What this forum needs is *another* sales thread! YEHAW!

[Vince]

Ohh my. I hoped this was over.... I knew that smelled familiar, what is it? Oh yeah, Bullshit.

The facts: The tie ratio on PS2 is lower than Xbox or GCN for the month of September when viewed from the top 10. Of course, the PS2 tie ratio is larger overall simply because it's been on the market a year longer.

What a fallacy. This is insane. The PS2 has around 2 times the amount of software than the 'box and Cube. Obviously, the amount of sales for the other two consoles will dramaticallty drop off compared to the PS2 when looking beyond the top few games.

At GA, they posted like the top 2000 software titles last month - I wish I could find it because it would totoally prove that your just skewing rations and numbers.

Even then, Wazoo has a great point. If XBox or Cube ever gain widespread adoption and reach a point of 40 Million, they'll base will have assimilated many of the casual gaming folk.

This does have something to do Xbox targetting the older demographic more heavily. There is no factual evidence to suggest that it is more hardcore than the PS2.

I'm sure that Turok would not be high on the list if hardcore gamers were the main Xbox demographic. Where's Quantum Redshift, which is hardcore favorite, in the list?

Your saying that the XBox isn't composed of a more hardcore base? Go look at Team-XBox... end of story

Anyways, if Quantum Redshift has the publicity, exposure, widly known name, and insteresting topic that Turok did - they it would have sold.

I hardly think taking this one example as a supposed micrososm/crossection of the XBox userbase is accurate - and I think you know this.

I think enough evidence can be extracted from the XBox's launch strength compraed to it's month-month sales trends and software tie-in rates during this period to see that it's userbase has not broken out of it's origional contingent of buyers.

I'm sure that Turok would not be high on the list if hardcore gamers were the main Xbox demographic. Where's Quantum Redshift, which is hardcore favorite, in the list?

Maybe not for the GCN, but certainly for Xbox this is probably true. Historically, both GCN and Xbox have outpaced PS2 at the same points in their lifecycle

Early in their comparative lifespans they did; but at the current point -with sales information normalized to a base year - the PS2 is outpacing the Cube and 'Box. Again, look at any of the GKM charts that exist or I've posted before.


I find this whole thing quite useless as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City alone is projected by UBS Warburg to sell more copies in the first 12 months than the entire, current, XBox installed base times two*.

*(using ~5M as an installed base)

 

[Vince]

Johnney:

This does have something to do Xbox targetting the older demographic more heavily. There is no factual evidence to suggest that it is more hardcore than the PS2.

I'm sure that Turok would not be high on the list if hardcore gamers were the main Xbox demographic. Where's Quantum Redshift, which is hardcore favorite, in the list?

Actually here's better proof that the demographic has yet to break out from it's hardcore contingent and enter the mainstream:

Monthly Hardware Sales: (September)

PSOne: 240,343 (up 56%)

XBX: 172,748 (up 26%)

Numbers are from CSFB Sept' 2002.

How can you say the XBox is 'mainstream' when it's getting outsold by the PSOne - which launched in what year? Hmm... I seem to have forgotten.

 

[Goldni]

Man I'd have thought that 'The Thing' and SMB2 had sold more than 40,000+ copies. If I've seen thier commercials once, I've seen them a thousand times. As far as 3rd party 'doom' predictions for GCN next year, I disagree. Most (about 85%) of 3rd party games have been ports so far. And some have come weeks.. nay months after the original versions with little improvements. I'll bet we'll see the new GCN version Bond sell even with or better than the XB one..maybe even half that of PS2 version (if it does'nt come out a whole month later that is). TS2 will do well on Cube as well as Godzilla and RE0. Sports games will sell well on PS2 and XB because of the casual gamer factor. Alot of hardcore Cube owners like me are tired of 'sports' games and 'wrastlin' games. Let the masses of PS2 sheep lap them up..(having said that WWE X8 did very well on the Cube).

Oh and Johnny, I disagree with your Quantum Redshift opinion. It was a turd. I took it back and preordered RE0.

 

[Teasy]

The more customers you get, the more you are going into the massmarket, the less you are selling proportionnaly.

Maybe, but then I didn't say there wasn't a perfectly good reason for it. I just said it is the case that PS2 sold less per console in September then both the other consoles. As I said its not that important.

er, actually that's incorrect teasy. Last I've checked, the softaware/hardware ratio is slightly higher than XB and quite a bit above GC. I'm just confused as to why you're limiting software performance to just the top ten.

When was the last time you checked then? The games sold per console in total may be higher for PS2, but in September it sold less per console going by the top 10, the top 10 is being used because that is the info available and it should give a good indication.

