Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

Pistolaero — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:55:11 GMT

"...maybe Retro Studios should catch the zeitgeist, pull a Bungie and free itself from Nintendo's clutches "unleash" its creativity as part of a "natural evolution" of its relationship with its Japanese owners." As I was playing MP3, I couldn't help but keep repeating a somewhat similar statement as yours above. It almost makes me want to say, Amen!

This thought didn't really hit me until I started gaming on the PS3 and 360. Seeing all of these gorgeous games made me realize that Retro has so much potential. Not to diminish the amazing work already done on all three MP titles, but man I'd love to see what Retro would be capable of on "next-gen" hardware. I can't even fathom what they would come up with next.

As to Retro being ignored by Nintendo, I remember Matt Cassamassamassamassina posted a blog back in August before MP3's release date voicing similar concerns. As a big N fan myself, I can't help but feel cheated as the software lineup for the Wii tends to lean towards the casual market. It's fine and all, but what about us? Are we to only have 1-2 titles a year? The more casual games I see inundate the Wii lineup, the more I feel Retro would be better off making games on the PS3 or 360.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

pyjamarama — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:53:37 GMT

I find it disappoint that access to games sales data will be made even more difficult, as in movies there is clearly a curiosity of a considerable segment of the population to what games come out on top each week. I think the industry should unite and release weekly data of games to the press, this could backfire in some occasion but overall i think it will provide more gains to the industry to have more press on the subject and it will help total sales numbers.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

jeffj — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:54:55 GMT

If Retro were to "pull a Bungie" their future games would still be for Nintendo systems, just like Bungie's future games are still primarily for the 360.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

joeboy101 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:55:03 GMT

Geoff is dreaming if he thinks pushing the Blu-Ray playback MORE will help Sony. That is exactly what is hurting them. A Blu-Ray component that shoots up the price of the console, putting it out of reach of many gamers. Look, it might be that the PS3 has the best hardware of any other game console, but television manufacturers only put market penetration at 30% and that seems quite optimistic. Neilsen is putting it at only 13%. 13! And even more striking is that 40% - 60% of those are not receiving HD content because consumers do not realize they need to order HD cable/satellite services. Blu-Ray is only a big seller if the public knows what it is, but considering its in a fight with HD-DVD right now, many A/V savvy customers will hold off until the one media is chosen. HDTV is simply not widespread yet, though it will be in the future. Problem is that Sony is getting hammered right now and the future could likely be too far off.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

SpaceShot — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:59:04 GMT

I think you both continue to miss the probability that Wii buyers aren't gamers. Now, on its face that sounds like a good thing, right? "Look at Nintendo... expanding the market."

The problem is, after Wii Sports and Wii Play, your average soccer mom is going to stop. There won't be anymore Wii game purchases... ever. The kids will bore of the machine soon enough and ask for more DS games (what kid in the world DOESN'T have a DS or at least a GBA?). The kids will beg to go to Johnny's house where they have a 360.

I've been to many store openings where Wiis were available, and the comment from the moms was always the same. Her two kids in two, she would say, "Okay, we'll get the Wii and Wii Play so you can have an extra remote." Other moms in line would dutifully inform each other that Wii Play came with an extra remote. The game was sold exclusively on the basis that you would have two remotes for your two kids.

Wii Play should be looked at as an accessory sale. To look at it as a game sale skews the numbers. MSFT could move some units of Viva Pinata if it included a wireless remote with it, could they not? It is purely an accessory purchase. Wii Play returns litter the Gamestops (many of whom are refusing to take it back at this point).

Bungie wanted to leave MSFT for simple reasons. Money and the chance to finally be done with Halo. No matter how great the partnership might have been (and when you see the level of integration Bungie pours into their titles with XBL and the Web, can you really say the relationship was acrimonious?), it is always better to be on your own. You keep a larger share of the pie, you get more creative control. MSFT probably very strongly advised Bungie not to close off the series here, and at some point you just have to say, "We've been doing Halo for ten years now. Can I do something else?"

Why would they walk away from the tight XBL and Web integration they have set the standard for? They have a legion of gamers who want that level of community. Will they release games on PC day and date? Maybe. That's a tougher call when you move millions of units in a month.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:39:39 GMT

@Pistolaero: I've yet to hear a good explanation of why Nintendo marketed Metroid Prime 3 the way that it did. I may meet with Perrin Kaplan later this week; if I do, I'll be sure to ask her.

