NPD: Pokemon beats FFXIII, BFBC2

'Final Fantasy XIII sold considerably better on PS3, racking up 828,200 sales to the Xbox 360 version's 493,900, a difference of 67%. '

am i missing something here,how is that a difference 67% if the 360 sales are more than half of the PS3 sales?....am i reading it wrong? or are you working out the percentage differently..sorry,confused ..i admit i didn't go to college,okay!!


good sales for the game though...i am sure SONY will see this as a win,which they have every right to....but i wonder if some may see it as nearly 500k sales lost

@metallicorphan

It depends on how you work it out. If you say: Xbox360Sales/ PS3Sales * 100 then the Xbox sales were 59.63% of the ps3 sales. However, with a total of 1,322,100 sales, the xbox sold 37.35% and the PS3 62.65%. The xbox would therefor need to sell an additonal 67.xx% to equal the ps3 sales.

In short: statistics mean shit.

Go go PS2. And go go Kratos!

@Kill_Crazy

ahh.gotcha,,,makes sense now

thx for that

Good to see Pokemon doing well - what's so bad about Ho-oh though that everyone wants a Lugia?

I'm glad FFXIII was beaten, because I haven't enjoyed playing it at all. Pokemon, GoW and Battlefield all deserved to beat it.

Screw SoulSilver. I'll be a HeartGold Bro 4 Life.

Loved FF XIII, had some boring bits but overall very good imo.

Can't say i'm surprised by the sales ratio as i think FFXIII was one of the games that many people bought a PS3 for.

given ff 13's split in favour of ps3, i think many people have overlooked the real achievement of the month. god of war 3 was released mid march and managed to rack up over a million sales in just over 2 weeks. thats pretty damn phenomenal for a single format title, not to mention those were just the american figures

No Just Dance?

people who really wanted 13 bought a PS3, that's why I bought mine. No regrets here. Except, of course, about buying Final Fantasy 13.

And, uh, I know it's not allowed to say so, cause the game is so beautiful and they spent so much money and time on the development, but I thought FF13 was really a lousy, boring, self-playing, pretentious, empty, miserly, predictable, japan-cheesy piece of crap, and a total waste of my precious time and money. I'm a big fan of the series, but as an RPG, as a game, even as a game on its own, it's the biggest failure I have seen in the continuation of a series. I don't mean to say I've seen it all, but that was a confirmation of a brooding sense over the years that Square Enix had lost it for good. They have insulted and ripped me off even on the content, even the fool's errands that serve as "quests" are scarce!! Never again will I buy a Final Fantasy game, or square game for that matter, unless I ever see a one digit price tag on it.

Pokemon is, on the contrary, the best in the series yet. You might find it's either to simple or too complex to bother, but it does fork out a LOT of pokemon goodness, with a decent control scheme this time, loads to do on top of an already crazy original gameboy game: pokeathlon, battle zone which is not a "meh" battle zone but the big thing, safari park, new locations, the voltorb viciously addictive mine sweeper... some quirks like the fact it take so much time to get special balls from fargas that you'll hardly ever get to use them, the stupid kids that call you all the time, and the accursed HM who players can't wait to see inevitably die off in black & white...

FFXIII was always going to sell way better on PS3.
The jrpg fanbase and the PS fanbase are the same thing.
Maybe that idiot wada will see that now.
The sales stats for the rest of the world will be even better for Sony.

One hundred thousand PlayStation 2s. One. Hundred. Thousand. That's still a fecking lot! Shelf life be damned

No surprise... I always go for the better version ( other than exclusives ofc.. ) so it was a chance to get for once a game on the PS3 since it was overall better version on that platform. Got me FFXIII for the PS3 and BFBC 2 for the 360 like almost every other multiplatform since it also plays better online. FFXIII is from the few reasons my console doesnt stay off for sooooo long -.-

Truth be told I have so many things to do that it's not like I play anything anymore I just buy and whenever I have the time for some gaming I just go for it.

