Top 100 USA Pre Orders - News
by Miles Taven , posted on 31 January 2012 / 9,276 Views
The Top 100 USA Pre Orders list consists of all retail games released from late 2009 onwards in the USA.
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Nice chart! Next-Gen could be even bigger on the pre-orders, hopefully by then we'll have a Europe chart. :-)
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Nothing sad 'bout having 7 shooters in the top10. 3 Modern Warfares however, is another matter.
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Hopefully the next mainline Elder Scrolls can get even greater pre-order numbers.
A few little things I have noticed. Please note I haven't run figures for these. First the obvious. Generally sequels have a small increase from pre-order to first week, except for a clear exception in CoD which is likely due to it's wide and casual appeal. It seems that perhaps reviews really do matter. A lot of the games with huge pre-order to first week increases are new games or sequels/franchises people were unsure about. Good examples being Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, AC2, Deus Ex, FF13. All games where people weren't sure of quality before hand either due to new ip, long dead franchise, negative hype or middling reviews for prior game then got very good to excellent reviews. Whereas games like Duke Nukem, Brink, Dante's inferno, medal of honor saw either very small increases or decreases. Interestingly I have always felt that with gamers there is a sort of mental divide between games above 80% which are strong buys and games under 80% that are either not worth it or something they will wait for. Of the games I checked (not all so lots of room for error) the ones that saw big increases from pre-orders to first week all scored over 80%, the ones that saw small increases or decreases all scored under 80% (using gamerankings). Only thing that immediately sticks out is Dark souls. However I suspect it's high difficulty put a lot of people off. Long post I know, sorry.
Also, The Old Republic preorders make me laugh. The game only sold slightly more than 600k in 2 Weeks of December. VGChartz had over 950k preorders... No.
I'm pretty sure despite VGChartz best efforts... Bioware and every other gaming company on the planet counts digital sales.
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Very cool. But it'd be even cooler if you could include a column for the increase from pre-orders to week one in percentage :D A quick Excel formula could do the trick.
Some of these had a really big jump from pre-orders to first week sales. Very interesting chart by the way!
Interesting to see the games with higher pre-orders than FW sales. Looks like "failure to launch" happens most with PS3, somewhat with PC and Wii and infrequently with 360. Interesting also to see those games with a massive increase (close to double or more) of week 1 over pre-order. Would be cool to colour code the FW sales: red for less than pre-order, black for <50% above pre-order, blue for 50%-99% above pre-order, [insert colour that denotes awesomeness] for 100%+ above pre-order.
This is a pre-orders list. For a chart of overall sales in 2011, visit this link: http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2011/USA/
There, you will find the following breakdown for 2011 total software sales, along with their YoY percentage change from last year.
Hardware:
360 7,476,541 (+5%)
Wii 5,048,112 (-32%)
3DS 4,636,233 (-32%)
PS3 4,468,855 (-4%)
DS 3,624,275 (-57%)
PSP 1,248,511 (-31%)
Software:
360 87,765,881 (+16%)
Wii 71,517,981 (-25%)
PS3 61,987,172 (+11%)
DS 43,645,895 (-23%)
3DS 11,238,751 (-23%)
PSP 8,289,953 (-30%)
PC 7,404,681 (+60%)
When keeping things in context, 360 is xbox country in 2011 hardware-wise, true. Software-wise, also in 2011. But notice the Wii is in decline since prior (it's since post-2009). For an idea of how things were, here is 2010:
Hardware:
DS 8,394,877 (-19%)
Wii 7,378,500 (-18%)
360 7,132,622 (+49%)
PS3 4,644,545 (+11%)
PSP 1,816,105 (-26%)
Software:
Wii 95,085,206 (+5%)
360 75,913,202 (+28%)
DS 56,619,246 (-18%)
PS3 55,765,995 (+37%)
PSP 11,772,576 (-23%)
PC 4,623,490 (-23%)
My point is reinforced. Yes, 2011 has been a good year for the 360, and especially (and more importantly) a weak one for Wii, which is eagerly expecting its follow-up console.