@pyjamarama: The impression I got is that the folks at NPD believe that they're giving away too much info for free and that they need to cut back for a while. Personally, I'd rather see a lot more data out there. When the full NPD charts were being leaked, it was great to be able to track how various games were selling for months on end. But that data is worth a lot to publishers and analysts who pay a lot to receive it. Nevertheless, I believe that the NPD's decision is misguided, and I hope they reconsider.

@jeffj: If Retro were to pull a Bungie, they'd probably get a lot more respect from whichever company was publishing its games. That was the point I was making. The folks at Retro clearly poured their hearts and souls into Metroid Prime 3. It's too bad that the marketing campaign didn't reflect the intensity of their commitment.

@joeboy101: Geoff cited the Nielsen study that you mentioned. You're correct that Blu-Ray hasn't yet proven the shot in the arm that PS3 needs. Nevertheless, Blu-Ray playback is still a feature advantage for Sony Computer Entertainment--one that only becomes more valuable to consumers as the price of PS3 drops and HDTVs become more widely adopted. Also, the format itself is still of strategic importance to Sony Corp, which is why you won't see Blu-Ray removed from the PS3 anytime soon regardless of the cost of goods--in for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, looking at the success of "Transformers" on HD-DVD, using the Blu-Ray release of "Spider-Man" to help promote the PS3 is a no-brainer on Sony's part.

@SpaceShot: I don't think we "both continue to miss the probability that Wii buyers aren't gamers." In my analysis of The Mini-Game Problem, I cited "the ultra-casual gamer who only breaks out the Wii when friends come to visit." Geoff wrote about the success of Take-Two's Carnival Games and wondered "where is EA Sports' Mini-Golf Putting Game? Or EA's Dartboard?" I still believe that hardcore gamers are being underserved on the Wii, and it's in part because of the success of ultra-casual games like Wii Sports and Wii Play and the hold that they have on non-gamers.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

harrison25 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:43:18 GMT

I'm quite positive that there is a large market for people who want a powerful, 'nextgen' console, but who don't want to buy an HDTV to play it on...

Of course, you can always use a ps3 or a 360 on an SDTV, but most consumers realize that the experience won't be the same...

basically, sony and microsoft +blu ray, hd dvd are asking consumers to go out and buy a brand new tv on top of buying a game console...

Personally, since microsoft is pushing IPTV and XBL, but yet knows that bandwidth is an issue, a 480p 360 would have made sense.

you don't need 720p resolution to play online games, and you don't need it to watch lower bandwidth lower res video over America's crappy broadband services....

Sony, in their desire to make blu ray a success in the same way the ps2 helped make dvd a success had the necessary impetus to create a high def media hub, but i'm quite surprosed microsoft didn't release the 360 as a high end 480p max console....

both companies jumped the gun on HD... many consumers again want a high end console, but know they can't afford a new high end tv... it was just a massive mistake... developers are biting massive development costs to create games for consumers who don't even have the right televisions to play them on... developers should be using these consoles for better animations, better physics, better explosions, better AI, destructable environments, open-ended gameplay, etf instead of higher resolutions....

Given that non of microsoft's initiatives utilize 720p, why didn't they just make a 480p high end console for the 98% of americans who don't want to spend 1,000$ and up for a new tv?

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

ThatPersonGuy — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:58:45 GMT

Nintendo will not be dumping Retro any time soon. From a legal standpoint, they're as much a part of Nintendo as EAD.

I agree that their marketing for Prime 3 was terrible, but my guess is that the lame duck marketing department simply didn't care. Thank goodness Nintendo is getting some new blood in there.

Marketing aside, the Metroid series has always sold less than it deserves. It's another one of the series' (not so) great traditions.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

DETROIT BASKETBALL — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:24:12 GMT

N'Gai, you didn't answer Geoff's question as to the next studio EA scoops up.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

joeboy101 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:32:02 GMT

N'Gai - Harrison beat me to it. Blu-Ray is a shot in the arm, but until HD market penetration reaches the critical mass needed, and given some of the research, consumers how to use it correctly, Blu-Ray is dragging the PS3 down. What person who still uses SD, for whatever reason, is going to want to buy a console where a sizeable chunk of the pricetag goes towards a feature they can get zero use out of until they upgrade to HD? Xbox doesn't have the same kind of HD requirement to get the majority out of the console. HD is always better, sure, but only having SD doesn't create a significant limit to what you get in your console.

