Halo3 hyping fever is now in full-swing, with a 15% increase week over week. Also, we're in the post-NPD era now, and have seen a few games take a nosedive, which I will argue.

My notes:

#1 Bioshock is just......Ungodly. I was right in saying it'd drop quickly on week 2, but have strong legs. Selling almost 100k on week 4 + having a sub-20% drop is just insane. Expect this to be a beast, and stay in the top-50 for the rest of the year.

#2 and #3 had big, but expected drops. They'll continue to plummet until new owners snatch them up during Christmas.

#4. Skate (imo) bombed. The few people I know that bought it, loved it, and I figured it'd indicate good first week sellthrough, but it didn't. Nevertheless, it should sell well, and end up doing managable numbers.

#5. Madden continues to do great, despite such huge numbers. VGC casterated the numbers, but it's still managing great numbers, and 2m LTD should still happen.

Rest of the titles were expected. I will probably argue with ioi over Blue Dragon data. It should be a bit higher, due to the extra day VGC accounted for vs. NPD. ioi only counted US sales, for 3 days on NPD, versus the legitimate numbers of Canada + VGC's 4 day period. If thats the case, BD probably did 65k first week, and should be around 10-20% higher than the tepid 78k it's done in 3 weeks.

Also, Oblivion got a 300%+ boost from the GOTY edition. If it ever gets a price drop, it'll do insane numbers. Nothing like a 1 and 1/2 year old game coming back to chart.

Japanese Charts:

Notes:

The real #1 was Mousou Orochi. However, for some reason it's not there...I don't know if Famitsu never got the numbers, ioi failed to report them, or what. At any rate, MO should of sold ~3,000 units on the week.

#1. Oblivion continues to just be beastly for a western game. Very few games have had these kinds of legs in Japan (LCS for PSP might be the only other one to come to mind right now). Oblivion has now officially passed  ahead of #2 Dead or Alive 4, week over week, and still tracks 1k more per week than DOA4. I expect 100k, because I just don't know what will happen, but 100k is a safe bet. It could, however, hit 125k or so in the end, if Oblivion got strong boosts from AC6, and Halo3.

#2. Hitman does suprisingly well. Despite having an abysmal 6.5k start, it'll wind up with a 2x multiplier: a good effort for a Western game.

Outside of #1 and #2, there's nothing remotely interesting. Everything drops 18%. Big whoop.

Next week is Halo3. This should help X360 sales a bit. I would project hardware sales at 4,000, and it should move a bit of software too. IMO, a 30% increase in old games, all of them, should happen. Halo3 should also sell ~50k units first week, if my projections are right. First Day sales should wind up @ 30-35k.

I know mrstickball. Sales are awesome really I'm out of words to say!!!!

On Skate.
The demo was retarded and dumb. The controls were horrible when I compare Skate. and the new Tony Hawk Proving Ground demo.

And Blue Dragon sales should be up and I agree.

Good analysis, agree with all of that.

Some guys here loved the SKATE demo, but I have real doubts about it long term.

(typical EA strategy - a game does well, lets muscle into that genre and steal marketshare - I hope it bombs ;)

EDIT - still see Madden figures (across the board) to be significantly down on last year. 

shams -

I would say that the reason M08 sales are so down, is the lack of next-gen hardware to push higher sales.

Looking at Madden sales from last-gen, sales increased each year, as hardware sales increased. Madden 07 for X360 was just about the only one to break that trend.

So IMO, through the gen, as h/w increases, so will Madden sales.

 Just wanted to disgree with you regarding the skate demo. Basically you like the controls or don't and based on my experience and most of the reviews most do like it.  Doesn't mean it will sell well but I would say it is a very good game that is different from the competition.  Sort of reminds me of nfl2k vs Madden with .skate being nfl2k.  Here is hoping it does enough sells to warrant a future version as competition and variety is always welcome in my book.

The Bioshock numbers make my heart happy. It's always good to see new IPs become embraced by the public when they deserve it.

And I'm absolutely shocked to see how well Two Worlds has been doing. It's been getting middling reviews, but people keep buying it. The game was made on the relative cheap, so you have to believe that some other companies are looking at this and thinking they might want to get in on the Western RPG genre. With Bethesda wrapped up in Fallout 3, there's a lot of room for new properties to have a shot right now.

Yah, I'm so confused as to why Two Worlds is doing so damn well. Southpeak has to be very, very pleased.

i bought two worlds and i personally liked it. it might be a knockoff of oblivion and it might be cheap but its an adicting rpg for some odd reason. you can tell its a cheaply made game but for some reason its addicting. it also has online multiplayer which i think sells copies. And it also gets patches from southpeak so it gets better and better. you can tell its cheap from the voiceacting and other things but for some reason its addicting. it calms the rpg players down who are waiting for new huge games and gives them something to do

The nice thing is that none of those 10 are Microsoft games. All 3rd party. Good sign for the guys in Redmond.

Also, I think skate boarding games have reached their pinacle until someone really finds a way to innovate the genre. There are the fans out there, but it seems like the same style is getting released each year with very little differences. Tony Hawk struggled last year, I thought Skate opened well for EA. But, I expect Tony Hawk to struggle on its release later this year.

Two Worlds is literally defying all reviewers odds. I think gamers are over looking the bugs in the hopes that they will come out with a patch soon. If they don't deliver soon, it could tank. If they deliver it might actually spike up again.

looks good for 3rd parties.

btw, mr. stickball could do for PS3 and possibly Wii. These things are very helpful.