Xbox 360 finally topples Wii's dominance

Well for September that is. Thanks to Halo 3. It was pretty obvious that it was going to happen. Read more here...

Halo 3 managed to push the sales of the 360 to 527,000 units and the Wii only sold 501,000 units. This is a first time in 9 months that the Wii made it to second place...

Erm ...
You are aware that this are only US numbers, are you?
There are 2 more continents.

MS does not sell any consoles in Japan, at least not more than a few tousands per week.

But at least the article clearly specifies, that this only was possible due to Nintendos stock shortage on Wii as usual ...
Something MS does not have to fear ^^



That one is just too good.
If MS really had any other game beside Halo 3 that would sell good enough they wouldn't be in second position world wide behind Nintendo and that with about a year more time.
And if they want to see what "hyped outsell" means, they should have a look at pokemon diamond and pearl ... against that, halo 3 doesn't win anything.

What dreamora said.

PS: Dont you mean 6 more continents :P)

(Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Antarctica(a survey stated 9 out of 10 penguins said "wii-wii-wii" when asked))

Halo 3 did dominate the Japanese charts actually ... pretty amazing for an American game ;)

Wii may be selling lots of units, but hardly any games. If you follow the Japanese gaming headlines things havent been looking that great. The only game that really sold in Japan was Wii Sports which is sold seperately.

Xbox games and systems are selling very well everywhere except Japan really. Wasn't a single Wii, 360 or PS3 game in the top5 in Japan last week. They seem to be more into mobile gaming there.

wow, Game sales in the US were $1.63 billion for the month, and Xbox360 sold 527.800 units. Mostly due to Halo 3. Wii wasn't far behind whilst PS3 only sold 118,000 units.

Halo single handedly raised console game sales by 64% compared to last year, whilst hardware sales were up 188%

Pretty crazy stuff really.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17836

Japan folks are really into those casual stuff, especially the DS so i wouldnt be surprise if the hardcore stuff there doesn't too well.

It's not doing much better anywhere else. A recent survey of Wii owners apparently had two-thirds saying they hadn't touched it at all lately. Although quite how you define lately is a bit vague. Still, it's not good.

I haven't touched my Wii in about 2+ months.

It's funny how just because Halo 3 came out, all of the sudden "XBox 360 games are selling like mad". It was the same around "Gears of War" time. Suddenly a good game is released (and I can understand you being upset you only on average get one of those a year) surprise surprise, people buy it, and suddenly the XBox 360 isn't a 27 billion USD embarrassment for Microsoft.

Makes you kind of curious how much better the Wii will be doing after Nintendo lets out its big guns (well, actually, just Mario titles <.<) within the next 5 months eh?

I know quite a few people that have been holding out on the Wii until Smash Bros Brawler comes out....

For all those Wii fans: DELAYED

Actually I think that was only Japanese survey...

I enjoy alot of games on the wii. Wii Sports, Mario Part 8, Zelda TP, my kids love Pokemon Revolution, and im sure ill love the upcomming Star Wars "The Force Unleashed" on all platforms almost, but specifically recrafted for the wii to take advantage of its control scheme, as well as a wii only multiplayer sabre duel mode.

I dont play my wii everyday, but I dont play my ds or pc games every day either. Well I take that back, im working my way through Zelda Phantom Hourglass, but thats my weakness, I cant put a zelda game down until ive beaten it, then ill be back to my normal game schedule of once every few days.

Wii is the champ imo. MS is lucky the halo series has a dedicated userbase.

Only about 5 good games come out a year across all platforms, for me they tend to be PC or 360 games. I don't have a 360 though, consoles are too expensive and don't do a lot other than play games.

"consoles are too expensive"

Compared to a top/mid range PC they are cheap. I find the it's the games that are expensive.

"don't do a lot other than play games."
Thats true but they do it flawlessly ( supposedly but I believe the PC gamming problems are creeping in, as they seem to be getting more like PC's with every next console released)

Do I own a games console ..... No, not since I bought a second hand PS One ( and I only played the about ten times ). I find PC's a useful tool to have and a lot more fun ;-)

I'm a wii and NDS owner (X360 might follow when the amount of great games that are no shooters or PGR) and play the games on them quite regularily.