As Harrison said, both companies jumped the gun on HD, thinking it was a no-brainer choice for gamers and viewers. Sony went further and figured they could provide a final decisive blow to the whole HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle and bundled it in the console jacking up the price. So Blu-Ray was not meant to give the PS3 a shot in the arm, but the other way around. Sony's market dominance would give Blu-Ray the shot in the arm needed to muscle through the format war. Funny thing happened on the way to the store though, public is not scooping HD up at the rate planned on, so that Blu-Ray bundling is an anchor around Sony's neck when selling to ANY SD customer.

I don't realistically think that Sony would remove Blu-Ray, but pondering the pipe dream of how a $299, 40 Gig, Backwards Compatible PS3 would sell. Sony may very well end up winning the format war, but the PS3 would likely long be a casualty in it before they saw a respectable ROI on its inclusion in the console.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

SuperEffective — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:36:59 GMT

Re: Retro/Metroid marketing --

I'm not really convinced that Metroid:Corruption was ever going to be a winner from a sales standpoint. The first one on the Gamecube was a revelation, and the hardcore went out of their way to find a way to play it. The second one was 'more of the same', and while Corruption had the WiiMote going for it, it sure did come out in a season overstuffed with quality FPS games.

My girlfriend, who happily bought Phantom Hourglass and is looking forward to Mario Galaxy, wouldn't touch Metroid, even though she'd had a ton of fun with Resident Evil 4, a game that plays very similarly to Corruption. I don't know how much I'm stereotyping here, but I'll go ahead and say it: casual gamers and women (to the extent that those groups overlap) hate first-person games. An actual quote: "This is Halo for the Wii, right? I'm not interested."

What a terrible position for Retro to be in, really. They're making a game that *looks* like the most popular genre for people who love scrutinizing graphics, but is actually a puzzle game built on item fetching and backtracking and no multiplayer on an 'underpowered' console. I still wonder whether Corruption would have been a bigger success if it had been a little more 'Lara Croft' and a little less 'Master Chief'. Platforming from a 1st person perspective is ... an acquired taste.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

Pistolaero — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:05:19 GMT

N'Gai, you are my hero.

@Jeffj: If Retro were to split, I'm not sure who they would make games for. It could be for Nintendo but it could also be otherwise. I was thinking of their split more along the lines of the Silicon Knights split. You know, different visions and all that.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:09:15 GMT

@DETROIT BASKETBALL: You're right, I didn't. I do have some thoughts on the matter, but as late as this installment of MMQB had become, I figured it was better for me to save those thoughts for a future post. P.S. Shouldn't that be DEE-TROIT BAS-KET-BALL? P.P.S. LET'S GO, LA-KERS! (clap clap clapclapclap!)

@joeboy101: Right now, it looks like Sony Computer Entertainment overshot the mark with Blu-Ray. But from Sony Corp's perspective, without Blu-Ray's inclusion in PS3, HD-DVD would already be the victor. So Sony Corp may be willing to temporarily lose this battle in order to win the war to own the successor format to DVD. It's possible that Blu-Ray may lead consumers to think that the PS3 isn't for them without an HDTV, but historically, the mass market doesn't buy in until prices hit $199 or below anyway. So as long as PS3 and 360 are priced above that, giving more well-heeled consumers additional reasons to buy isn't a bad thing.

@SuperEffective: You raise a potentially interesting point regarding the possibility that the somewhat disorienting nature of first-person games may turn off casual players and a non-trivial number of female gamers. I'll talk to some of the developers I know and see whether that jives with what they've observed.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

Pistolaero — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:47:50 GMT

@N'Gai: You mentioned Carmack and Newell's distaste for PS3 programming. To me, this is just as biased as a Sony first-party developer talking about how their game couldn't have been done without Blu-ray. My problem with this is, why are journalist still asking those type of questions? Is it really that important why so and so game couldn't have been realized on anything but the PS3. For that matter, developers should learn to keep their mouth shut about certain things.

Newell especially comes off as childish in his distaste for it. If you hate developing for the PS3, that's fine, but this isn't an episode of Desperate Housewives, keep that kind of stuff to yourself. I find it especially difficult to believe anyone when developers such as Infinity Ward can release a game on both platforms that are supposedly identical. I only say this because from the reviews/previews I've read, there seems to be no difference. At least not graphically.

