American Sales for the Week Ending June 24, 2007
The American Chart for this week has revealed significant insight into a number of questions worth addressing. However, first it is necessary to compare the weekly hardware for current platforms (Wii, PS3, 360, DS, PSP) to last week.
Platform 17-Jun 24-Jun
Wii 83,971 85,546 +2%
DS 98,005 103,429 +6%
PS3 21,292 20,832 -2%
PSP 51,860 53,128 -2%
Xbox 360 41,166 41,771 -1%
Hardware continues to follow the recent spring & summer trends in which Wii sells 80-90k, DS sells ~100k-120k, PSP sells ~50k-60k, PS3 sells <25k, and 360 sells 35-45k. These trends assume no big games (a.k.a. Mario Party 8, Forza 2, Pokemon) are released in a given week. Until the release of Pokemon for Wii, Lair for PS3, and the triple-threat of Too Human, Blue Dragon and Madden in August for 360, I expect trends to continue largely as they are now for hardware.
Software is much more interesting this week. Here are the top tens for each current (PS3, Wii, 360) console.
Wii Xbox 360 PS3
1 Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition Dirt MLB 07' The Show
2 Mario Party 8 Tenchu Z F.E.A.R.
3 Wii Play Forza Motorsport 2 Resistance: Fall of Man
4 Big Brain Academy Guitar Hero II Elder Scrolls IV
5 Super Paper Mario Shadowrun Fantastic Four: ROTSS
6 Twilight Princess Tom Clancy: R6 - Vegas Motorstorm
7 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07' Pirates of the Carribean Fight Night Round 3
8 Wario Ware Smooth Moves Command & Conquer Spiderman: The Movie 3
9 Mortal Kombat: Armadgeddon Gears of War Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07'
10 Scarface: The World is Yours MLB 2k7 Pirates of the Carribean
Overall, a remake of a violent two year old Gamecube title took the lead for the week. This is quite surprising, given that games like Godfather, Scarface, and others did no such thing, despite being violent, quality ports as well. It is perhaps indicative of a market for only very well made violent games on Wii. It is too bad Manhunt II got delayed - it would have been fascinating from a sales perspective. Below are other notes when going through the data.
- Big Brain Academy has legs. It did not drop off immediately. In fact, it was nearly as strong as week one in terms of raw units.
- PS3 & PSP have no titles in the top 50. Fortunately for Sony & publishers, PS2's massive userbase continues to insure that it's titles make the top ten .
- Dirt had a stronger debut than expected.
- MLB 07' has been the PS3's best seller for weeks. Perhaps the sixaxis and pretty graphics have won over the baseball gamer crowd?
- Wii officially has over 30% of the Americas market
- 19 Xbox 360 titles in the top 200 sold over 250k. This compares to 3 for the PS3, and 9 for Wii.
- A number of cheap attempts to cash in on trends have failed - notably the Sims Pet game, and a number of movie based properties for all platforms.
- Could Guitar Hero II (using combined PS2 & 360) be amongst the top 5 selling selling games for 2007?