New Feature. Well, this whole site is a new feature. So call it a new mini-feature. Mineature, if you will.
- Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (PS3)
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (360)
- Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii)
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (PS3)
- Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (Wii)
- Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training (DS)
- Wii Play (Wii)
- Carnival: Funfair Games (Wii)
- Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)
- Sega Superstars Tennis (Wii)
So, on a breakdown, let’s take a look.
- Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is just a glorified Demo/Beta of GT5, so why are so many people buying the damn thing? Are they really that needy for a decent PS3 game? I know MGS4 is going to absolutely nail itself to the number 1 spot for a few weeks, but is the PS3 games market really this weak?
- Rainbow 6 takes up two of the spots on the chart, at 2 and 4 for the 360 and PS3 respectively. If you compare the amount of 360 owners to that of PS3, once again it looks like the PS3 games pool must be pretty weak to get so many people to buy one game (which has been publicised to be buggy as a beehive on several sites. See here).
- Five of the games (M&S at China, Kawa’s BT, Wii Play [Seriously, how can that even be considered a game anymore? It’s just a cheap Wiimote + Disc] and Funfair Games) are Minigame collections. Two generations ago, this would’ve been seen as nothing short of a travesty of gaming. But because these games are all on the Wii/DS, the new demographic isn’t gamers anymore. Nintendo can get away with it, because the expectations of said demographic are so low, compared to that of previous generations.
Four fully fledged games are up there, and two of them are just for different systems. That’s depressing.
Having a quick look at the surprises:
- 16/19. CoD4 (down 11 for the PS3/down 15 for the 360): Quite a steep drop for a game that constantly tussles with Halo3 for the top Live game
- 20. God of War: Chains of Olympus (New Entry): I would’ve thought it would’ve made more of an impact than that. I hope they gear up the ad campaign and sell some more.
All in all, I’m not really sure I wanted to take a look at this in retrospect. If we removed the DS and Wii games, we wouldn’t have games like Metroid Prime, HotD and Mario Strikers in at all, but including them in the charts removes the whole ‘gaming’ thing. Because each of these minigame collections is basically one of those cheap, tacky 101 in 1 games machines you buy on holiday to keep your child quiet (after removing the speaker), in cartridge form.
Tags: gamingcharts, chart-track