Brett Walton
05th November 2009
The big multi-platform and multi-region release this week was Tekken 6 which saw a near simultaneous worldwide release on Xbox360 and PS3. The Tekken series has sold nearly 30 million units to date worldwide, peaking with the 5.5m selling Tekken 2 and 7m selling Tekken 3 back on the original Playstation. The series has been in decline in recent years and unfortunately the 6th iteration hasn’t managed to reverse the trend – mediocre reviews and a launch of around 450,000 units puts Tekken 6 firmly behind both Street Fighter IV (down 52%) and Soul Calibur IV (down 35%). With Namco Bandai announcing a launch shipment of 2.5 million units we expect to see a lot of retailer discounting in the coming weeks.
One interesting trend can be noted from the sales of these three games and that is the rise of PS3 as the preferred platform for fighters – 71% market share in the case of Tekken 6, despite only 44% hardware market share supports a shift that has been gradually increasing over the last twelve months in the genre.
Many other games performed well this week, Wii Fit Plus and Forza Motorsport 3 saw first weeks of over 250,000 in “Others” and Americas respectively. Borderlands reaches nearly 650,000 units in two weeks on 360 and PS3 and looks to have strong legs – it could be one of the surprise hits of the holidays. PES 2010 reaches nearly one million units – a similar start to last year overall but still a long way to go to sell through the 3 million initial copies shipped.
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City was a disappointment compared to expectations. Many analysts had predicted first weeks close to 500,000 copies but our estimates put the title closer to 175,000 units. It is unclear why the title didn’t perform as expected – maybe most potential buyers already downloaded the first DLC back in February and therefore chose the DLC option for Tony Gay rather than the standalone double pack. Whatever the case, Episodes from Liberty City did well for an expansion but far below expectations.
Ratchet and Clank saw solid sales in America – 100,000 units in the first week and Bayonetta had an impressive debut in Japan – 200,000 units across PS3 and Xbox360 with over 30% on Xbox360 – unheard of for a multiplatform title in Japan and possibly as a result of the higher review scores awarded for the Xbox360 version.
Moving on to hardware, all formats were pretty much flat this week with the exception of PSP which had a 16% increase with PSP Go launch in Japan. Year-on-year, PS3 remains the only console seeing an increase – sales up 28% on last year. With the holiday season seemingly starting a little later than last year (due to reduced consumer spending) we expect year-on-year comparisons to get much closer for most formats in the coming weeks as sales start to pick up - this time last year hardware was already starting to increase across the board in the holiday buildup.
The big release next week is Dragon Age: Origins. The title has been awarded some very strong review scores to date and I expect it to far exceed expectations because of that. Lego Rock Band should have a slow start but sell well over the holidays and Europe finally sees the release of Ghostbusters on non-Playstation platforms. Overall a slower software release list than recent weeks but expect most new releases from the last 2-6 weeks to stop seeing weekly drops from now on and start gradually increasing through the holiday season.
As always, the full data will be posted on VGChartz in the next few hours so be sure to check the charts out:
Worldwide
Americas
Japan
Others
