For those wondering sales statistics for game systems in December (and they were high)....

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Gameboy Advance SP sold 2.5 million
Playstation 2 sold 1.8 million
Gamecube sold 1.1 million
and Xbox sold 991 thousand.

There weren't any very big name titles this year, with Mario Kart being the top game this holiday season selling just over a million. In my opinion: this year looks like it has a lot more to offer than the previous 2 years combined.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I laugh at XBox.</div>

[G-man Joe]

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>I spit on the Xbox. =8^)</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Still some good games for it. This gen, the GC is like the DC, lots of good games no one is buying; Xbox is like the N64, a few great games, some good ports (it gets the best ports), and lots of crap.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>the average stuff is what sells the sytems not the good stuff. You can't possibly explain all of PS2 system sales on just the good games alone (# of systems >> # of good games sold)</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>If anything, the average games are only going to be for the diehards that need a game every week. The normal folk will only buy the recommended games, the best games. Sure, some people have niches, such as GBA/PSX's RPG niche, or N64's (for the most part) kiddie image.

Think about it. What does the average person ask when they get a new system for it? "What are some good games for it?" They don't ask "What are some average games for it?" They don't need to waste time on average games, when there are better ones out there.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Of all the people I know who bought Playstations, The only ones I know who bought it for FF7 are here at the Shrine. Most people I know bought it because of the "200 games available" thing. But I do know some who bought it for Gran Turismo (Only God knows why) and the Resident Evil series.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>THe Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2 each have hundreds of games available for them, more than was ever available for the N64 or Dreamcast. Most of the games on each system are crap, and the PS2. The Dreamcast was the system that had a few good games and a lot of crap, the N64 probably had the lowest ratio of crappy games of any system ever existing (that was major, of course) because none of the crappy companies could really afford to develop for the system (which had the highest development costs of any major videogame system to date). On average, an N64 game sold WAY higher than a game on any other system. There are 3 Xbox games that have sold over a million in North America (according to NPD), 5 Gamecube games, and 23 PS2 games. Only 5 games from this generation have sold more than 2 million; there are 16 games on the N64 that sold over 2 million copies in North America. You can't really compare it to the Xbox, the Xbox has Halo, the N64 had all those Nintendo games, Zelda, Zelda 2, Mario, Banjo, Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Smash Brothers, and so on.

Dreamcast, it had 1 game that sold a million copies, and a million was all it sold. There are a lot of good Dreamcast games, but the line-up on Dreamcast does not stand up to any of the major consoles out now, all of the good Dreamcast games were ported to Gamecube anyways (where they actually sold more). Yes Dreamcast is a pretty good system, one worth buying, I had a lot of fun with it during the two years that it was alive, A LOT of fun, but that was with only a few games, it only really had 5 o6 or 7 really good games on it (and two of those are two of my favourite games ever, Skies and SC), the rest were crap in comparrison to other games on other consoles. You can't really compare it to the Gamecube, the Dreamcast had Soul Calibur, Sonic, Skies of Arcadia, Resident Evil, and some other titles, well Gamecube also has Skies of Arcadia, Sonic, Resident Evil, and Soul Calibur, but it also has: Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers, F-Zero, AC, Viewtiful Joe, Eternal Darkness, and on. Dreamcast had a lot of Sports games too, but I don't like Sports games for the most part (They seem pointless and boring for the most part, except for NHL and PGA games) so I can't say anything on them.</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>PS2 has lots of great games, average games, and crap games. It just has it all, which is why it's the runaway leader</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>The FF7 example was an extreme case, but people aren't keeping track of the number of games per console. They see good games on certain systems and buy based on that.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>FF7 sold around 3 million. If every person who bought a FF7 bought a PSX because of FF7, that'd account for 3 million PSX sales... which leaves a lot of PSX sales not accounted for.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>If every copy of a 'great' game was responsible for someone buying a PSX, you still have the majority of PSX hardware sales not accounted for.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Plus there are people like me who bought a PSX before FF7 was even known to be on that system, but still bought FF7. I forgot Crash Bandicoot (FF76 sold 2.45M by the way) which sold about 3M copies each, that was the PSX's major game series.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Focussing on the number of games released on the system was central to SCE's marketing of the console when it was at its hottest. Though they did use Crash as a mascot.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Well yeah, but I mean it's obvious a game can't sell more systems than the number of games that was sold (someone who didn't buy the game surely didn't buy the system for that game), so it's just an overestimate of how many systems game sold, and it's still not nearly enough.</div>