Is selling a million still a good landmark?

Dr Mario Kart

The problem is that even with an expansion of the userbase, costs have grown at a much faster pace than sales. From The Escapist: (A bit outdated, but the point still stands)

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:


Exhibit C:


The last chart is the one that is truly disturbing. If it is to be believed, the vast majority of games have actually been LOSING an increasing amount of money (I believe they may have said 4 out of 5). The publisher is basically waiting until they strike it with a popular title, then using the profits to fund any number of failed ventures until they can get lucky once again.

With that said, 1 million is still good, yes.

Pheezer

Since those charts, if they are to be believed, indicate that on average a game sells 100,000 units, selling ten times as many as the average title is probably a pretty damned good thing.

The obvious problem is, using averages the way those charts do is complete bullshit.

emnmnme

DrDizaster wrote: »

Since those charts, if they are to be believed, indicate that on average a game sells 100,000 units, selling ten times as many as the average title is probably a pretty damned good thing.

The obvious problem is, using averages the way those charts do is complete bullshit.

How do you mean? Games cost the same now as they did twenty years ago.

Blake T

Look at the top 5 of game sales though it's really quite interesting.

Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green (Game Boy - 20.08 million approximately, 10.23 million in Japan,[32] 9.85 million in US)[38]
2. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES - 18 million)[29]
3. Nintendogs (DS - 14.79 million)[55]
4. Pokémon Gold and Silver (Game Boy - 14.51 million approximately, 7.6 million in US,[38] 6.91 million in Japan)[32]
5. Super Mario Land (Game Boy - 14 million)[29]

The only console in there is the DS, and we need to go to number 6 (Vice City) to get to the last generation of consoles and that was released 5 years ago.

(It should be noted that occording to the wiki the orriginal Super Mario sold 40 million but this was a bundled game)

I really posted this to point out that no game for a while has been a really huge seller. There may be a few more games that sell well but few that really capture the imgaination of everyone.