So... How many people are handheld gamers and DS is selling still like crazy? Amazing numbers like always.

Clearly FFXIII was going to do better on PS3 and worldwide that will shows, though bemused that BFBc2 on X360 are not just marginally better in sales but exactly superior lead as well?!

Given that JRPG, FF are linked to PS, furthermore people in know or will always get the superior and complete version of FFXIII on PS3. So the advantage would be good, plus people get PS3 a while ago in expectation of this game Inc moi.

So is the BFBC2 reversal a confirmation of x360 being a FPS King console? If so then the same ratio should show for MW2, BioShock 2 and other multi platform fps?!

DS reigns supreme.

@teh9182
you sir are a dick

"In fact, I have some select phrases mapped to function keys on my keyboard ready to put people in their place!

Must resist... 'sad life' comment.

On topic, despite FFXIII selling considerably less on the 360, I'm sure Square Enix will be delighted at almost 500K extra sales.

SPARTANS STAND TALL!

@berryl227

He's more than that, he's an invisible dick now.

Speaking of Final Fantasy, I got it today. I was a little apprehensive due to some bad reviews, but got it anyway. I've played about two hours so far. I'm relieved to find it amazing in my opinion.

The plot seems intricate, the characters varied, the sound is quality, the graphics are orgasmic, and the gameplay is quite fun too, although I'm not entirely used to it yet. It's not quite turn based but not quite real time too.

Anyway, my only complaint so far is that Vanille is an over-sexualised girl with an annoying voice, she sounds like a British/Australian hybrid chipmunk on helium. But still, she's bearable.

I get the feeling it's meant to be played in bursts though, so I decided to take a quick break.

So far the 360 has outsold the PS3 all three months of the year in 2010 in the United States. And if the 360 Slim rumors are true, you can pretty much rule out the later part of 2010 (when it'll be released) and all of 2011 for Sony as well. Perhaps Sony will slip in a monthly victory in the few months left that it has a chance to.

It's funny to see the internet coated with Sony boylovers acting like Sony is some resurgent underdog, what with the increase in sales and the release of some actually good games.

Nevermind the fact that in the last generation, Sony's PS2 outsold the Xbox by over 110 million units. That's how far Sony has fallen, and in a very short period of time. And with Microsoft guaranteed to apply massive amounts of pricing pressure to Sony's entertainment division (which was once their most profitable, then their loss leader, and now they've finally returned to a marginal level of profitability)...well, Sony is going to have a nearly impossible time regaining the momentum they once had-- such a thing would require massive investment and risk taking, and done in competition with a ridiculously wealthy Microsoft.

Final Fantasy XIII selling better on the PS3 isn't a 'loss' for Microsoft. The fact that a Final Fantasy game was released for a Microsoft console at all is, in fact, a major loss for Sony.

But lets return to the money factor, which like it or not effects virtually everything.

In the four years of 2006-2009, Sony profited $4.5 billion dollars. In the same four years, Microsoft profited $59 billion dollars.

Considering Sony as a whole is worth $36 billion dollars, after 2010 Microsoft technically will have profited enough in the last 5 years to buy the entire Sony Corporation... TWICE, and still have enough profit left over to buy 20 million PS3's at retail price and hand them out-- 20,000 of those PS3's could be given as charity to the 20,000 employees Sony cut to achieve their return to profitability.

In fiscal year 2009 (that ends in June for MSFT), Microsoft will have actually had it's most profitable year-- ever. They'll have made roughly $2.00 for every share of the company-- and there are 8.77 billion shares so I'll let you do the math. 2010, the average estimate is that Microsoft will make $2.20 for each of the 8.77 billion shares. Again, I'll let you do the math.

Sony's reality is they are a struggling, restructuring, ill-equipped to compete, unfocused disjointed and confused entity losing market share in the videogame industry faster than Lehman Brothers lost stock value in late 2008.

And they're doing it against a company that is profiting $370 million... a FUCKING WEEK. It takes Microsoft 12 weeks to make more money than Sony can in 208.

