PlayStation 3 180.8K
PSP 65.5K
Xbox 360 185.4K
Wii 277.2K
Nintendo DS 440.8K
1. TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION* 360 UBISOFT Apr-10 486.1K
2. POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 242.9K
3. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 200.3K
4. POKEMON HEARTGOLD VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 192.6K
5. GOD OF WAR III* PS3 SONY Mar-10 180.3K
6. WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09
7. BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 166K
8. WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09
9. JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09
10. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV PS3 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 143K
(*includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
What a fantastic drop! As you know, I desire the destruction of the Game Industry. Forget trying to ‘fix’ it. Let it all end in fire. Therefore, it is Happy Days for me.
Now, remember what was being said around January and February? It was something like… “Foolish Malstrom! Look at those wonderful Modern Warfare 2 sales! Core Market dying? Hah! It is now the future!” Since that time, Modern Warfare 2 has disappeared from the charts (but not Mario 5). The development team for Modern Warfare 2 has literally imploded with Infinity Ward and Activision suing one another and people leaving the company. It has been amusing to watch game journalists switch templates. The first template was that ‘zOMG Modern Warfare 2 is selling more than sliced bread.’ Then the template switched to “Noble artists and visionaries at Infinity Ward assaulted by Bobby Kotick and his minions” forgetting the inconvenient fact that Activision does own Infinity Ward and can tell them what games they can do. In the same way, Nintendo tells Retro what to do. It would be absurd for Retro to say, “Sorry Iwata, but we’re going to do a game about pineapples and unicorns and you don’t have any say in it.”
Faced with this unfortunate reality, our hardcore friends switched all their attention to Monster Hunter Tri. “Where is it on the sales list? OMG! Wii Fanboys owned! zOMG!!!” Monster Hunter Tri is not a Wii game, it is a PSP game that is on the Wii. The game isn’t even the standard resolution of 480. The game uses none of the controls for the Wii. And the marketing team really screwed it up. I’ve been quiet about MH3, but the ads, while amusing, struck me as totally off. It is as if the marketing team looked at Monster Hunter and said, “Durr, it is about hunting monsters. Let us do commercials about that.” But that is not what people value of the game. If you ask any MH fan, they will say proudly how many hours they have sunk into the game almost as if the game was a single player MMO content-wise. This value was never marketed. Fans who said they could sink 500 hours into it caught my attention. Only the style of MH was marketed, not the substance.
But let them spin away from the bigger story which is the disintegration of the Core Market. Final Fantasy XIII, where did it go? Gone. These games come out and then they disappear.
But thank goodness we have Anita Fraizer on the case. I couldn’t go outside until I heard the valiant Anita Fraizer tell us what is going on. And what an “analysis” this was!
She continued, “Part of the decrease from last year can be attributed to Easter shifting. Last year, Easter fell in mid-April so most Easter shopping was accounted for in April sales. This year, that shopping would have fallen in March. So that could account for about $55 million of the decline from last year. Interestingly, the decline in software sales seems to have been driven by catalog titles and March ’10 releases which fell off more dramatically in their second month at market than did the March new releases last April. The April ’10 new releases actually performed very favorably in aggregate as compared to last April’s new releases.”
Easter shifting!!!!!!? What nation is Anita Fraizer analyzing because it certainly isn’t the United States. No one goes out and buys video games for Easter. Unless kids are more spoiled then I ever thought they could be, they get things like chocolate bunnies and candy for Easter. But video games?
“But Malstrom,” reeks a hardcore gamer. “The PS3 had greater sales than last year. See? SEE! Core Market is growing!” PS3 also had a completely different model and a completely different price tag. These ‘percentage’ gains are illusionary and are a distraction from the real numbers.
We asked Frazier if the Wii shortage situation had anything to do with the lower Wii sales. She responded, “As far as the Wii is concerned, this month’s unit sales are fairly in-line with what was sold last July and August. I have heard rumblings on the street about inventory issues, but only Nintendo could clarify that situation. But Wii games account for 4 of the top 10 games for the month, and Nintendo (including DS) has 6 of the top 10.”
This came from IndustryGamers. Now James Brightman isn’t the brightest bulb around, his sloppiness pretty much blatantly shows he was trying to get Fraizer to blame the Wii for the Industry decline. These man-child journalists could ask a grown up question to Anita Fraizer such as…
“What happened to that PlayStation 3 shortage?”
Inquiring minds would like to know. Is the PS3 shortage still going on? After all, I heard that supply was “TIGHT”. Looking at these numbers, the only thing we can conclude is that the PS3 is still supply restrained and so is the PSP. In an incredible revelation, the Game Industry is realizing that the PSP has been “supply restrained” for its entire lifespan. I suppose also since I didn’t see any Gizmondo numbers that the Gizmondo is also extremely supply restrained.
If this Industry had any sense of objectiveness, they would all be commenting on the sales of Super Mario Brothers 5. After all, they were having orgasms over the sales of Modern Warfare 2. Now that Modern Warfare 2 is fading away and Mario 5 keeps going, you would think they would comment on that. After all, Mario 5 is a 2d sidescroller where we were told that 2d sidescrollers could not sell. We were also told that the ways of the 2d sidescroller were lost to time, that people like me had to get used to ‘FPS galore’ rather than play games that resemble anything on the NES or SNES.
Since today is Happy Days, let us indulge in one more little video. Consider it an analogy with the hardcore pushing around the poor old school gamer and Malstrom, with his black leather jacket, has to come in and set things right.