But for the moment, there is the common problem: Due to the summer hole in the USA, its still "going on" in europe, especially if you want interesting games ...
This means, at the moment I wait for Mario ;-)
Most of the interesting wii games actually have counterparts on NDS, which is why the Wii might not have that great game sales until Q1 / Q2 of 2008

So X-Box 360 has 1 game to buy?
X-Box 360 will certainly be more popular in America, but against the rest of the world definitely not.

In Japan X-Box 360 sales have always been low.

> especially the DS so i wouldnt be surprise
> if the hardcore stuff there doesn't too well.

Hardcore stuff does do well in Japan, just not on an X-Box.

In the past couple of months PSP has overtaken DS in system sales thanks to 2 well timed Final Fantasy exclusives.
So I guess even casual game systems can be under threat if you don't secure some exclusive deals. So the Wii might not be as invincible as everyone first thought if the PS3 was to secure some exclusive games.

X360: Project Gotham Racing 4 looks prehhttyy cool.

Not that it'd make me get a X360, still getting plenty of play out my xbox and GC. My PS2 is on the way out... nothing lasts forever. Transformers on the NDS is impressive....

What? Like Gears of War and Halo 3 weren't delayed? Wasn't Halo 3 supposed to be a launch title?

I buy at least one game every month, not counting the impulse bought DS games. Most of them are Wii games.

By consoles being expensive, I meant that I can't justify paying lots of money for a system and expensive games. Not when all I get to do is play games.

I'm very picky, like less than 5% of the games that come out, those I do like are played through once and completed in a week, never to be played again.

PC is a much better investment since I have more fun making games or playing with the technology than I do actually playing games. Plus it has many non gaming uses that are often more important. I can do so much more with a PC than a console. A decent Vid card is good for a couple of years, and even though my system is made up of components between 2-4 years old it still plays all the latest games that I like very well.

Oblivion, Bioshock, company of heroes, Medieval 2, mohab, Double Agent, X3 Reunion all run at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 with all the details on but minimal or no AA. And thats on a 4 year old CPU and 2 year old GPU.

PC hardware has already overtaken PS3 and 360, and the games I'm currently waiting for are Assasins Creed, Gears of War, possibly Hellgate London.

Well that's odd, because mine is about two and a half years old, and it doesn't play anything very well. In fact most things it plays quite poorly.

Mine are Mass Effect, GTA4 and Tabula Rasa. And the hardware to play them on.

I have a socket 754 A64 3000+ which is equivalent to your cpu only the Athlon64 was known to produce a higher average FPS back in those days whilst the intels had higher peaks and more frequent lows in games.

1gb 333mhz ddr ram, 256mb 7800GS AGP (I checked and it's actually 18 months old)

Your videocard is why you can't play modern games. I bought this one off of Ledwerks, previously had a 6600GT which is a little faster than yours and could only play the latest games at 800x600 with most things turned up. The 7800GS is about 5-6x faster than the 6600GT at resolutions over 1024x768 and much better at sm 3.0 shaders, plus the extra Vram means you can actually turn all the graphics right up.

The Nforce mobos seem to share system ram with the GPU really well too, which really helped when I had the 6600GT.

Also I'm quite happy to play any game with the graphics maxed out so long as the framerates are between 30 and 60 FPS, which I feel is quite acceptable.

If you got a 7800GS you would most likely get at least a 5x performance boost too. 8600GTS is several times faster than the 7800 again at $150

Oh yeah, I like almost any Bioware game other than NWN2. Can't believe I forgot Mass Effect

I have an X1650XT now. The sig is old.

Yeah, and it's the fact that I have a laptop that's holding me back (and the fact that it's almost two years old). Right now, I am in the process of building a nice gaming rig, and to me, I probably could trade in a few X360 games for the PC counterparts, just to get back into the keyboard and mouse mode, once and for all. To me, even tho I do like the X360 and Wii equally, I'd still have to say that most of the games that I've seen, especially the multiplatform ones, usually do wind up on the PC anyway, especially X360 games. So, I'm gonna be glad to come back to the PC, and get moving forward. Even some Blitz games I've been trying to put together just ain't gonna cut it on this dead-end "pad" if you will. The fact I have Vista on here ain't gonna make things any better.

> PC is a much better investment since I have
> more fun making games or playing with the
> technology than I do actually playing games.

LOL. The PS3, Wii and X-Box360 have been out each for over a year now. If they were PCs they'd be old and outdated by now and wouldn't be able to run the latest game too well.
And that's not even including the flaky stability of running in Windows.

Also, you then have stuff like Vista which will cripple your system performance of your PC well before its time.