I don't ever remember them complaining about the PS3 architecture. Could it just be that Newell isn't as awesome as he originally thought?

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

poppabk — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:52:33 GMT

There seems to be an assumption that MP3 should be selling Halo numbers instead of Bioshock numbers. I'm not really sure that MP3 has that same mass appeal, or can ever be expected to. But the fact that it is selling similar numbers to Bioshock (in the US at least) suggests that it is by no means selling poorly. I think a lot of games on the Wii are going to have long legs, as the audience is less likely to care if they get the game on its release or a month later.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

poppabk — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:58:25 GMT

@N'Gai: My wife finds all 3D games disorientating and headache inducing in anything but short bursts.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:46:41 GMT

@Pistolaero: If Gabe Newell and John Carmack were the only ones complaining about the PS3 architecture, I would agree with you. But they aren't. They're just the most prominent voices. When I speak with third party developers privately--including some who are doing excellent work on PS3--they nevertheless mention that the 360 is significantly easier to work with. To say nothing of the delayed and/or inferior 360-to-PS3 ports that we're continuing to see. As for your suggestion that they should keep their complaints to themselves, both Carmack and Newell own independent studios, and they've been successful enough and have done important enough work that they can say what's on their minds without fear. And selfishly, as a journalist, I benefit whenever the people I cover go off the reservation and speak their minds.

@poppabk: I don't think that Metroid Prime 3 should be selling Halo 3 numbers. But in two months, the game has sold just 385,100 copies, which is less than a tenth of what Halo 3 sold in under two weeks. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime just told an investor conference that the Wii has seen a big jump in ownership this year among males aged 15-29, implying that the Wii is not just for the casual, but also for the hardcore. I have no reason to doubt those figures, but I certainly doubt their "hardcosity," because they're certainly not buying Metroid Prime 3. Maybe they don't yet know that it's in stores.

The BioShock comparison isn't favorable to Nintendo either, because BioShock is a brand new IP, which meant that consumers had to be educated about it from scratch, as compared to the classic franchise that is Metroid. Yet BioShock has sold 640,900 copies in two months, or 2/3 more units than Metroid Prime 3. Given the Wii's momentum this year--heck, in September alone--MP3's sales relative to its Metacritic score of 90 are a withering indictment of the way that Nintendo has marketed the game. And if I were one of the guys at Retro Studios, I'd be spitting mad.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

xrayzwei — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:55:44 GMT

"And then there's the problem of backwards compatibility, which really is one of the most shocking about-faces I've ever seen in gaming. I spent a lot of time beating up Microsoft over a lack of backwards compatibility in the 360, so it's only fair to call out Sony. Especially since when the PS3 was announced, "Full backwards compatibility" was right at the top of the press release. The 360 SKU story has been confusing to say the least, but the PS3 one isn't much better, I'm afraid--especially with different SKUs offering different levels of backwards compatibility."

Is anyone else still concerned over the BC support on the 360, like me? Sony is getting a bunch of press on the lack of BC support on the 40 gig model, but the 360 is late releasing a 4th quarter BC update this year. Is it possible Microsoft is taking a wait-and-see approach, and slyly moving away from supporting this on their box? Surely there exists a group of players that have a back catalog of games they would like to play that still aren't supported.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

Pistolaero — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:13:51 GMT

@N'Gai: Touché! I'm not going to sit here and pretend to know all of the ins and outs of the business. I trust that whatever you say is true because you are in contact with people in-the-know. If a lot of developers are complaining about PS3 architecture, it doesn't surprise me to be honest with you. I am just basing my opinion off of news I read on a daily basis.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

poppabk — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:18:17 GMT

@N'Gai: Bioshock has sold ~50% more copies than MP3 but there are roughly ~50% more X360 consoles than Wii consoles in the US so I think my point still stands. However, given the crowded shooter market for the 360 and the complete lack of competition for FPS(A)'s on the Wii, to the point where people are salivating over a Medal of Honor sequel to a PSP game, the figures may not provide the full picture.

Interestingly, for myself Bioshock is not really a new IP as it follows in the footsteps of SystemShock(2) which I have played. MP3 on the other hand is effectively a new IP as I have never played any of its previous iterations, 2D or 3D, which is probably the case for a lot of Wii owners (the MP3 part not the SS2 part).