So let us all kindly set aside these minor discussions on some bizarre micro-victory of Sony's taken completely out of context. In the long run, unless they win a $100 billion lottery and Microsoft's campus get's nuked by Apple Jihadists, Sony's long term prospects in the gaming industry are incredibly bleak. Their trend in the industry-- in the long term-- is decidely pointed towards the X axis rather than up and away from it.

@ bill gates

thanks for sharing your thesis mate! Although I think i'd only give it a 2:1 for now.

Perhaps try a little harder?

Seriously why would having a gaming industry with only one player help? After all clearly by your conclusions Sony are doomed... Don't be to quick to wish away the competion, no competion no reason to innovate or provide value for money.

TBH I think both companies days may be numbered in the games industry, just as Sony took over from nintendo in the 90s think anouther company maybe online will win the streaming battle

Here is where my being smarter than everyone on Earth actually works to my disadvantage. It makes me prone to holding opinions that, while correct, aren't 'popular'.

One single console is not only 1) a good thing, it 2) is going to happen, because it's a natural monopoly. I'd could sit here all day and explain that it being a natural monopoly is proof that it's a good thing, and that it being a good thing is what leads it to being a natural monopoly. But then I'd have to chop through a mountain of your pre-conceived non-original opinions that will unfortunately run counter to your predictable intuitive response.

But I'll keep it simple. Console hardware is a means to an ends.

Hardware is simply there to facilitate software. Just like roads are there to facilitate transportation, language is used to facilitate communication, laws are there to facilitate social cohersion.

Would having several different kinds of roads, with only certain kinds of cars compatible with certain kinds of roads, help our transporation system?

Has having humanity been broken up into hundreds of different factions, with differing languages, helped humankind progress or has it hindered it?

Would a society that has conflicting, competing laws make any sense to you?


The point I'm getting at, is everyone thinks Sony vs. Microsoft is good for competition. It's fantastic-- for hardware competition. It means us gamers get the amazing benefit of having to buy a new console every 5 years or so, while half of the console cycle is spent with developers releasing shit games because they have to learn a new console.

But what does splitting developers up do to software competition? It hurts it, obviously. Software is the entire reason we play videogames. We don't buy hardware to gasp at the complexity of the engineering-- we buy it play games. Only, if I want to play all the best games guess what I have to do? I have to buy 3 consoles. How the fuck is that good for gamers?

It's a natural monopoly, and it's going to happen anyway, for the same reason DVD was the previous movie standard, and Blu-Ray is the high-def. Neither of them had competition for very long and it was GOOD when they monopolized the means to watching movies at home. It meant the consumer could focus on the only product that really mattered: the DVD's themselves, and not DVD players, since they can pop it into anyone of them and they'll work.

The industry is gravitating towards a monopoly-- the best evidence I can give, is look at how cross-platform the software has become. As costs have increased, hardware has become less differentiated because of simple market forces. Consoles are going to perform more and more like each other-- differences are going to continue to erode because the market is naturally inclined to a single standard. In other words, even if there continue to be multiple hardware standards for a while (Sony probably has at least another console in it's dwindling momentum), developers will try to overcome it via a greater focus on cross-standard software. Multiple consoles is a BURDEN for developers.

In the long run, the standard bearer is going to be the one who can survive the constantly increasing costs. And it's really that simple. Sony can't in any conceivable way compete directly with Microsoft for an extended period of time-- they simply do not have the resources. That's why the focus on short-term progress and miniature victories is utterly pointless: in the long run, Sony is doomed. They could eventually try to pull a Nintendo and create an entirely different product within the gaming spectrum-- isolating themselves from competition but only attracting a relatively niche aspect of the market.

Only I can't see where on the gaming spectrum another Wii-like fad product can fit. Nintendo has the casual/borderline-retarded gamer market on lockdown, and I doubt Sony'd be able to crack that market. They certainly can't compete with Microsoft for the more advanced gamer portion of the gaming spectrum. And PC is for the hardcore of the hardcore.

