John-ShepardWell, we know they were excellent in terms of quality, but how about sales? That is the one question that has resulted in facing the Achilles Heel of the PlayStation 3 thus far, but as the user base grows, that drawback continues to disintegrate (thankfully).
Exclusives did relatively well in 2008 – especially for Nintendo, but what else is new? – and that includes the likes of Fable II for the Xbox 360 hitting 1.2 million sales worldwide, and Konami's masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots , topping the 1 million mark in the U.S. alone (over 4 million worldwide). Unfortunately, the other two major PS3 exclusives for the year, while both of excellent quality, didn't perform quite as well. They're not exactly disappointments from a sales standpoint, but considering initial projections, both LittleBigPlanet and Resistance 2 have underperformed: Media Molecule's innovative platformer (which dominated the recent AIAS Awards nominations), sold around 611,000 copies in the U.S., while Insomniac's awesome sequel sold just over 600,000 in the same region. Now, we're always saying we should see more IPs, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to compete against established franchises. Still, with over one million sold worldwide for both LBP and R2, that should be enough to encourage IP-minded developers.
It's just that, if you're wondering how any of this compares to games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Gears of War 2 …well, just don't bother to make that comparison.
