ioi said:
@letsdance
I'm not arguing with you on this - I'm telling you that LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Motorstorm 2, Heavenly Sword, Lair etc etc did not live up to expectations in terms of SALES. Some didn't review that well either but even those that did could not put up huge sales.
Look at the (incomplete) list of PS2 sales on this site - you have to go a long way down to get to 2.5 - 3 million - those aren't particularly impressive sales, especially when you are talking about the kind of budgets that these games have. A big, well-budgeted, well-marketed, well-reviewed exclusive should be hitting 4-5m really.
And 360 is just as guilty as I've been saying (and Wii too - we all know about Conduit, Madworld etc). A lot of games this gen just haven't sold anywhere near as well as they should have or how people expected them to - Bioshock, Mass Effect and many others fit into that same category. As someone else said above, this gen seems to have far more seperation between the "superhits" (Halo, GTA, WiiFit, Mario Kart, COD etc) and everything else - there just aren't that many games hitting 4-8m for some reason.
I'm not attacking PS3, just commenting on trends we are seeing this gen. Whether you want to agree or not, those games I have listed have failed to meet expectations. Uncharted 2 could have done 1.5m week one (more on the level of MGS4) and could have hit 4-5m in total but that's not going to happen, which is suprising and disappointing given the hype and review scores the game has been given. That's all I'm saying...
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If you look at the PS2, not that many games actually broke 5 million. You had GTA, GT, Final Fantasy, some of the NFS games, and a couple of others. NFS, GT and FF were all massive franchises at the time, and GTA had really struck a chord amongst more casual gamers. As you move down the best sellers list, you see sports games, and some less popular, but still famous franchises, such as Metal Gear Solid. It's when you approach the 3-3.5 million range that you see a lot of games.
Looking at this gen, it's the games with casual appeal that really sell: GTA, CoD, Wii Fit, Halo. The PS2's main games of this type were GTA, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo (and Need for Speed, but that's a dead franchise now). GTA is multiplat but still sold extremely well, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo have yet to release.
The reason games flop relative to expectations is because expectations are too high, pure and simple. If people realised that most games popular on the internet are only going to manage 2-3 million sales, we wouldn't see that so much.
I won't pretend I'm above this. I was sure KZ2 could cross 4 million, and I thought LBP could see 5 million. But I like to think I'm more level-headed now. I expect 3.5-4 million for Uncharted 2, and it should be able to manage those sales.
(Former) Lead Moderator
