I wonder if the people writing these things feel clever or if they go to sleep feeling a little bit like assholes for intentionally deceiving shareholders and press while having plausible denial.

I really think the "overall increase in sales" should become a vgchartz meme... Including all the possible variations of course.

Dolla Dolla said:

 Bump. Really good. 

Oh, silly me!

The same way the NES / SNES are still "increasing" their overall sales - I bet they had great months as well?

;)

I have a serious & significant question now:

Sony is spending a HEAP on developing these "big" titles - 20m plus on some titles (no idea what HS costs). How will these sales figures impact what they are doing?

Can these titles be "long-term" titles, and drive sales for a year (or two) in the future? Can they use the tech from these titles as a basis for future titles - and release improved sequels or even more IPs?

Can they afford to stick with this route?

...

Out of LAIR, HS, Warhawk, Folklore - I would say Warhawk is closest to breaking even. It is also selling on PSN, so probably has raked in a lot more revenue than we know of.

Folklore has been a strong commercial failure - it has sold under 100k WW (?) to date. Even at $30US profit per unit - that makes $3m to cover development, marketing, production. I would estimate its costs at $12m-$15m?

HS has at least sold some units in the US, and will probably crack 500k WW. At $30US, this should reach $15m WW. This probably won't cover development and marketing (any figures anyway?), but may get close.

LAIR has been the worst, and for good reason Sony is not pushing the title internally. It may struggle to reach 300k WW. At $30US, that makes a paultry $10m revenue - for a title that reportedly cost more than $20m alone to develop.

...

A simple comparison is against MP8 (Mario Party on the Wii). It will have sold close to 3m units by the end of the year. Nintendo may be making $25US / unit (this may be a lot higher), reaping $80m US (+).

By constrast, the game probably cost around $5m-$6m to make, and maybe another $5m to advertise/market. That's enough profit to fund the development of all these big Sony titles - at once.

It may be too late for Sony - but is Ninty's strategy of cheaper/casual development the right one? Is it worth doing this to fill in the coffers, and THEN use some of this money to fund the riskier big-budget titles?

(sorry to all - this is sort of off-topic :P)

For only the 2nd time in it's lifetime the 360 has claimed the #1 position in north america monthly sales. Bravo! ;) a year or two from now its sure to do it again. Amazing the Wii was only 26k behind in second place. O_O and it's best month since last december.

I was wondering what made Sony decide to drop the 80 gig price "effective immediately". That was rather out of character as everything else has more or less been orchestrated to some degree. That just came out of left field. Obviously we now know why. They are a paying NPD customer and I'm sure they have had the date for a while now. Was the price drop an "oh Schnitzel" response?

Folklore and Warhawk were lower budgeted titles.. not sure About HS.

xbots are you retarded?
why wont xbots stop going on about lair - we know it was a disapointement, sony know it was a disapointement.
there are plenty of games worth playing, especially considering the ps3 only in its first year

if i had to buy a console for only a year - let's say it blows up on the 1st january 2008 (little in-joke there, xbots) - i would deffo go for the 360. Truth is, however, that i buy a console to last me AT LEAST 4-6 years with loads of games 2 look forward to.

3 mentions of 'xbot' in one post, most impressive. You're not a fanboy, are you?