Regardless, a single console will pit all the developers against each other. That is actually productive competition that create sincere software innovation-- because they *only* differentiating factor left will be quality developers. No more 'buy a 360 if you like FPS, buy a PS3 if you like JRPG' nonsense.

It'll be: buy this one standard, which every software developer on Earth is devoting their full resources to. THAT's competiton. Not this split-standard phony temporary competitive shit.

I thought you were going to be short...

You put a strong case for the developers but would you diasagree that the both Sony and MS have been forced to reduce costs and innovate directly because of each other and nintendo? This years much vaunted project natal and move have been inspired because of the success of the wii. Even the introduction of the xbox slim is directly intended to pull Market share from Sony. These developments cost money what would be the need to do so in monoplolised Market. Overall the customer is benefitting this generation like no other.

Your point on DVD is true to a point in the standardisation of format but any manufacturer can produce a DVD player again causing lowering of prices and innovation of function. A wide range of players are available from supermarket players to high end theatrical systems. The monopoly comes in the standardisation of format not manufacturer of equipment. This would not be possible if any games manufacturer had a monopoloy, there could be no tesco version of xbox only Microsofts.

I welcome your counter arguement.

Also as I mentioned I think in years to come hardware won't be the issue with services such as onlive etc

@Bill Gates is Evil

Just congratulating you for your point of view and, even if half painfully long posts, still thorough and valid points and arguments. ++

There are certainly innovative benefits to hardware competition, many of which would have to be sacrificed (or at least hardware innovations wouldn't hit as quickly as they do now). There are ups and downs to everything-- there is always a loss to every course. Right now we have a competitve structure appparently beneficial to hardware innovations, but which also force developers to ration out their limited resources amongst 3 major different formats.

But there just like there is a clear upside to competition (innovation being a major one), there are also downsides. For one, competition can actually limit a companies willingness to make very risky decisions-- straying too far from the competitive norm, even if it's the most innovative and brilliant idea in the history of the world, is taking a massive risk. Hardware competition has shown it's ability to foster micro-innovations, but you won't see any truly massive changes precisely because of the amount of risk involved-- kinds of risk that exist solely because there is a competitor. Competition can make companies afraid to make mistakes, and fear is directly in opposition to the entire notion of innovation.

Nintendo took a risk with the Wii and succeeded-- but they only took that risk out of necessity. They were gradually losing their ability to compete in the traditional gaming market, and so they set out for a blue ocean strategy in which they create their own sub-market in which they alone dominate. It's a brilliant idea looking back-- but I assure you Nintendo was anything but certain they'd succeed, and it's Nintendo's (rightful) fear of failure going into the unknown with the Wii that explains why the console is so underpowered-- the Wii isn't at the cutting edge of graphics technology not because Nintendo thinks graphics aren't important, but because it allowed Nintendo to keep costs low. Their decision to have the Wii underpowered had nothing to do with gaming, but entirely to do with hedging against the risk they were taking with the console. By using existing tech with the Wii (it's essentially a boosted GameCube), they never had to take any losses on the console itself-- so in Nintendo's mind even if the Wii turned out to be a major flop, they won't absorb many losses because they intentionally invested a bare minimum in the engineering of the console.

In other words, they were scared shitless when they released the Wii. But they got lucky with it, and I promise Nintendo is probably the most surprised out of all of us at the Wii's success.

But to respond to this...

"The monopoly comes in the standardisation of format not manufacturer of equipment. This would not be possible if any games manufacturer had a monopoloy, there could be no tesco version of xbox only Microsofts. "

I completely see your point and agree with the general theme of it, but I don't believe this is what would actually occur-- in fact, I think it's hardware competition itself that's preventing there from being a Wal-Mart or Tesco version of a console. That sounds counterintuitive at first but give me a listen.

