That brings up an interesting question - how much were Player's Choice games last gen?

I'm not sure but based on memory, I think that some player's choice titles were 19.99, and other's 29.99. I understand Nintendo's hesitancy to drop the price on the Wii console, but don't understand why they haven't implemented a player's choice for both Wii and DS, for older titles that aren't selling so well anymore. It would spark more life in the old titles, and add value to the system, because new purchasers could get great games for a cheap price.

From my understanding, Nintendo doesn't want to build the expectation of a price reduction into anything they produce ...

For games this tends to mean that they don't reduce the price until the game stops selling well enough for stores to keep the game in stock, so Nintendo reduces the price to being a budget priced game to encourage further sales. With many of their games regularly seeing thousands of sales every week for years after release there is limited motivation for Nintendo to reduce the price.

@ HappySqurriel

That's a good explanation. I understood the logic behind not wanting to do a price cut on consoles because it is only a short tern solution, and won't build long term demand. But with software, except advertising the game again long after release, there is no other way to increase demand except for price cuts. But if that is just to be consistent with the policy of no price reduction on anything it is more logical.

Game of the Day

(Highlighting a game to talk about the change in sales)

8/24

Call of Duty Franchise

 Description: Today's game of the day is actually multiple games, on two platforms.  With the anticipation of Modern Warfare 2 building as it is coming out soon, the Call of Duty franchise is now obvioussly one of the biggest franchises in gaming.  But that wasn't always the case, the games sold well, but not amzingly on the PS2 and Xbox.  So what was it that caused this franchise to go from big to huge this generation?  Also why is that the 360 version is now at the top of the biggest gainers list, and the PS3 version has only slightly improved over the PS2?  Let me know what you think =).

My Take: Call of Duty was a franchise that was slowly picking up steam, but with the release of Call of Duty 4, the franchises was launched into top tier franchise status. The momentum gained from that game allowed World at War to sell a lot better than all of the other games with a WWII setting.  What I think is interesting is why the game is selling so much better on the 360 than the PS3.  the PS2 versions of the game did better than the Xbox games, and despite the larger userbase the 360 has, games like Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Burnout, all of which were more succesful or only on PS2 games, sold about the same or better on the PS3 than on the 360. I really think the fact that Halo is on the 360 has been a big part of that, having a hughe exclusive FPS that is exclusive to your console attracted lots of FPS fans, and now games in the FPS genre are selling much better on 360.

Call of Duty is an interesting one. I agree with what you said about the increase in sales. I think the controversial and unique setting of Modern Warfare (plus it being a great game if you like fps) is what caused the huge increase in sales for the franchise.

As far as why the franchise has seen such a large increase in sales on the 360 and not so much on the PS3, I think your explanation is part of it. There really is just a shooter fanbase on the 360. Also however is the really low sells of COD 3 on the PS3. I think it and the Wii version both released later than the 360 version, which explains part of why the sales were so low. But still the Wii version of COD 3 almost doubled the PS3 version. That is really strange, considering how much better WAW did on PS3 than Wii.

@Lester, that is an interesting point about COD 3 PS3. It is understandable that the game sold much better on 360, but why did this version actually sell better on the Wii, than on the PS3 as well. Maybe had COD 4 been on the Wii, World at War would have sold closer to the PS3 version.

My theory on why COD 3 sold so poorly on the PS3 is because there is a large overlap in PS3/360 owners. So a delayed release on one of the platforms really hurts the sales on that platform. For example look how poorly Bioshock sold on the PS3 after it had already been released on the 360 for awhile. So with the simultaneous releases of the Call of Duty franchise after COD 3, the PS3 versions have been doing much better than they were. I know a lot of people disagree with that, because they don't think there is a reason to own both a PS3 and 360 since they share many of the same games.

 Daily Update Posted: Today just updated the game of the day, and reformatted a bit.  The poll about why people aren't commenting was still getting votes about the chart being too hard to follow, so I took out two unnescary columns on the right.  Also posted a description of how to read the chart, and linked the index to the posts each platform's chart is in (If anybody can tell me how I could just make the link move to the post in the thread, instead of viewing only that specific post please let me know).  Hopefully these changes makes it easier to follow.  Also, it seems that the little bit of discussion the Game of the Day started has died down instead of picking up steam like I hoped.  I'm going to keep doing updates until Sunday but if by then comments haven't picked up again, I will have to finally let this thread die.

Game of the Day

(Highlighting a game to talk about the change in sales)

8/25

Metroid Prime 3 Corruption

 Description: In honor of the recent release of Metroid Prime Trilogy; Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is today's Game of the Day. Metroid Prime 3 holds the dubious honor of being the only Nintendo first party Wii title in the chart to see a decrease in sales this gen. It's a relatively small decrease of ~14%, but still worth noting.  What is the reason for the decrease in sales?  Was it the slightly less praising reviews the game recieved, releasing in the slow summer sales period, or does the Wii user base not have as many "core" gamers as the Gamecube? Let me know what you think.

 My Take: I think a big part of the decrease, is the fact that Metroid Prime was bundled with the Gamecube for awhile.  We've talked about games like Forza 2, who look like they've really increased in popularity this gen because of being bundled.  Metroid Prime 3 suffers from the opposite.  Also, throw in the fact that Metroid Prime was the revival of a franchise, that would get fans curious to try to see how the new mechanics work, but didn't pick up the later games, and the sales of Metroid Prime would be a lot lower, and Metroid Prime 3 would probably be around even, or maybe have seen a slight increase in sales this gen.

It's too bad that the amount of comments hasn't picked up. I've enjoyed your format in this thread, and like looking at your daily updated. I will continue to do my part in commenting. The chart is easier to follow now, the current games being below the last gen games, just in a different color is a little awkward, but I'm not sure what I'd suggest to improve it.

For today's game of the day, I have to say it is a bit of a boring choice. I think you've summed up the small decrease in sales pretty well. It is all coming from the high sales of Metroid Prime, and those were due to bundles, and the newness of the game. The Prime series has continued to sell well, but Metroid is not one of Nintendo's top franchises (sales wise), and it is hard to imagine why Nintendo had Metroid Prime 2 be the only big game on the gamecube, during the holiday season. With how people are dissapointed in Nintendo's releases last Christmas (Wii Music, and Animal Crossing), both of those games have sold twice what Prime 2 sold. It will be interesting to see how Metroid:Other M sells.  I think it will do a little better, maybe breaking the 2 million mark.