Alexander wrote:And Nate, I bet you $10 SSBB will out sell Halo 3 overall. Sure, the Xbox 360 has America, but then again.
I'll take that bet, considering that as I pointed out, Halo 2 outsold Smash Bros. Melee by 2 million copies, even taking into account that the Xbox did abysmally in Japan. :p
(which, I should add, Halo 2 sold a grand total of 50,000 copies there)
Which means that 7,950,000 copies of Halo 2 were sold in America and Europe.
As far as I can find, the sales figures as of December 2005 for Smash Bros. Melee were 2.9 million copies sold in America.
Well, the game had only sold 6 million copies by March 2006, so even then, Japan would only account for 3.1 million sales assuming all further sales of the game were in Japan. The latest figure for sales of Smash Bros. Melee is 7 million copies, total. So let's up it even more and assume that the extra 1 million copies were ALSO all sold in Japan.
This makes for a grand total of 4.1 million copies of Melee sold on Gamecube...a system which in Japan SLAUGHTERED the Xbox, we shall remember.
So. 4.1 million sales of a game on a super-popular console in Japan. That still pales to the over 7 million copies of Halo 2 sold in America (and Europe) since, as you said, Halo 2 only sold about half a million copies there.
See what I'm saying? Even in Japan, on the system that was hundreds of times more popular than the Xbox, the sales of Smash Bros. Melee STILL was destroyed by the sales of Halo 2...
IN AMERICA!
Alexander, I'll take that ten dollars in personal check, money order, and I also accept all major credit cards. ]And believe me, when you have a game that appeals to all three major countries, that makes a MAJOR difference. But I won't hold my breath. We'll just have to wait and see.[/QUOTE]
There aren't any games that appeal to all three major distribution areas though (can't say countries, Europe isn't a country :p). FPS games have always sold extremely well in America and not so well in Japan (and not bad in Europe), English-language learning games for the DS are always sold out in Japan and have zero presence in the other areas...and soccer games are enormous in Europe and sell decently in Japan but America could care less.
It's just differences in culture is all...you can't really make a game that appeals to all three major areas very well, with a few notable exceptions. But you have to admit, Xbox Live is huge, and people waste so much time on it, that Halo 3 is of course going to be massively popular for LAN parties and late night deathmatch sessions...which is why I keep saying, if Brawl isn't online, it's going to sell very poorly. We're mostly geeks on CAA, and kinda anti-social, so yeah, maybe
we don't care about online play. But to the over 7 million people that bought Halo 2, if Brawl doesn't have online, it's going to be dead to them.
Melee was the best selling game on the Gamecube, 7 million copies worldwide...which still didn't even beat out sales of Halo 2 overall. We may all prefer Brawl...I know I do. But like I said, numbers prove otherwise. Which is why Brawl is never going to outsell Halo 3, and why the Wii isn't going to outsell the 360 anytime soon.
Keep in mind that 30% of 360's have hardware failure. The amount of 360s sold is higher than Wii but how many are actually in (american) homes? I think the Wii/360 Gap is smaller than speculated.
Yeah, I know, which is why I haven't bought a 360 yet. I'm scared it'll break on me. XD
As for the 360/Wii comparison, here's the numbers:
Xbox 360 - 11.6 million units shipped worldwide as of July 2007 (this is only shipped,
not sold)
Units sold in United States: 4.5 million consumer sales as of December 31, 2006
Units sold in Japan: 380,131 consumer sales as of July 2, 2007
(By the way, keep in mind the number of sales for America is still based on last December, almost seven months ago, and has surely increased.)
Wii - 8.2 million+ units SOLD as of July 2007
Units sold in United States: 3,121,280+ as of June 2, 2007
Units sold in Japan: 2,949,783 as of July 8, 2007
So when you say,
I think the Wii/360 Gap is smaller than speculated.
the numbers are right there, man. The gap between the 360 and the Wii is at its SMALLEST 1.4 million units, and it's probably larger than that since the 360 sales figures are over 7 months old, and the Wii sales figures are as of this month...meaning the Wii/360 gap is probably closer to 2 or 3 million units in favor of Microsoft.
Which, as I've been saying...is only going to get wider when Halo 3 comes out.
But ultimately, I can't prove the future, so...we'll just have to wait and see.
And oh man. This is supposed to be a Sony thread. We freaking hijacked it all to heck. XD