Those are some pretty significant differences

Woah, the differences are huge!

The textures are way better...and a lot shinier.

@Bagaren

That was due to there being MUCH more enemies and they were also eager to stay alive, so they use everything they had against you. Now in NGS2, it's just like the enemies are less desperate in all cases. A delimbed enemy behaved differently in NGII. They really did seem to be looking to take you out with them when they were missing an arm or leg. On lower difficulties, this is not as pronounced, but once you get to Mentor, this becomes so much more apparent.

With NGII for 360, the original Team Ninja really did give two difficulties to the less hardcore gamers and the other two to the loyal hardcore fans who love the series for that reason. I thought NGII did a lot of things right. It fixed a lot of the issues with the first 3-D Ninja Gaiden game. That game did not know whether it was a Zelda/Tomb Raider style dungeon crawler or a badass action game with intense and amazing combat. NGII went for the latter and succeeded.

NGS2 feels like it's at a halfway point between 1 and 2 -- kinda like 1.5. Anyone who preferred the speed, larger scope of the battles, or brutally visceral nature of the original NGII will not be getting the same kind of experience with the PS3 Sigma 2 port. But the latter offers its own experience that people who would never go near an Xbox might find worthwhile.

@Yakuzaice:

I was asking for NA and UK numbers for comparison.  NGS2's 27k on Day 1 in Japan, where they just had a price drop, isn't exactly noteworthy.  Something like Tales of Vesperia's Day 1 numbers (147k), or even half that would be another story.  At this rate NGS2 will probably sell less than 100k in its home country lifetime. That is a territory where PS3 is MUCH more popular than any MS brand product. It's also supposedly the reason they butchered the gore effects and put in sixaxis breast controls.  I'm just being honest.  I prefer the PS3 as a console this gen for the most part, so save the nonsense.

So all in all, that leaves NA and the UK for them to try to make up over 900k sales.  Just wondering if they're off to a good start with Uncharted 2 and Co. on the holiday horizon. 

Here is a side by side comparison of both demos of these two games. Even though it's not HD footage, this gives a better representation of how comparable they are, since most screen shots are easily doctored up or tampered with to look better or worse either way. The NGII screens circulating from Gameswire.net are obviously captured from very low quality sources or console settings.

(note: fanboy comments from both sides in the comments section) See vid below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg9a2Ub_JdU

Yeah, but you have to be realistic about sales expectations in different territories.  This version has had the best start for any entry in the franchise for 15+ years.  (can't find any data for the NES games.  I'd assume they did better, but you never know)  Perhaps if they had revived the franchise on the PS2 rather than the Xbox they might have been able to get it to DMC levels. 

Tales had multiple 500k+ games last generation, so there was already a large existing fanbase waiting to be tapped.  You can't reasonably expect 100k+ people to suddenly start buying Ninja Gaiden when they haven't before.  It didn't happen on the DS, and it certainly wasn't going to happen on a platform that already had one NG game.

So why bother changing the game's content so much for an age rating issue in a territory where NG does not sell?  Futhermore, based on what you're saying, whey even release a port to the PS3 at all if their expectations are that low?

We're basically back to where we started.  Which is why I want to know how NGS2 is doing in NA and EU territories, where the franchise sells the majority of its units.

Told ya. Microsoft got screwed big time. They shouldn't help these Japanese devs finance shit. They should just focus on first party.

There is a drastic difference between selling a PS3 game and a 360 game in Japan. This game should sell much more than you think in Japan. Sigma 2 wasn't buchered, it was refined and turned into a totally new and superior experience. Microsoft got the clunky, bloody impossible version and the PS3 got the sleek, beauitful, magical and dark version (which suits me more....gore is cool, but doesn't suit this  type of game really.). The reason this game didn't sell well on the 360 is because its the 360 and it was  horribly marketed and well the only thing that will give at least decent numbers in Japan are JRPG's (which don't make enough anyway on the 360 in Japan). It has been marketed like crazy in Japan and the PS3 numbers are growing at great rate  in Japan (Duh its a Japanese system). I expect a lot of top Japanese titles to sell very well now with the Slim version of the 360 at $299 and their conversion to the  yen.

Wow, there's a drastic change. I wonder why the IGN review made it out to be as if it was the same game? Especially the graphics, were improved in comparison to the Xbox version. Was it the Uncharted effec?t (The Game is so stuning, it makes others look bad)