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This is a 2011 pre-orders chart. If you're looking for sales charts, here is where you whould go: http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2011/USA/
Hardware:
360 7,476,541 (+5%)
Wii 5,048,112 (-32%)
3DS 4,636,233 (-32%)
PS3 4,468,855 (-4%)
DS 3,624,275 (-57%)
PSP 1,248,511 (-31%)
Software:
360 87,765,881 (+16%)
Wii 71,517,981 (-25%)
PS3 61,987,172 (+11%)
DS 43,645,895 (-23%)
3DS 11,238,751 (-23%)
PSP 8,289,953 (-30%)
PC 7,404,681 (+60%)
As you can see, the Wii is in decline while the HD twins are generally flat or on the upswing.
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This is a 2011 pre-orders chart. If you're looking for sales charts, here is where you whould go to Chartz, Yearly, USA in the vgchartz hompage. Here are the sales for 2011.
Hardware:
360 7,476,541 (+5%)
Wii 5,048,112 (-32%)
3DS 4,636,233 (-32%)
PS3 4,468,855 (-4%)
DS 3,624,275 (-57%)
PSP 1,248,511 (-31%)
Software:
360 87,765,881 (+16%)
Wii 71,517,981 (-25%)
PS3 61,987,172 (+11%)
DS 43,645,895 (-23%)
3DS 11,238,751 (-23%)
PSP 8,289,953 (-30%)
PC 7,404,681 (+60%)
As you can see, the Wii is in decline while the HD twins are generally flat or on the upswing.
Here it is for 2010.
Hardware:
DS 8,394,877 (-19%)
Wii 7,378,500 (-18%)
360 7,132,622 (+49%)
PS3 4,644,545 (+11%)
PSP 1,816,105 (-26%)
Software:
Wii 95,085,206 (+5%)
360 75,913,202 (+28%)
DS 56,619,246 (-18%)
PS3 55,765,995 (+37%)
PSP 11,772,576 (-23%)
PC 4,623,490 (-23%)
Keeping things into perspective, the 360 is winner of NA in 2011, , but that is because the Wii is is eagerly awaiting its successor this year. Still as you can see the Wii was winner in sales for 2010. Also, in the top 100 for 2010, you will see an assortment of games from all platforms, with the Wii holding 9 games in the top 20.
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I forgot to mention above that, post-2009 is decline for Wii, but 2009 and prior, the Wii was the clear winner in terms of sales in NA. Take a look at the charts yourself. ;)
Just as an example, here is 2009:
Hardware:
DS 10,369,446 (+2%)
Wii 8,989,309 (-9%)
360 4,787,281 (-2%)
PS3 4,172,494 (+20%)
PSP 2,452,361 (-36%)
Software:
Wii 90,141,989 (+8%)
DS 68,773,746 (+2%)
360 59,287,153 (-2%)
PS3 40,837,533 (+19%)
PSP 15,251,011 (-9%)
The pattern is pretty much the same in 2008.
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Why don't Nintendo fans preorder as much as 360/PS3 fans, despite the huge userbase advantage?
I would say lack of advertising. The only adds we get to see (wii games) are nintendo adds.
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Because the most of them are casual gamers(not saing everyone are that but most)
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The total pre-order versus total sales numbers (not in this article) would show that much of the Nintendo games on this list end up being picked up by consumers at the shelf.
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Haha, top 5 are xbox 360, really shows how much they dominate the multi console games.
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Amazing how big the first week of PS3 games are when compared to the preorders and how small the 360 games first week's are when compared to their massive preorders.
Oh wow . Socom 4 : 160 198 pre order ... First week : 155,414 ... Are you serious vgchartz ?
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it's a small generation after all it's a small generation after all a small small generation
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