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

SM5555 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:59:09 GMT

@N'Gai: The bigger question, I think, is how is Prime 3 selling relative to the other games in the series. As it is, Prime 1 would be *really* tough to get an accurate read on, as it was one of the games which Nintendo "packaged in" with the 'Cube to try and boost sales. For that matter, how did Metroid Zero Mission and / or Fusion do on the much more widely-played GBA? We already know that Metroid's a no-go in Japan, but it's entirely possible that there's a ceiling on sales here in North America as well.

@Pistolaero: The games being graphically identical isn't the big thing developers care about; what matters is that it appears to take a lot more effort to get something looking good on the PS3 than it does on the 360 right now, and the 360 has the added benefit of easy PC porting. That's why developers speaking out against the PS3's lack of ease of design is an important thing. As a PS3 owner (needed to replace the old PS2 right around the time that the 60GB was vanishing from stores), it worries me that the PS3 might not see cross-platform support for that very reason. Remember how Nintendo's decline started when the N64 was revealed as a nightmare to program for?

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

joeboy101 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:11:39 GMT

N'Gai - Point taken on the Blu-Ray. Sony probably will win that format war in the end, but Toshiba is really getting in their pound of flesh with HD-DVD it seems. One point gleaned from forums and touched upon when discussing the SD appeal of the Wii, is the question of games being bought by owners. Not so much that third-parties aren't selling well, but that with the exception of Wii Sports (bundled with Console) and Wii Play (bundled with extra Wiimote), none of their games are selling to the rate expected with their expanding install base. Not sure where I saw, but saw a recent study that over 50% of Wii Owners have not played their console in 2 months or more. Might be an awfully good thing that Nintendo is making money per console.

And just because I like poking the animals... Call of Duty 4 is a much closer representation of video game art than BioShock. *Dons his hip waders* Release the hounds!

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

perrinbar — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:16:17 GMT

@poppabk: I think using the 360's install base over the Wii is somewhat of a fallacious arguement given the obviously "harder-core" nature of 360 gamers. The software sell numbers are something like 3 games per Wii vs. 6.5 per 360 console sold showing that 360 owners are much more likely to buy any game which is probably a stronger arguement about why MP3s numbers are so low. It also certainly points to the nature of 360 owners vs. Wii owners. Most people who bought a Wii don't care about Metroid in any incarnation so they really aren't inclined. Also I think the marketing plays a huge factor. If we assume that Wii owners are the more casual players, then we should also assume they are far less informed about games than the average 360 owner. If Nintendo doesn't provide the marketing, how are Wii owners going to learn? Certainly not from reading blogs like LevelUp.

More general comments: I think Sony has done all they can at this point to attempt to atone for their major sins so far this generation. It is a damn shame the backwards compatiblity is a casualty of their hubris, but they have to make drastic moves at this point. I agree with the assessment that GTA will show much more clearly were the hardcore live. I think that N'Gai is correct in assuming the 360 will have a lead, but I think that the delay has actually helped the PS3 more than most people assume. The PS3 now has another holiday to get into the hands of gamers and at a lower price point as well. The more they sell the more copies of GTA they will sell. I suppose the most interesting question for me is how the japanese market is going to affect all of this. The PS3 is going to survive only by doing well in Japan as it is fairly obvious their NA dominance is a thing of the past. Recent hardware numbers seem to be reflecting a decline in Wii interest in Japan while the PS3 is slowly picking up speed. Will this be enough to keep Sony from finishing a distant third? We won't really know until the big guns, GT5, FFXIII, and MGS4, hit with all their console selling power.

Honestly, as a PS3 owner and former employee of Microsoft Game Studios, I really hope that both Microsoft and Sony can carve out a strong section of the consumer public and we can truly have a 2 console setting. For now at least. It won't do anyone any good for one console to win out. Look at the fear the hardcore have of the Wii-ification of video games. Look at what Sony did after the PS2. The competition keeps everyone honest and keeps them making the systems and games we want.

October is going to be an interesting month, my prediction is that Halo is going to see pretty heavy decline. I think MS was banking too heavily on it pushing consoles, when many of the Halophiles had already bought their 360s. Time will tell of course. Will the Wii be able to post any software that can out sell it's remote plus minigames? Hopefully. Hopefully some third party will breakthrough with an actual honest to goodness game, but I'm not going to get my hopes up too much.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

SuperEffective — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:36:19 GMT

"Recent hardware numbers seem to be reflecting a decline in Wii interest in Japan while the PS3 is slowly picking up speed."

