US Video Game sales for July

I'm going to need some time to fully digest these numbers, but one thing is clear. These are very important results. A lot of things happened in July. And a lot of stuff DIDN'T happen. So these numbers say a lot.

Here's my prognosis. The lack of Wii titles in spite of the huge sales tells me that Wii Sports is still the Killer App. The casuals don't need another game other than that, and Wii Play is a nice compliment for the extra Wiimote. Sales will continue to bloom and will probably see a boost with WiiFit. However, the LONG TERM (3-5+ years) fate of the Wii remains unclear from a hardcore perspective. The only hardcore games that have made a big dent on the sales charts have been port-em-ups of games that were the BEST LAST GEN HAD TO OFFER. So, if 3rd party games have to be equivalent to a Zelda or RE4 in quality to sell, then that's not a good situation, since most devs just CAN NOT make games that good. GH3's sales for the Wii will indicate a lot, as well as Madden Wii, and FIFA Wii. Essentially, we still have to see if the big selling decent quality 3rd party titles can sell on the Wii. If they can't, then it doesn't matter how many Wiis are sold. They'll make a hell of a lot of money for Nintendo, but you won't see a significant shift to Wii development (at least not by Western devs).

The increase in 360 sales is directly attributable to NCAA. The correlation in sales makes this point obvious. The HD sales console has been chosen, and it's the 360. This will only become more true with Madden in August. Considering that Sports games are one of, if not THE, highest selling genre in the US, this is a great situation for MS. They've effectively captured the hardcore sport gamer. They've also captured the hardcore action/shooter gamer as well. There's the hardcore japanese gamer that they still need to capture, which they will this fall with Katamary and Ace Combat. And then the casual gamer which they won't capture this year, period. But the 360 Arcade and Scene it? Are decent starts. Still, they need a Killer App akin to Wii Sports, and that just isn't on the seeable horizon.

Sony's situation is concerning. If software doesn't sell on the PS3, then a PS3 port might stop making financial sense. However, that might affect games where only a PS3 + 360 version would make financial sense, therefore that game won't be made. This would be bad for everyone. And if the scenario laid out in paragraph 1 comes true (3rd party games don't sell on the Wii) then that'd be really really bad. What would probably happen is that the game would still be made for the HD consoles, it's just that the budget will be scaled back resulting in inferior quality. Therefore any hardcore gamer that enjoys great visuals should want both the 360 and PS3 to do well. Or at least one of them do EXTREMELY well. It seems that the 360 might have crossed the threshold that it can support almost any game, but we'll see. I mean 100K+ for Tenchu Z? Come on! In which case Sony just needs to make sure that they can ride the port trails until their big heavy hitters come out, and we'll see how that affects things.

Sony needs to do something this holiday season to have a chance at shifting market positions. Maybe Home really will be revolutionary? Or an MGS4 demo will be released that just totally blows everything away? Either way, if Sony doesn't do something big, then the PS3 is going to get slaughtered this holiday, and will relegate the PS3 to 3rd place for the foreseeable future.

HK-47, what's it going to take until you admit the PS3 is LOSING and people don't want it for a reason. The 360 was low, but still ahead of the PS3. And just wait until next month/two months.

Even if Halo 3 is the greatest game of all time, the 360 still won't surpass the Wii. The Wii is selling to a completely different contingent group of people that don't really care about games and gaming. They just buy the Wii because it's a lot of fun. Period. Though I do think that if Halo 3 and Mass Effect are mindblowingly ridiculously ridiculous, then the PS3 sales could suffer even more.