360 Madden Outsells PS2 Version in August, BioShock Takes Third Spot
The 360 Madden stiff-armed its way to 896,600 homes during the game's first month at retail, a considerably higher amount than the 643,600 PS2 versions sold. Using Madden sales as a relative measure of console popularity, it would seem the mainstream move to current-gen consoles has arrived. This shift is seen further by the Xbox 360's 276,000 units shipped during August, beating out the last-gen PS2's 202,000.
Taking third place in software sales was the Xbox 360 version of 2K Boston/2K Australia's underwater shooter BioShock, selling 490,900 units during the month. Nintendo-published Wii titles like Retro Studios' Metroid Prime 3: Corruption took four of the top ten spots in August.
Overall, year-to-date software sales are up 22.0% to $3.8 billion compared to 2006, with August having a 22.5% year-over-year increase in sales to $488 million. Check out the complete list of the month's top-10 best-selling software below
- Madden NFL 08 (X360; EA Tiburon, EA Sports) 896,600 units
- Madden NFL 08 (PS2; EA Tiburon, EA Sports) 643,600 units
- BioShock (X360; 2K Boston/2K Australia, 2K Games) 490,900 units
- Madden NFL 08 (PS3; EA Tiburon, EA Sports) 336,200 units
- Wii Play (Wii; Nintendo) 256,800 units
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii; Retro Studios, Nintendo) 218,100 units
- Mario Strikers: Charged (Wii; Next Level Games, Nintendo) 147,400 units
- Guitar Hero 2 (PS2; Harmonix, RedOctane/Activision) 145,400 units
- Mario Party 8 (Wii; Hudson Soft, Nintendo) 138,300 units
- Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (PS2; Harmonix, RedOctane/Activision) 127,100 units
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mittense
replyAny idea how the PC Version of Bioshock sold?
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Something like 80k, a small fraction of the 360 sales.
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poor PC gaming =[
I suppose broken widescreen and insultingly offensive copy protection don't help but holy crap.
PC gaming I loved you, never forget the good times we had!
<salute>-
Wasn't the widescreen the same on 360?
And as far as copy protection, BioShock was still the top-selling PC game of the month even with those numbers, so I imagine the copy protection and its elimination of first-day piracy helped sales more than it hurt.-
Yes to 360 widescreen and probably yes to helping sales. I just look at this as "why in the hell would anyone want to develop for the PC over consoles?" Then I realize the number of good answers can be counted on one hand and it makes me very sad. :(
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The answer is, most developers making high-budget games simply don't want to develop for PC over consoles--they'll sometimes develop for both, but more and more consoles are the lead dev platforms. That was true for BioShock, the 360 version was the lead. It just doesn't make sense to do it any other way. And as much as PC gamers bemoan the trend, we see that even at a site like Shacknews, which has FAR more hardcore PC gamers than probably nearly any major multiplatform gaming site, it looks like most people here still ended up buying the game on 360 rather than PC.
Even Valve, which still publicly declares its affection for the PC, is a multiplatform studio now, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see their console sales of new games quickly outpace new sales of the PC versions.
I'm really intrigued by EA and Ubisoft currently publishing Crysis and Far Cry 2 for PC-only. I wonder if the thinking there is that if they don't offer a console version, the owners of both PC and console who might have bought the console version will buy the PC version instead, thus encouraging PC gaming. After all, any publisher wants all the platforms to be as strong as they can be. That said, I also wonder if reality will set in and they'll end up announcing console ports.-
You're preaching to the choir I'm afraid. :(
I'm sad that Steam numbers have never been released (to my knowledge) for any game as I'd be super curious to see some of that data. So far there hasn't been a lot of hype for TF2/Ep2/Portal in the console world that I've seen, but I'd definitely be willing to bet more copies are sold there than on the PC. And that makes me sad. -
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I find your last paragraph interesting as well. I think EA and Ubisoft are really limiting themselves there considering those games require ultra high-end systems which just limits their market yet again. It seems totally bizarre to aim a game at the minority of the market where a bit of porting to a platform that's really not that far off a PC (i.e. the 360) would raise their revenue immensely.
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Obviously, the copy protection and widescreen issues had zero tangible impact--it's not like those issues caused 400,000 PC buyers to stay away. If the difference between console and PC sales was just a few thousand then you might be on to something.
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Those numbers don't include Steam, do they?
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I believe those numbers are NA only so if you triple that number it will probably be more reflective of world wide PC sales. Not bad really, I'm sure it will hit 500k by year end on the PC if not more.
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Umm no, NPD only provides sales numbers of North America and I'm certain the game sold a lot better on the PC in Europe. Every European I know still prefers the PC to any console.
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Well a guy on the internet knows Europeans so it must be true!
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Just look at the sales numbers of the 360 in NA and Europe... Its like 6 to 1.
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I'm not sure what you are saying is 6 to 1 but its bout time for you to cite some sources I'm afraid.
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http://www.vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=X360®1=America&cons2=X360®2=Total+Other&cons3=X360®3=Japan
Ok it's not like 6 to 1, but it's strongly in favor of more consoles being sold in America. Also recognize that Total Other includes Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world not including Europe.
I know vgchartz.com isn't the most accurate website for sales, but its hard to deny that the 360 isn't really selling that well in Europe considering they have a much larger population and their acceptance of past consoles.
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How do you figure? If we base it on population Europe has a much better market than North America. Seeing how far fewer people in Europe own a 360 than they do in America, it is only logical that they would buy the PC version if they can't get the 360 version. Sales for the PS2 are virtually equal between NA and Europe. The 360 on the other hand is drastically selling better in NA than Europe. I think its pretty fair to assume that the European PC Gaming Industry is a lot stronger than the NA industry. You can see such in communities like Q3, Q4, BF2 and other online games that have a large European community but a very small NA community.
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i'd have to pull up some figures, and i could be mistaken as it has been awhile but from past information i've garnered, the european market is substantially smaller than the north american market. while the major population areas have a healthy install base, europe as a region in general is highly fractured and divided, with sporadic "gamer" cultures. there is a large barrier of entry for publishers, for many different reasons.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/fotox/capcom_market.gif
Pulled that from a Capcom Annual Report. That is annual software sales in each region. 2007 is of course estimated. 9.1 billion for the US and 7.5 billion for Europe. So yes Europe is slightly behind the US, but what fraction of what is console vs PC I have yet to determine.
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Probably 5 million in China and Russia alone if you count pirated versions.
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http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/34271/BioShock-Best-Selling-PC-Game-of-August (Bioshock - 77,374 units)
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I think many more people own a 360 than a decent computer to run BioShock.
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