That... is an interesting way of putting things. Not to say that the PS3 won't continue to pick up speed in Japan. But that's more a function of Microsoft not having moved the needle much, not a decline in Wii interest.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

perrinbar — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:55:00 GMT

@SuperEffective: My point was not that decline in interest in the Wii was spurring PS3 sales, an argument I can't imagine making with a straight face. However, if you look at the weekly hardware numbers in Japan interest in the Wii has certainly declined bringing it's ratio over the PS3 to merely 2-1 where it once sat on top a mighty 6-1 ratio. A slight uptick in PS3 sales plus a major drop in Wii sales is to blame. Check the Simple 2000 chart data and you can see the drop in Wii sales. Will that change over the holidays? I would bet yes, but I don't think the Wii will sell in the numbers it did in the beginning of its cycle. So MS be damned, and they most certainly are in Japan, the Wii is selling less than it once did and the PS3 is sitting on some heavy hitters for the Japanese market, especially MGS4, which could shoot its numbers into low end Wii territory at the least.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

poppabk — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:25:16 GMT

@perrinbar: The point is that Bioshock is the kind of critically acclaimed epic game that appeals to "hardcore" gamers. If both MP3 and Bioshock are selling as well as each other in the US (relative to install base), and MP3 sales are considered poor, then the problem is not that the Wii lacks hardcore gamers but that single player, story/exploration driven games like MP3 and Bioshock do not sell well to "hardcore" gamers.

With regards to attach rates I think that you have to be careful reading too much into these as;

1) Official sources are hard to find/may not exist

2) Attach rate is dependent on the length someone has owned there console

Given these caveats I would still expect the Wii attach rate to be lower as the Wii demographic is definitely less software driven especially in terms of having games as soon as they are released. I am sure there are plenty of Wii's out there with just Wii sports and Wii play but I am also sure there are plenty of 360's out there with just Madden and Halo3.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

perrinbar — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:39:41 GMT

@poppabk: Actually you can find the rates from the NPD group, or at least what they have revealed to the media. http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/31/360-leads-hardware-to-software-ratio-wii-and-ps3-trail-with-sim/ Like I said, those show a surprisingly low rate of sell through, although I suppose not too surprising. You are correct in pointing out that the time the system has been on the market affects things as well, but I think the anecdotal evidence of Wii's collecting dust is borne out by those numbers.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

solomonrex — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:28:37 GMT

Every analyst and company missed how disruptive the move to HD and Internet-enabled games would be. Yes, PC games have been online multiplayer for a long, long time and even consoles have been online for almost a decade. But having real download services in the broadband era is a huge shift: XBLA, Steam, firmware, patches and microtransactions are all part of consoles now. As for HD, it seems the game companies assumed that everyone would move to HDTVs immediately and that hasn't happened. Collectively consumers have been overwhelmed and of course the Xbox's demographics have adjusted the easiest. On the other end of the spectrum, the Ipod-influenced Nintendo has staunchly stayed on message about simplicity.

And so the market is the most wide open it has been since the 80s:

1. Including handhelds there are probably 5 viable hardware platforms, instead of one or two.

2. There are a half dozen online services across PC and console gaming, and any of them could win out.

3. Developer tools have led to an incredible number of ports to every platform and shared game engines - leading to so many more viable choices. EA doesn't have to choose sides.

4. Media formats are wide open, too: HD-DVD, BluRay, Itunes, etc.

Quite simply, every analysis assumes the same winner takes all system of previous cycles and I think the cycle has been broken. This has become a more fractured market.

All players have figured out a way to be profitable and none of them can scale up enough in this generation to put the others out of business. Maybe next generation will be different, or maybe this is just what it is now, like the car business, where each company has regional strengths but is profitable on every continent and plays to their strengths.

re: Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for September 2007

DETROIT BASKETBALL — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:41:35 GMT

Well, if I was looking to capture the true phonetics styling's of John Mason, it'd look more like:

DDDDEEEETTTTRRRRIIIIOOOOTTTT BBBBAAAASSSSKKKKEEEETTTTBBBBAAAALLLLLLLL

But I thought that was a little much.

"This game's in the refrigerator: the door is closed, the lights are out, the eggs are cooling, the butter's getting hard, and the Jell-O's jigglin."