gamers. I did not understand your MGS4 to GT5 comparison because it was stupid therefore still do not understand it.

Now GTA IV on PS3 compared to the PS2 games, well stickball if you're not cannot see where you went wrong there is no hope for you. Also for someone who loves his sales numbers you have no idea about market saturation and what happens when a sequal of a game releases later on in the consoles lifecycle.

GT5 will easily sell what Halo 3 did at worst, prologue has shown that people still have interest in the franchise. It was bundled of course but not for long in NA and EU, lately was in Japan but that finished a few weeks ago. Then there are also the PSN downloads sales which we have no idea about, I highly doubt prologue has the majority of it's sales come from bundles unlike Forza 2.

That was expected for a GT4 to have a bundle, all big franchises do however it was not a pack in like Forza 2. That is the huge difference between the two franchises, people purchased the GT bundles because they had interest in the game but the Forza 2 pack in was just in every console sold.

Edit - Stickball where are you getting Forza 2 sold 2.5 million before the bundles? I find that really hard to believe.

1) Your forgetting that Halo 1 & 2 set the standard for attach rates on the Xbox. It's not like Halo 3 differed from how Halo 1 and 2 tracked. The games are incredibly hardcore, and Halo 3 would have sold very well even if it had a lower install base. However, due to the much more brisk pace of sales of the 360, Halo 3 sales have exceeded Halo 2's, and for few other reasons. Why is it such a crazy thing to believe the inverse would be true - that a game's sales may decrease if the userbase isn't as large? We've seen it with a lot of other games.

2) If GT5 is so casual, then why are casual players going to be adopting said game on a $400 console? It's not like LBP has set the world on fire with sales. It's had to be bundled quite a bit in Europe to reach 2 million sales.

I'm still looking for a valid reason from GT5 apologists as to how a game will have increased LTD sales on a console that has an infintely lower user base. Cite MGS4 till your blue in the face, but GT5 has shoes that are twice as large to fill to do the same thing.

I stick my by 8 million unit prediction. Lets see who's closer to reality, RPG.

Ok. I'll explain FM2 numbers again:

You have 3 'stages' of Forza 2 sales. The number sold before bundles ever occurred, the number sold while it was bundled (it's not like sales magically stopped when the game was bundled. People that owned X360's still bought the game), and units sold after the bundled promotion ended.

So let's define those periods, and how we can measure them:

Pre-Bundle Sales:

The easiest to track for Forza Motorsports 2. They are easily defined at 530,000 for American, and 520,000 for PAL sales, as well as an extra 35,000 for JP sales. This yields an easy number at around 1,085,000 (VGC says 1,089,000).

During Bundle Sales:

A bit harder to track, but it's important to define such, and in this case (and almost exclusively this case), it's measurable. In the FM2 bundle promotion, there was another game that was included - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance in America, and Viva Pinata in Europe. Since both of said titles were selling very poorly before the bundling, we can subtract the difference between FM2 'sales' (which includes pack-ins) and M:UA and VP 'sales' in the proper region. The discrepancy is the minimum number of software units sold by FM2 during the bundle sales. Doing this reveals that roughly 500,000 copies of Forza Motorsports 2 was sold in between October 19th, 2007 (when the bundles began showing up on VGC), and February 22nd, 2008 (when sales of the bundles constituted under 5% of all hardware sold on a given week).

After Bundle Sales:

This one is also kind of easy to figure out, as we just need to subtract the LTD sales (4.36m) from total sales after bundles ended. I used February 22nd again for continuity (which shows around 3.7m LTD sold as of that date). That points to around 760,000 software units sold after February 2008.

Add all 3 numbers up: 1,089,000 + 500,000 + 760,000 = 2,349,000 copies of Forza 2 sold to consumers.

Now, the critical analysis of using this method is as follows:

• It assumes 0 units of the other bundle were sold inside of the bundle sales (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and VP were selling around 5,000 units/wk when bundles began)
• It assumes 0 bundles were tracked as sold by VGC after February 22nd.

In both cases, I think it's plausible that both cancel eachother out. If anything, it should mean more units of Forza Motorsports were sold, since that'd mean around 10k units/wk were sold of the other software titles, and inflated LTD titles of comparibles. But for the sake of this argument, I'm not including them.

Did you just compare GT5 to LBP? Cute characters do not equal a casual game, the casual player will not want to make levels or spend the time doing it. Really though, do not compared a new IP to one of the biggest franchises in the gaming industry.

We will see who is right but you are one substantial guess which is the price remaining at $400, if the price of the PS3 drops to $300 during christmas 09 what sales do you see then for the game? I see a price drop in EU and most definitely Japan before GT5 releases. Japan because FFXIII will most probably be out by then and EU because this is GT.

Given the fact that it'd still be more expensive than most of Gran Turismo 3's sales were made under, it'll do better - maybe an extra 1.0-1.5m copies if the price was $300 before GT5 launched in at least 2 of the 3 major territories.

Also, maybe I'm not understanding the 'casual' side of GT4, but it launched with 2.5 million units in it's first week, and sold 50% of it's lifetime sales in 4 weeks. I really don't think that's 'casual'.