No offense, but the whole, "Brawl will sell more in the long term" is a bunch of crap. No matter how well the Wii sells, Brawl can't even begin to touch Halo's strength.

Halo sells somewhat well in Japan, and Smash Bros has never been amazingly strong in Japan, although it does sell quite well, and manages to have long legs.

Super Mario Galaxy, maybe. Brawl? No chance.

cebrian said: Brawl is going to be HUGE And its coming during the holidays... First week vs First week, would be close. (in America) if it does come out in europe this year brawl will have a huge first week too. I dont really know the date of Halo3 in europe... But in america August is not so hot (Halo is... but the date will help brawl past it). Obviously by the time brawl hits, Halo will have sold a lot (3 months headstart) and it will take some time to Brawl to catch on, but my prediction is 2008 holidays.

You really think that first week sales of both games are going to be close in the U.S.?  Sorry but that just seems to be pretty hard to believe.

MontanaHatchet said: No offense, but the whole, "Brawl will sell more in the long term" is a bunch of crap. No matter how well the Wii sells, Brawl can't even begin to touch Halo's strength. Halo sells somewhat well in Japan, and Smash Bros has never been amazingly strong in Japan, although it does sell quite well, and manages to have long legs. Super Mario Galaxy, maybe. Brawl? No chance.

Super Smash Bros. was the Gamecube's best selling game (Wikipedia) and Halo was the Xbox's best selling game. They both sold similar amounts, and Xbox had a slight advantage in hardware sales. Overall, the Wii has an ever increasing sales advantage over Xbox 360, and assuming these games will get sales proportional to their predecessors Brawl should beat Halo 3 in the long run by a small amount. Halo will win in the short term though, due to hype. Smash Bros. must be strong in Japan: the original was meant to be Japan-only but its success allowed Nintendo to release it in NA and PAL too.

RolStoppable said: naznatips said: I'm with the majority here, Halo 3 initially, Brawl in the long run. I'd even go so far as to say in lifetime sales all of these Wii games will outsell Halo 3: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Super Mario Galaxy Mario Kart Wii Woah there, you are really taking a big risk by saying these three games will outsell Halo 3. If you just think about it for a few seconds, you will realize that the chances of these games to outsell Halo 3 are realistically only about 99.99 %. @MontanaHatchet Smash Bros. is incredibly strong in Japan, both games had attach rates of about 35 % on both, N64 and GC. Melee was also the only million seller the GC had in Japan.

I really have to question the people who're making outrageous claims because of the Wii's success.  Halo 2 outsold the best selling Brawl game (so far) by almost 2 million of copies, the Halo series has shown that it has longer legs than the Brawl series, and at least some of the Wii's success (I say a lot actually) can be attributed to Wii Sports, a casual game in which I can't see a large part of it's audience attracted to Brawl.  Yet the people here are making predictions that go against everything we know about the previous games in both series.  I think the Wii's success is going to some peoples' heads.

Game_boy said: MontanaHatchet said: No offense, but the whole, "Brawl will sell more in the long term" is a bunch of crap. No matter how well the Wii sells, Brawl can't even begin to touch Halo's strength. Halo sells somewhat well in Japan, and Smash Bros has never been amazingly strong in Japan, although it does sell quite well, and manages to have long legs. Super Mario Galaxy, maybe. Brawl? No chance. Super Smash Bros. was the Gamecube's best selling game (Wikipedia) and Halo was the Xbox's best selling game. They both sold similar amounts, and Xbox had a slight advantage in hardware sales. Overall, the Wii has an ever increasing sales advantage over Xbox 360, and assuming these games will get sales proportional to their predecessors Brawl should beat Halo 3 in the long run by a small amount. Halo will win in the short term though, due to hype. Smash Bros. must be strong in Japan: the original was meant to be Japan-only but its success allowed Nintendo to release it in NA and PAL too.

Take a look in the charts to see which game has the longer legs (I know Halo 2 has been a staple of the charts since it first came out).  Also you can't just looked at the Wii's installed base and make some kind of calculation compared to the Gamecube's because the audiences for both systems are not the exact same.  There are people buying Wiis that were never gamers before but picked one up because of Wii Sports, I can't see many of those kinds of people having bought Gamecubes.  Anyways what I'm trying to say is that the Wii's audience is much more diverse than the Gamecube's so chances are a game in some hardcore genre will very likely not have the same attachement rate on the Wii that they would have on the Gamecube.

Legend11 said: Game_boy said: MontanaHatchet said: No offense, but the whole, "Brawl will sell more in the long term" is a bunch of crap. No matter how well the Wii sells, Brawl can't even begin to touch Halo's strength. Halo sells somewhat well in Japan, and Smash Bros has never been amazingly strong in Japan, although it does sell quite well, and manages to have long legs. Super Mario Galaxy, maybe. Brawl? No chance. Super Smash Bros. was the Gamecube's best selling game (Wikipedia) and Halo was the Xbox's best selling game. They both sold similar amounts, and Xbox had a slight advantage in hardware sales. Overall, the Wii has an ever increasing sales advantage over Xbox 360, and assuming these games will get sales proportional to their predecessors Brawl should beat Halo 3 in the long run by a small amount. Halo will win in the short term though, due to hype. Smash Bros. must be strong in Japan: the original was meant to be Japan-only but its success allowed Nintendo to release it in NA and PAL too. Take a look in the charts to see which game has the longer legs (I know Halo 2 has been a staple of the charts since it first came out). Also you can't just looked at the Wii's installed base and make some kind of calculation compared to the Gamecube's because the audiences for both systems are not the exact same. There are people buying Wiis that were never gamers before but picked one up because of Wii Sports, I can't see many of those kinds of people having bought Gamecubes. Anyways what I'm trying to say is that the Wii's audience is much more diverse than the Gamecube's so chances are a game in some hardcore genre will very likely not have the same attachement rate on the Wii that they would have on the Gamecube.