Is this an XBox 360 thread?!?! ;)

I played PGR4 this weekend. I felt that the control of the cra wasn't responsive enough. In my opinion, Forza 2 is still the better game.

As for good games for the 360, Call of Duty 4 comes out in November. It is going to be GREAT!! I can't wait for that one.

True, and I'd like to think that Test Drive Unlimited and Burnout Revenge seem to make the grade, too. However, Forza and PGR were supposed to really compete head on with Gran Turismo, and I'm still hoping that the two vs. one goes on a while. Wow, dunno how Microsoft has two driving franchises, while Sony only has one.

I got all achievements in Test Drive unlimited. Until Forza 2 came out, it was my driving sim of choice.

The first PGR's werent supposed to be realistic. the whole point was to have fun in a tony hawk kind of way, with point multipliers, controlling your car with finesse whilst driving at the edge 11/10ths so you can chain those drift manouvers together to get big money and buy better cars.

It wasn't at all a realistic sim in PGR 1 and 2. I havent played 3. 2 Was my favourite.

Forza was cool but it looked like a sim with funny over diffuse lighting, and you never feel like your driving fast till you hit a corner. Only to find what seemed like 30mph was double that.

I must be really lucky BTW. I rarely have any game problems on my PC, and next gen consoles are already out of date compared to PC's. Especially this gen where GPU is concerned. There just isn't a big enough market on the PC so fewer cutting edge games come out for it. But at least PC games tend to have more depth and are less pick up and simple play. Most console games are way too shallow.

True. I disliked that aspect of it.



I never get that. I think it simulates the speed very well. That game is all about speed when you get to the faster cars. It is easy to lose control and wipeout even on very slight turns when driving really fast. I ove fast cars on that Nurburbring course (12 miler, tight narrow roads)...



I never have problems running games on mine either. But you can't turn the detail up when your hardware gets to be a bit dated. You see great graphics in the ads, but can't achieve them on your PC. THought, it does look nice, you can never get the best.



Not really. Outdated by PC standards. But, games on consoles get better and better as developers learn to push the hardware. They don't have to do that with PC games, and that is the problem. They just expect you to get a faster vid card and CPU. They don't have to really do their best to get the most from the hardware. That is why console game continue to get better even though the hardware doesn't change. But newer PC games never play better on old hardware. A brand new game expects brand new hardware ot get decent graphics. If you have a slightly older card, too bad.



No, the PC game market is still quite large. It just that developers don't have to push the hardware. And, it is difficult to push the hardware when you can't do anything for a specific piece of hardware. With consoles, they know the exact hardware the customer has and can push it to its limits.



Some are some aren't. I agree, there are more RPG and RTS style games on the PC that have huge stories and whatnot. But there are a few on consoles. Zelda, Oblivion, C&C, etc...

This is kind of a funny thing to knock consoles for on a forum on a website where many of the developers develop casual indie games. :)



There are many, I agree. But I do not think Most is true. Gears of War was very in depth. There are many RPGs on consoles in Japan, they just don't leave Japan. But, there are just as many shallow PC games.

If you were to do a side by side comparison, big budget game for big budget game, I think it would be fairly equal.

Well, i'm not sure anymore. :p

If you wait for TR, I hope you've played the beta
Otherwise you will be seriously unsatisfied with what you get and shocked by the fact that you either have a higher end shooter gaming rig or beeing forced to use low settings as the engine is fully shader driven like vanguards piece of .... (I've been long time beta tester)


I'm with those here who only buy a few games a year. although this for me means "a few games at launch"
buying games from the rest boxes and the like is a different thing, especially after I get really great games there for 15$

I don't pay 60$ for "HD" games.

I recently got a 360 with halo 3 and pgr4. I've not regretted it so far. racing games on consoles are brilliant, and I just can't get the same experience playing on a PC. Halo 3 is a bit different, as I mainly play FPS's on the PC, but with halo it's fine playing on the TV, it's also an awesome game, which helps.
Regarding other aspects, I've bought the orange box on PC instead of 360 due to the modding opportunities, I'm already playing HL2 maps using portal, which is pretty good fun, and let's you explore bits of the level you can't normally get to.

I like Japanese RPGs, almost to the exclusion of other genres these days, so for me a console is essential to my gaming. Modern PC gaming sucks for many reasons, expense, hardware headaches, and the distinct lack of the type of games that I like to play being but three of them.