In other words, do a top 20 or even 30 and you'll see PS 2 is on par with it's market share. Limiting it to the top ten with 3 different consoles is not a very accurate guage imo

What you have to remember there is that GameCube's U.S userbase is only 1/5 the size of PS2's, so selling 6 times more isn't mind blowing. Also you cannot just say "take top 20 and you will see X" if you haven't seen the top 20 yourself. Or If you have seen it then post it for each console, if I see evidence that shows PS2 is selling as much software per consoles as the others then that's great, as I said its not particularly important anyway.

Microsoft and Sony publish just as many games as Nintendo does.

But not as many great games, and certainly nowhere near as many MS/Sony published games have just been released recently (hence still selling well) as Nintendo published games.

The fact is that kids and their parents mainly buy the GCN for Nintendo's games.

There is actually a much more reasonable explanation if you actually take the time to think about it. XBox is selling better then GameCube as far as 3rd parties go in September because they're users are being starved of quality first party games right now. GameCube has SMS, SFA and Animal Crossing, all first party and all released recently (hence still selling well). What recent first party games does XBox have in its top 10?.. none AFAICS Less great first party games leaves more room for good third party sales because people simply have nothing else to buy.

 

[Tagrineth]

Man I'd have thought that 'The Thing' and SMB2 had sold more than 40,000+ copies. If I've seen thier commercials once, I've seen them a thousand times. As far as 3rd party 'doom' predictions for GCN next year, I disagree. Most (about 85%) of 3rd party games have been ports so far. And some have come weeks.. nay months after the original versions with little improvements. I'll bet we'll see the new GCN version Bond sell even with or better than the XB one..maybe even half that of PS2 version (if it does'nt come out a whole month later that is). TS2 will do well on Cube as well as Godzilla and RE0. Sports games will sell well on PS2 and XB because of the casual gamer factor. Alot of hardcore Cube owners like me are tired of 'sports' games and 'wrastlin' games. Let the masses of PS2 sheep lap them up..(having said that WWE X8 did very well on the Cube).

Oh and Johnny, I disagree with your Quantum Redshift opinion. It was a turd. I took it back and preordered RE0.

For reference, last night at my local Best Buy, there was one TimeSplitters2 GCN left, and right across the street at a Sam's Club the GCN version was sold out (I watched a customer carry their last one from the rack no $7 discount for me)...

I'd say it's selling OK. Didn't check how many PS2 and Xbox TS2's were left, but at Sam's there were still four or five PS2 TS2's.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

There's plenty of evidence that Xbox is selling into the casual market - strong sports sales, low Sega title sales, good performance from games like Dead to Rights. For every TeamXbox site there are about 3 rabid PS2 fan sites. Not surprising, given the userbase of the PS2.

Vince, you might not like it, but you're dead wrong about attach ratios on Xbox vs. PS2. At the 11 month mark, Sony would have dreamed of having the current Xbox attach rate.

 

[marconelly!]

For every TeamXbox site there are about 3 rabid PS2 fan sites. Not surprising, given the userbase of the PS2.

Actually, I don't think PS2 has anything even close to a fan site of the TXB caliber. I'm dead serious. THe closest is probably the PSX2 central which moderately updates news and has active board that is one of the most civil VG I've boards I've ever seen (I could swear there's more bickering and hate going on here than it is there). The only other 'important' fan site I know of is PSX extreme, which has good news updates, but again, the board is not even a fraction (activity and hate wise) of that on TXB.

There are other, very small fan sites (and very few of them), but Xbox has that too (xbox365, xboxgamers, xbox clubhouse...)

 

[BoddoZerg]

Those Gamecube sales figures are bizzare. The top 3 games have insanely high sales figures, 5 times as much as corresponding Xbox games, but after that it just bottoms out. From 4 to 10, the GC sales figures are below xbox, and by #9 and #10 the sales are less than half of Xbox. (!!) I wouldn't be surprised if those top 3 GC games are enjoying more sales than all other GC games combined. Once you get to the top 100 games, or all games total, the PS2 will start looking much better (since it has much more games) while the GC will likely look like crap.

And... it is a sad, sad thing that Dead to Rights and Turok Evolution are outselling Halo on the 'box. Just goes to show that people, whether on PC or console, have absolutely no taste in games.

 

[Teasy]

BoddoZerg, the numbers aren't really bizare IMO. I think there's actually a perfectly good explanation for them.

As you said the top three games are selling extremely well, infact the top 3 GameCube games sold quite a bit more then the top 10 XBox games conbined! Doesn't it make sense that if there are 3 really good games all being bought by allot of people the rest of the games that month will suffer in sales? Especially if the rest of the games that month are mostly average to good games, nothing great there. If someone buys 2 of those top three games in September they then can't afford any of the other top 10 games (or most can't).

It makes sense IMO, if a few games sell great one month, then other, more average games on that system will suffer that month, they'll have potential sales stolen from them by people buying the big name games (which is happening for GC in September in the U.S). If no games are selling great that month then more games will get a better share of the sales (which is happening with XBox in September).