 Thank you for saying what I was too lazy to say. Nice job.

90% of 360 users are going to buy Halo3, don't you think? It's "the Xbox game". And sales will remain strong throughout the generation.

On the other hand, Melee was the bestselling GameCube game last generation, and Wii is set to outsell the GC by far, so it might be a head to head race.

I say, launch: Halo3 >> SSBB
Long run: Draw.

i will be buying both. BUT halo three is a much better game and value. i will play halo 3 online a multitude of hours (ala rainbow 6) i will play brawl a couple of times with my kids. I think eventually games will come with more variety of price points. I think halo 3 would sell at 80 dollars where brawl would sell best at 30-40 dollars.

MontanaHatchet said: No offense, but the whole, "Brawl will sell more in the long term" is a bunch of crap. No matter how well the Wii sells, Brawl can't even begin to touch Halo's strength. Halo sells somewhat well in Japan, and Smash Bros has never been amazingly strong in Japan, although it does sell quite well, and manages to have long legs. Super Mario Galaxy, maybe. Brawl? No chance.

Halo's strength? Well, let's take a look at that shall we. First, I'll paste the numbers for some quick reference:

Name	Console	Publisher	Japan	America	Others	Total
	Super Smash Bros Melee	Nintendo	1.44	4.06	1.08	6.58
Totals (1 matches)	1.4	4.1	1.1	6.6

Name	Console	Publisher	Japan	America	Others	Total
	Halo 2	Microsoft	0.11	6.49	1.67	8.27
	Halo	Microsoft	0.10	4.91	1.42	6.43
Totals (2 matches)	0.2	11.4	3.1	14.7

 

Super Smash Bros Melee outsold Halo.

You said Halo sells somewhat well in Japan, and Smash Bros. has never been amazingly strong in Japan, but that's just freaking ridiculous. 110,000 units is not somewhat well, it's complete shit. 1.44 million units is amazingly well. Lets look at some other games that have sold less than that in Japan:

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 sold 1.16 and 1.24 million respectively.
Metal Gear Solid 3 sold .86 million in Japan.
Everybody's Golf 3 sold 1.39 million in Japan.

All of these examples were on a system with more than 5 times the userbase of the Gamecube in Japan. There were only 4.02 million Gamecubes sold in Japan in it's lifetime. That's a 35% lifetime regional attach rate, which is nothing short of incredible. It's ridiculous to not say that's amazingly strong.

 

Now lets move on to the total sales. Of course there is the looming beast of Halo 2, which managed to outsell Super Smash Bros. Melee by 1.69 million units. This sounds like a lot, but lets break it down a bit more:

Super Smash Bros. Melee was released on the Gamecube as a launch title. This means that all of it's sales were based off pretty much nothing but its legs. It powered it's way to the end of the Gamecube's life with strong legs.

Halo 2 was released on the Xbox on November 9th, 2004. Prior to it's release, the Xbox had sold 17.34 million consoles according to the latest fiscal reports (filed in September). So, with 17.34 million consoles, Halo 2 was able to pull off 2.5 million units sold in it's first week in America. In the next 3 weeks Halo sold 735,000 followed by 377,000 followed by 293,000 units. Within it's first month on the market, Halo 2 had sold more than half of it's total lifetime sales, again on a console with 17.5 million units already out there when it launched.

The Gamecube sold 21.59 million copies worldwide in it's life. The Xbox sold 24.76 million copies in it's life. This gives Super Smash Bros. Melee an attach rate of 30.5% and Halo 2 an attach rate of 33.4%. Not a whole lot of difference when you look at it like that is there? Oh, and remember, we are talking about a launch title vs a game that was launched when the Xbox had already sold 75% of it's lifetime sales.

In review, you are saying there is no chance of Brawl surpassing Halo 3, when Melee already outsold Halo (a fellow launch title), and barely did worse than Halo 2 in lifetime attach rate, when Halo 2 was released 3/4 of the way through the Xbox's very short life. To add to that, Halo 3 is being released on the 360 when it has only sold 11 million units worldwide, wheras Brawl is going to be released on the Wii (if sales remain the way they are) when the Wii has sold 14 million units worldwide. The gap between the systems in sales will continue to widen throughout their lifespans as well. Considering that Smash Bros. is a series with huge legs, this can only benefit it, and can only hurt Halo, a very top-heavy game.

ripper said: i will be buying both. BUT halo three is a much better game and value. i will play halo 3 online a multitude of hours (ala rainbow 6) i will play brawl a couple of times with my kids. I think eventually games will come with more variety of price points. I think halo 3 would sell at 80 dollars where brawl would sell best at 30-40 dollars.

and you obviously know nothing at all about Brawl or it's features.  Oh well, ignorance is bliss.