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Forums - Sales - The Damning Truth: The percentage of LTD sales sold in the first week

puffy on 20 April 2009
Gnizmo said:
WereKitten said:
I appreciate the effort put into this data-gathering, but I think it's way too coarse to make it useful in predictive terms.
The obvious problem with categorizing the data by console is that the three platforms have very different library compositions, especially the Wii vs the PS3/360.
As such, trying to predict anything about the long-term sales of a game based on its initial sales on a given platform will be totally unreliable unless the game is homogeneous in genre and target audience with the majority of the console library.
An analysis with real predictive power should try to model the sales of games in a parametric way and gather average parameters for the various genres/contexts.

 Obviously this is a work in progress. The big problem with expanding the info is trying to come up with a solid definition for the different categories of the game. Based on my not quite arbitrary definition of casual and core you still have significant differences between what is needed to sell a million on the respective consoles.

Gnizmo is doing an excellent job trying to solve this problem right now. It's difficult but it's getting there.. The first numbers we have so far point to Wii core games needing a higher start but it's still a fair amount lower than the PS3/360 first week sales. I'm sure Gnizmo will update the thread once he has completed his research. It's just very difficult to work out the differences and where to draw the line I guess.. 

We'll do our best and of course we'll keep people posted once a more solid understanding of sales has been found. I'll also be tracking some noteworthy titles in the coming months and seeing if they follow the pattern we have so far. 



 

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MaxwellGT2000 on 20 April 2009
puffy said:
Oyvoyvoyv said:
puffy said:
MaxwellGT2000 said:
Amazing work man, really haven't seen such solidly built info put into a thread in a while.

It looks to be like this PS3 and 360 can get you higher sales if it's a hit right off the bat, but if it doesn't make a nice splash it'll flop really hard, couple that with costs and you might be out millions on top of millions.

Wii can have mild openers and sell a solid amount, but may never reach as high, but you're less likely to have a flop, and if you do it's not as dangerous.

So it's like pick your poison you can either be amazing or die on PS360 or just be solid on the Wii with no really wow numbers but it'll be work work horse keeping steady.

These are really good points.. I'm wondering also.. is it possible to use the statistics to perhaps say if a Wii title sells 1 Million in its first week, it's safe to say it'll sell around 10 million copies give or take 10%? Could you also say that a 360 title that launches with sales of 1 Million should get to sales of 5 Million give or take 10%? I'd like to look deeper into solving that issue.. Then see where it goes wrong, such as with front loaded sequels and find multipliers for them.

So it's possible that if Wii number are small they can still end up with a good result but if they are very large.. You could end up with mammoth sales, not saying that's true but it'd be interesting to look into

 

I started writing here about why that wouldn't work with large openings, as they don't follow the same pattern. Surprisingly, only a few titles actually broke the pattern by a large amount.

So I guess this could work.

Maybe +/- 20% would be better though.

 

There are a few Wii titles that completely break the Wii pattern, and rather join the more Ps360-esque ones. Like Brawl, which should end at ~ 20-25% in first week.

 

 

 

I also think people should just ignore Cueil's last post, as that discussion may very well derail the thread completely (which would be a shame, considering how incredibly interesting it is). Just leave it at that it's misinformed, and don't quote him.

 

I agree please don't talk about third party budget vs. rewards per platform because we'l just get into a war over how Wii games being cheaper/more expensive/riskier/whatever lol

 

I can explain Brawls results quite easily: It's a massively hyped sequel that had very front loaded sales. Funny that the front loading is similar to the normal sales of PS3/360 games though..

 

But Smash continues to sell well, much like it did on gamecube, Melee never went below 35k sales last gen and brawl is on the same track so it's not so front loaded...



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Oyvoyvoyv on 20 April 2009
MaxwellGT2000 said:
puffy said:
Oyvoyvoyv said:
puffy said:
MaxwellGT2000 said:
Amazing work man, really haven't seen such solidly built info put into a thread in a while.

It looks to be like this PS3 and 360 can get you higher sales if it's a hit right off the bat, but if it doesn't make a nice splash it'll flop really hard, couple that with costs and you might be out millions on top of millions.

Wii can have mild openers and sell a solid amount, but may never reach as high, but you're less likely to have a flop, and if you do it's not as dangerous.

So it's like pick your poison you can either be amazing or die on PS360 or just be solid on the Wii with no really wow numbers but it'll be work work horse keeping steady.

These are really good points.. I'm wondering also.. is it possible to use the statistics to perhaps say if a Wii title sells 1 Million in its first week, it's safe to say it'll sell around 10 million copies give or take 10%? Could you also say that a 360 title that launches with sales of 1 Million should get to sales of 5 Million give or take 10%? I'd like to look deeper into solving that issue.. Then see where it goes wrong, such as with front loaded sequels and find multipliers for them.

So it's possible that if Wii number are small they can still end up with a good result but if they are very large.. You could end up with mammoth sales, not saying that's true but it'd be interesting to look into

 

I started writing here about why that wouldn't work with large openings, as they don't follow the same pattern. Surprisingly, only a few titles actually broke the pattern by a large amount.

So I guess this could work.

Maybe +/- 20% would be better though.

 

There are a few Wii titles that completely break the Wii pattern, and rather join the more Ps360-esque ones. Like Brawl, which should end at ~ 20-25% in first week.

 

 

 

I also think people should just ignore Cueil's last post, as that discussion may very well derail the thread completely (which would be a shame, considering how incredibly interesting it is). Just leave it at that it's misinformed, and don't quote him.

