XBLA: The Road To NPD - XBL Community Games Sales For March 2009
With the March NPD U.S. game sales numbers just a few hours away, GamerBytes looks back at the last month of sales for downloadable spaces, with the data available to us and the public
Specifically, every week, Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb posts a Top 10 for the Xbox Live Community Games, which gives us somewhat an inside look at which games are selling better than others. It's no secret that the XBL Community Games are not selling as well as some developers hoped, but many of the games that appeared in the Top 10 list were not a part of the analysis we did.
Inside, we have a look at the new titles for the month, look at the comparison between the sales of ZP2K9 and its positions each week, and then finish it off with a bit of armchair analysis and hard opinion:
Standout Titles
The list has not changed a lot from month to month. For the most part, new titles such as Fading Memories, NextWar, Tank V.S or ZenHak have appeared for a single week and then dropped off quickly.
The 3 standout new titles for the month were ZP2K9, Solar and Little Racers, all which got past a week of being in the Top 10. While ZP2K9 was released at the very end of February, it has stayed in the Top 10 for the whole month of March. Solar has kept itself in 2nd place for two weeks running, and Little Racers has continued to stay in the lower parts of the countdown for two weeks now. Considering its price of 400MSP, that's not too bad.
Speaking of price, there are few games in the list that are above the 200MSP price point, which is not surprising. Besides Little Racers, the only other titles are Supercow , ZenHak and the return of Colosseum after a price cut at the end of the month. As all these games are twice as expensive, they would have made twice as much money, so being 400MSP or above and not being on the list doesn't mean they're doing badly, relatively speaking.
ZP2K9 Sales And Position
A few weeks ago we delved into the sales of ZP2K9, and going by those statistics, we can see how other games are doing, based on its position in the Top 10.
On the week of March 2nd ZP2K9 sold 769 units and got 6th place. On the week of the 9th it sold 1,177 units and reached 4th place, and on the week of the 16th it sold 1,130 units and fell to 8th place. So it's not doing so bad at all, and the stats mean that those games above it are doing more units than that per week.
RC Air-Sim, for example, has as of today been on the top of the list for 10 of the last 11 weeks, so going by that it has done better than any other XBLCG title. We'd speculate that it could have done at least 20,000 units, and Aquarium HD has been sitting quite high as well for 6 weeks, and should have hit at least 5,000+ units as well just during that time.
So it's perhaps not too bad for some developers, but it still looks like a lot of developers looking to create more "core" games -- rather than cheaper software toys -- might have some work ahead of them if they wish to make a good amount of money off of their title.
[We thank Major Nelson for releasing these statistics, as well as James Silva for releasing his statistics for ZP2K9 to us. We also thank our colleagues at Gamasutra and on NeoGAF for spurring discussion and bringing more analysis to the table.]
Comments
I'm the sort who scopes out the major forums to see what sort of XBCG games are generating buzz, and I see a disconnect between these forums (full of enthusiasts) and these lists.
Which obviously tells us that there is a casual base of gamers out there that appreciate software like Rumble Masseuse, RC Airsim, Aquarium HD, and DrumKit. Compare the sales of these titles to titles such as Miner Dig Deep (which has been well received on most forums).
This disconnect between sales and web-hype is something I'm trying to analyze in a manner that would be helpful to developers. Obviously, there are a good number of people, people willing to spend money, who are more interested in "non-game" diversions (not to take anything away from these apps) rather than a gaming experience. These people outnumber the sort looking for a traditional game (ie. with rules, levels, objectives).
In a way, it's exciting. There is an audience out there. An audience with money. They just aren't necessarily interested in the horizontal bullet hell shmup you've been making. It also tells us that sales of 10K-20K are feasible...a good amount for anyone looking to make some money from XBCG.
In general I find this interesting and exciting mainly because nothing like XBCG has ever been done on the console-space. Allowing gamers to create and sell their own games...it's such a new concept that developers, gamers, NPD/sales charts enthusiasts, and even MS themselves, aren't sure how this is going to play out. It's a "brave new world".
I do think though that XBCG could be viewed as a platform in and of itself, and it needs to be "sold" to core gamers who are aware of it but are wary of the level of quality on it. Just as MGS sold the PSX, Halo sold the Xbox, Mario sold the NES, there needs to be a top-class game on XBCG to get people's heads turning. Sure there have been great games so far, but it seems that you need a game like Flower, Braid, etc. to really get people's attention.
Oh jeez, sorry for this long post Ryan. :/
Posted by: nrXic | April 18, 2009 7:16 AM