Probably my most-anticipated week with Blue Dragon, and all kinds of holdovers such as Bioshock, Two Worlds, and so on. Tons of new releases, and newer games...

Japanese charts will be up shortly. But lets discuss the current week sales and future outlooks.

My take:

 #1 Bioshock's drop was as-expected. I predicted it'd have a big drop (60%) from last week's thread which happened. Is this tell-tale of what will happen to Bioshock's legs? Doubtful. It had alot of hardcore hype for the first week. Expect smaller drops (sub 50%) from now on.

#2 Tiger Woods 2008 did remarkably well. EA Sports must be happy that the X360 is basically destroying the competition for sports games, both overall, and by each and every game. Even though TW 2008 for Wii might wind up beating it sometime in the future, 127k is still great.

#3 Madden 2008 had a great drop compared to last week's huge drop. At a *mere* sub-40% drop, it's well on it's way to hitting the 2m mark. Remember: last December, Madden 2007 sold almost 300,000 copies. This year, M08 should sell around 350,000 or more in December. 2m could even be possible before January.

#4 Blue Dragon had a good start, if you expected a meager start like I did. At 108k, this is about 20,000 units more than the Japanese debut. I expect good legs. Also, I attribute the great increase in hardware due to Blue Dragon primarily. I think those bodes well for the X360.

#5 Two Worlds had a pretty bad hold. TW was released on a Friday, and only had 2-3 days to garner sales via the charts. This is a rather large drop, and pretty telltale of the bad reviews the game has got. I think Two Worlds is at a crossroads: If it doesn't get the online multiplayer fixed perfectly (the game's major benefit), the game will plummet and die real quickly around 400k. However, if they fixed it, sales could end up pulling an RSV and do real well. Two Worlds is currently dominating the MGC RPG charts above Oblivion and Blue Dragon by a decent margin (despite not being out in Europe). Hopefully they patch the game, as a good patched Two Worlds would be a phenominal game.

 Outside of the top 5, alot of notable newbies. Dynasty Warriors mimiced AC4s numbers (and probably will wind up @ 100k), MotoGP did last year's numbers, and Stuntman did a meager number. Hopefully Stuntman and MotoGP have good legs. GH2 continues to track good, and RSV gets a slight boost.

Overall, the numbers were very good. The X360 almost did another 1m+ week. Next week should be pretty good with Stranglehold. I'd expect good holds overall, and Software in the 800k area. Most interesting will be the drops of the top-5 games, and if Stronghold doesn't bomb.

Even I, a non Xbox fan, have been impressed with the recent software explosion on the Xbox. And sales have followed, as should be the case. The one thing I will take issue with is the Bioshock estimate of 1,500,00+ lifetime. I think any holdover hype it recieves will be swallowed by the all mighty Halo coming to town. I think alternate genre games like Madden and Blue Dragon will be grabbed as a second game when people buy a system for Halo. Plus I think the availablity on the PC will hurt the legs. Too me it would not normally be too soon for software to carry into the holidays, but this year is different. Despite being a great game there is so much going on for the 360 this season that I am predicting close to 1,000,000 lifetime for bioshock.

Also Tiger Woods did great but it had a very simlar install rate on all 3 systems so I predict that EA will stay buddy buddy with MS just as long as they lead in America.

Thanks as always mrstickball. I love these sum-ups. I think your right about Blue Dragon being the system-mover this week. I actually think it will be again next week. As word gets out amongst the JRPG community that its actually a really good game, people will start picking it up or buying a core console for it. Western reviewers haven't done it justice based on the user reviews so far, though admittedly i haven't played it yet (loved the demo though).

Great post mrstickball, it truly shows how great the 360 and the massive fan support the system has. Lets just hope the rest of the games can still compete when Halo3 hits.

 I certainly expect other games to take a back seat for a little while, but while people might buy a console because of one game they dont buy a console to play one game.  I expect most people who purchase a new 360 will purchase another game on the day or over the next few weeks.  And we've all seen how well the 360 base rallies together for big games, i wouldnt expect other big or medium games to bomb.

Every game will take a back seat to Halo3, but in the end, it's not a bad thing.

Gears of War was a very similar setup. It was obviously the most hyped game, and curbstomped COD3 and RSV.

However, that didn't prevent COD3 and RSV from easily managing 1m+ over time. The fact is, regardless of what the hardware does, software will do better when you have an extra 200,000+ units in the US user chain. It's not like the 200k people (I estimate) that get a X360 + Halo aren't going to shrug buying other big titles, and smaller titles as well.

About my 1.5m estimate for Bioshock. I have Bioshock at 1.5 for a few reasons:

#1. With such an ungodly high reviewer and user rating, legs will wind up being better than normal in the end.

#2. Bioshock IS X360s 2nd biggest shooter right now (next to Halo3). So when the Halo boys get on board, I think sales for shooters will be split between H3, Bioshock, and COD4. Bioshock will remain in the top 200 for the rest of the year. If it does this, it'll pass 1.5m at some point. It's already at 550k, so it's 35% there.

Looking at other major X360 releases, on a per-week basis, no game has under a 2.3 multiplier for ANY weekly release on the X360. So a 2.3 multiplier for Bioshock (at worst) would put it at 938,400 units in the US alone. However, with the units being moved for Halo 3, and Christmas upcoming, I think it'll wind up with a 3.5. Remember, Gears of War has managed a near 6.0 multiplier despite it's massive debut....So 1.5m isn't too far off.

Also, I'd agree that TW08 had a similar install on next gen (and PS2 wasn't too great). Nevertheless, other EA Sports titles such as Madden, NCAA, and Fight Night have done vastly better on the X360. With that being the case, EA will still cosy up, because their blockbuster titles are still doing the best on X360. A platinum Fight Night 3 (which is still charting around 7k units a week, and well over 1m), a 1.6m Madden 07, and a 1.1m Madden 08 puts the X360 in the drivers seat for sports games.

I think Blue Dragon will do better then the normal drop off, because it is a JRPG and because it got some lower reviews that people are saying may be unfair.

Two Worlds just got the bad press to bring it down badly. I think SouthPeak should have delayed it to October 23rd and fixed the issues it has rather then releasing a game with glaring problems online. It would have also put the game alone as an RPG in October. But the past is past, and they have to live with and fix it.

I also expect Stuntman and Moto GP to have a better then normal drop off as people who opted for other AA and AAA titles the last few weeks will pick them up (Many people still in BioShock and Blue Dragon).

Next week Medal of Honor will show up as well... But, I don't expect it to do really well... As reviews are not raging people to buy it and the series has a bad rep from the last couple releases.

Looking forward a bit more, the 17th should be a solid week again with Canadians buying NHL games, Skate coming out, Kengo, and Fatal Intertia... I noticed America's Army got moved to late-October... Clearing the way for Halo 3 no doubt. Now there are no games that will take away from the Halo 3 launch on the 25th (CSI and more family genre stuff).

An interesting thing about Blue Dragon:

Blue Dragon is the US's largest JRPG of the year for first week. It's also close to actually besting every and any PS2 JRPG made this year. Not bad for a system that doesn't have the JRPG base the PS2 has, eh?

I think sales like that (with BD trumping PS2 JRPGs this year) that the X360s userbase is nothing like people assume. There are lots of FPS freaks, but there are lots of gamers that are RTS fans, JRPG people, and so on.

Incidentally, i just finished bioshock. A agree with most of Mrstickballs reasoning, but really i just hope this game reaches 1.5 million, because it just plain deserves too.