Sony Exclusives Not Selling
- Scribbled on June 29th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News, Sony PlayStation 3
While Sony ballyhooed their upcoming first party exclusives like God of War III and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, those titles may not move PlayStation 3 units as they would like.
Number-cruncher Matt Matthews has, in a report over on GameSetWatch, detailed the sales performance of Sony’s new, exclusive titles, revealing a lineup of games that are two-headed beasts: somehow managing to consistently find critical success while being, relative to their exposure and advertising backing, commercial flops.
Removing bundled games from the equation, only one title has sold over a million copies in retail – Resistance: Fall of Man, a launch title, and only LittleBigPlanet has even sold more than 900K. AAA Sony exclusive games like Killzone 2, Resistance 2 and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune have been flops.
This is damning in that Xbox 360 games have sold a million almost regularly. The 360 version of UFC 2009 Undisputed has just sold 900K in 5 weeks in the US, while even mediocre titles like the original Lost Planet sell 1.22M in the US, while “flop” Viva Pinata sold 1.46M worldwide. AAA titles on the 360 tend to sell a million in a matter of days: Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV both sold 2.8M and 2.3M in their first US week respectively (3.8M and 3.3M first week worldwide), while Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War, and Gears of War 2 all sold 1M, 1.3M and 1.8M in their first weeks alone worldwide on the 360. In multiplatform, the 360 has regularly outsold the PS3, often by a factor of 2.
This is not limited to the 360, either. The Wii has had 52 titles (47 if you exclude non-game titles like Wii Fit, Wii Play, and so on) that have sold 1M, and have had some mindboggling sales on some of their AAA titles, like Mario Kart Wii (16.3M total, 7M US, 2.3M first week total, 1.7M US first week), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (8.5M total, 4.7M US, 2.7M first week, 1.5M US first week), and Super Mario Galaxy (8M total, 4.1MUS total, 1M first week). Sony is embarrassed by its Japanese rival.
The question is, is a price drop too late?
(Thanks, Kotaku.)
June 29th, 2009 at 11:52 am
[...] meant to bash Sony in any way. I am posting this story which was written by Jonah Falcon over at GameStooge.com because I find it very interesting information and I wanted to share my thoughts and hear yours in [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Good stats Jonah! My only question is are the Sony numbers for North America or global?
You mention the global numbers for Viva Pinata which might be confusing the issue.
Aside from that it’s interesting that these hyped games really aren’t gaining any traction with gamers.
June 29th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
At first, I thought it was worldwide numbers, but another article later said, US, so I included figures for both worldwide and US, just to cover my ass a little. The point, however, is that only one Sony first party title broke 1M in release, which is sad even for just NA territory.
July 8th, 2009 at 8:35 am
[...] Of course, Stringer doesn’t seem to want to discuss the fact that there’s a loss on every PS3 sold now. Then again, this is the man who managed to steal David Letterman from NBC and still lose late night to the cosmically unfunny Jay Leno, and who was brought to Sony in 2001 and helped turn the #1 console into the #3, and lost the war with iTunes badly (”We can no longer say that we’re right and our customers are wrong. We can’t build only what we want to build.” No, really, Howard?) Then again, Stringer noted back in 2007, “Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours … because it’s cheaper.” He predicted a strong lineup of games that year would spur PS3 sales – they didn’t. [...]