There has been a lot of concern recently regarding the sales performance of PS3 exclusives. This is an attempt to provide some data to support or disprove those concerns. In an attempt to provide an apples to apples comparison, I chose to limit my data set to any console exclusive title that has released since 1/1/2008 at retail with a Metacritic of 80 or higher. I filtered out DLC and XBLA/PSN games because their sales are difficult to track and aren't relevant to the discussion. Although Tales of Vesperia and Ninja Gaiden 2 are releasing on the PS3, they are at this point in time still exclusive to the 360. There are two ways to view a software titles sales performance (overall unit sales, and the title's attach rate). I list the attach rate as a percentage defined as Sales/Total Console Sales.
Overall, 27 titles have been released as exclusives since 2008 with an 80+ metacritic (14 PS3 and 9 360). Of these exclusives the PS3 averaged a Metacritic score of 86% and the 360 averaged 84%. The complete list is in the table below(ordered by Unit Sales). Gears of War 2 outsold all titles with 4.95 million units sold. MGS4 had the best overall attach rate of 17.76%.
| Title | Metacritic | Platform | Sales | Attach Rate |
| Gears of War 2 | 93 | 360 | 4,950,000 | 16.03% |
| Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots | 94 | PS3 | 4,060,000 | 17.76% |
| Gran Turismo 5 Prologue | 80 | PS3 | 3,050,000 | 13.34% |
| Fable II | 89 | 360 | 2,870,000 | 9.30% |
| Left 4 Dead | 89 | 360 | 2,270,000 | 7.35% |
| LittleBigPlanet | 95 | PS3 | 2,250,000 | 9.84% |
| Killzone 2 | 91 | PS3 | 1,710,000 | 7.48% |
| Resistance 2 | 87 | PS3 | 1,570,000 | 6.87% |
| Halo Wars | 82 | 360 | 1,320,000 | 4.28% |
| Ninja Gaiden II | 81 | 360 | 940,000 | 3.05% |
| SingStar | 82 | PS3 | 850,000 | 3.72% |
| Buzz! Quiz TV | 80 | PS3 | 710,000 | 3.11% |
| Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds | 81 | PS3 | 700,000 | 3.06% |
| MotorStorm: Pacific Rift | 82 | PS3 | 660,000 | 2.89% |
| MLB 08: The Show | 85 | PS3 | 640,000 | 2.80% |
| Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts | 80 | 360 | 530,000 | 1.72% |
| inFAMOUS | 84 | PS3 | 520,000 | 2.27% |
| Valkyria Chronicles | 87 | PS3 | 500,000 | 2.19% |
| Naruto: The Broken Bond | 80 | 360 | 500,000 | 1.62% |
| Yakuza 3 | 83 | PS3 | 480,000 | 2.10% |
| MLB 09: The Show | 90 | PS3 | 460,000 | 2.01% |
| Tales of Vesperia | 80 | 360 | 320,000 | 1.04% |
| Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise | 82 | 360 | 290,000 | 0.94% |
In regards to the overall sales by platform, Sony sold 4.17 million more units than Microsoft, but MS's average per title was 257,302 higher. Sony sold it's exclusive titles at a higher attach rate of 5.67%.
| Platform | Total Unit Sales | # Titles | Average Sales | Attach Rate |
| 360 | 13,990,000 | 9 | 1,554,444 | 5.04% |
| PS3 | 18,160,000 | 14 | 1,297,143 | 5.67% |
| 257,302 |
Please post any data changes or mistakes and I will update this post. I realize that I limited my dataset and excluded some of the best selling titles this generation (Gears 1, Halo 3, MotorStorm, Forza, Resistance 1, Uncharted, etc.) I chose to filter out older titles to provide a better picture of the current market. I used a Metacritic of 80+ to remove the argument that the title didn't sell because of poor quality (Haze, Too Human).
(All data was compiled from Metacritic.com and VGChartz.com)
Thanks for the input, Jeff.
Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. " thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."