Multiple consoles competiting over the same finite market creates the need for a console to clearly define itself. A console has to standout, be clear and understandable, and carry a somewhat unified 'message'-- they have to do so because they have a competitor. Competition amongst consoles forces the respective companies to be extremely controlling of the console and it's image-- thus they will not hand out control to 3rd party hardware manufacturers because the hardware 'matters'. In a theoretical monopolized gaming industry, the hardware will cease to 'matter' and companies would be more willing to cease strict control over the standard because maintaining a unified message and image is no longer important.

In fact, Sony in their glory days when it seemed they were ultimately going to monopolize the industry, talked about allowing 3rd party development of the hardware-- they were going to allow basically any qualified company to create their 'own' Playstation, because at that point in time Sony had such a strong grip on the market that the Playstation brand was very nearly the single 'standard' for the industry. I don't quite know what to search on Google to back up this information, but I promise you I'm not making it up-- I think it was prior to the release of the Playstation 2 that Sony discussed their plans to allow other companies to build their own devices using the PS2 gaming standard.

But then Microsoft came along and upset Sony's ambitions, and also greatly delayed the arrival of a single standard because now the industry has to endure yet ANOTHER major hardware battle that will naturally end in only one victor. Hopefully it'll stop there and the industry will have finally arrived at a single standard-- besides what company left in this world has the resources to invest massive amounts of money to just get it's foot in the door, nevermind overcome Sony/Microsoft's grip on market share? Apple...maybe? Some sort of iGaming console? That's the only possible new competitor I can imagine and that's a bit of a stretch.

Ultimately the main problem with multiple consoles is it both drains and divides developer resources. Cross-platform gaming is increasingly common, but there are still costs to port and usually one or the other consoles version of a game suffers and/or doesn't fully take advantage of one or both of the consoles. It's extremely inefficient. Remember developers are like anyone else-- they are on a budget. Money wasted overcoming the inefficiencies of multiple development standards is money not being spent on the substance of the game itself.

The nature of making a single game for two seperate standards implies that it'll use neither standard to it's fullest-- it's why console exclusives always seem like the 'best' games; they allow the developer to focus on a single standard and not waste time and resources on multi-standard red tape. Console exclusives incidentaly are usually named and pointed to as reason #1 people believe multiple console competition is beneficial-- but this is extremely deceptive, because they seem to imply that kind of quality only exists because Sony wants to kill Microsoft etc. etc.

But in fact, if there were only a single standard every game is an exclusive. Everyone developer is in competition with every other developer (with no console-heavy genre niche competitive loopholes, like the previously mentioned Xbox/FPS, PS3/JRPG example)-- there is no escaping for these developers, no loophool to exploit in a divided market.

Every dollar of every developers resources will be fully available to every gamer, via a single console. It's far more efficient for the developers as they focus more on the games than the consoles, for the gamers (as they currently have to buy 3 consoles for access to all developers), and for the growth of gaming into an easily-understandable truly mass-market entertainment format. Gaming is NEVER going to get the full respect it deserves until there is a single, global living-room gaming standard.

@ bill gates

Really good to have a sensible discussion on the forum makes a refreshing change. Again you make some excellent points and can clearly see the pain developers have in supporting 3 IP's. Whilst I hope if a single format console were ever to exist a licensing of the ip would be available to all to protect the consumer and offer choice.

I dont work in the gaming industry but would have to disagree on your position of competition stifling creativity by its very nature competition encourages innovation and creativity in order to ensure survival of the company, both within working practices and deliverable product. An example of this would be apple and the creation of the apple i mac and more recently the I pod and i phone. Apple were a company with a very niche consumer base whilst the PC rained supreme. Who would have bet upon Apple delivering a high end fashionable computer which would prove so profitable. The creation of the ipod exploded how we looked at and managed music causing seismic changes within the music industry itself. Both these examples show a company not afraid to take risks within the competitive market but moreover one which sees change and creation as a key philosophy.

I dont doubt Sony are struggling but just as Xbox came from nowhere to change console gaming online dont bet against a new or revamped company (sega perhaps) risking entering the console market if the product is right.