 

I agree please don't talk about third party budget vs. rewards per platform because we'l just get into a war over how Wii games being cheaper/more expensive/riskier/whatever lol

 

I can explain Brawls results quite easily: It's a massively hyped sequel that had very front loaded sales. Funny that the front loading is similar to the normal sales of PS3/360 games though..

 

But Smash continues to sell well, much like it did on gamecube, Melee never went below 35k sales last gen and brawl is on the same track so it's not so front loaded...

How much do you expect Brawl to sell? I believe it will make 11-12M.

That's ~ 24% sold in the first week, which is the average on Ps360.

It still sells a lot, but it started with an even bigger lot.

 



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Oyvoyvoyv on 20 April 2009
MaxwellGT2000 said:
puffy said:
Oyvoyvoyv said:
puffy said:
MaxwellGT2000 said:
Amazing work man, really haven't seen such solidly built info put into a thread in a while.

It looks to be like this PS3 and 360 can get you higher sales if it's a hit right off the bat, but if it doesn't make a nice splash it'll flop really hard, couple that with costs and you might be out millions on top of millions.

Wii can have mild openers and sell a solid amount, but may never reach as high, but you're less likely to have a flop, and if you do it's not as dangerous.

So it's like pick your poison you can either be amazing or die on PS360 or just be solid on the Wii with no really wow numbers but it'll be work work horse keeping steady.

These are really good points.. I'm wondering also.. is it possible to use the statistics to perhaps say if a Wii title sells 1 Million in its first week, it's safe to say it'll sell around 10 million copies give or take 10%? Could you also say that a 360 title that launches with sales of 1 Million should get to sales of 5 Million give or take 10%? I'd like to look deeper into solving that issue.. Then see where it goes wrong, such as with front loaded sequels and find multipliers for them.

So it's possible that if Wii number are small they can still end up with a good result but if they are very large.. You could end up with mammoth sales, not saying that's true but it'd be interesting to look into

 

I started writing here about why that wouldn't work with large openings, as they don't follow the same pattern. Surprisingly, only a few titles actually broke the pattern by a large amount.

So I guess this could work.

Maybe +/- 20% would be better though.

 

There are a few Wii titles that completely break the Wii pattern, and rather join the more Ps360-esque ones. Like Brawl, which should end at ~ 20-25% in first week.

 

 

 

I also think people should just ignore Cueil's last post, as that discussion may very well derail the thread completely (which would be a shame, considering how incredibly interesting it is). Just leave it at that it's misinformed, and don't quote him.

 

I agree please don't talk about third party budget vs. rewards per platform because we'l just get into a war over how Wii games being cheaper/more expensive/riskier/whatever lol

 

I can explain Brawls results quite easily: It's a massively hyped sequel that had very front loaded sales. Funny that the front loading is similar to the normal sales of PS3/360 games though..

 

But Smash continues to sell well, much like it did on gamecube, Melee never went below 35k sales last gen and brawl is on the same track so it's not so front loaded...

How much do you expect Brawl to sell? I believe it will make 11-12M.

That's ~ 24% sold in the first week, which is the average on Ps360.

It still sells a lot, but it started with an even bigger lot.

 



http://www.vgchartz.com/games/userreviewdisp.php?id=261

That is VGChartz LONGEST review. And it's NOT Cute Kitten DS

Kantor on 20 April 2009
Munkeh111 said:
Interesting, but of course it varies greatly from game to game. Most shooters tend to have much smaller legs, with more casual games having longer legs. So for most shooters you will probably need closer to 300k to reach 1m.

Of course there is no concrete pattern, but very good research nonetheless

I was about to say the opposite. CoD4, Halo 3 and Gears have all sold well for over a year now, same with Gears 2, Left 4 Dead, and to a certain extent, Resistance 2.

Killzone 2's legs remain to be seen.

And also, thanks for putting in so much work, OP. So, on average, a game on PS3 will sell roughly a quarter of its LT sales on opening week.

Next job: Genre by genre

Lol, hopefully someone can do that at some point. I'll see how hard it is...

EDIT: Slight problem in this method. These games are still selling. So these aren't Life to Death sales, they're Life to Date sales. Which, unfortunately, makes them quite inaccurate. For example, Killzone 2 is currently at around 1.4 million units sold. It's not going to stop there, or anywhere near there. It'll cross 3 million with ease, and could hit 4 million. So you can't say that it sold half of its LT sales in its opening week, because it won't, it'll sell around 18%.



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puffy on 20 April 2009

Yeah that had occured to me however all consoles have games in that position so it should even out fairly



 

dib8rman on 20 April 2009

You should probably also exclude the Lego Indiana Jones (360).

As well as subtract roughly 2.8~3.4 million from Motor Storm.



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kylohk on 20 April 2009

Crawl to a million... that's what they say.

Secret Rings is a prime example. I thought it was a joke seeing that game in the top 10 chart in the GAME shops here, but in the end it was not!



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Samus Aran on 20 April 2009

Don't remove wii play and wii sports. Wii sports is not bundled in Japan AND xbox360 and ps3 also come in bundles and most people I know buy those bundles...



dib8rman on 20 April 2009

Samus Aran, Wii Sports has a standalone price tag incorporated into the cost of a Wii, so regardless of Japan it should be added because it isn't Free.

That's why by the logic used in the OP for that exclusion I was saying games like Motor Storm and Metal Gear 4 should see a reasonable deduction.



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