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A new report from GameSetWatch shows that to date only one Sony published PS3 exclusive title, Insomniac’s Resistance: Fall of Man, has sold over 1m units in North America in the two and a half years that PS3 has been on the market.
The only other title to even near the seven figure sales mark is Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, whose US unit sales sit between 750k-1m.
A number of titles have sold 500k-750k units – Insomniac’s Resistance 2, Guerrilla Games’ Killzone 2, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.
Those yet to reach the half a million mark include Evolution;s MotorStorm, Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank and Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword. Both MotorStorm: Pacific Rift and Hot Shot Golf are yet to sell 250k units.
Note these sales numbers, which are based on NPD stats, do not include games sold as part of hardware bundles.
The numbers appear all the more noteworthy when compared with big first party titles on other systems. Microsoft’s Gears of War, for instance, hit the 1m sales mark after just a month on the market and had reached nearly 2m unit sales by the end of its second month. And that was at a time when the Xbox 360 user base stood at less than 3m – the PS3’s US install base is currently around the 7m mark.
As GameSetWatch notes, whilst Sony launched the PS2 with just one self-published title – the still under-rated FantaVision – PS3 was launched with the might of several first party games under its belt.
However, rather than relying on established IP Sony was keen for studios to bring fresh franchises to the table.
We’re still waiting for the PS3’s God of War (PS2 title God of War II actually hit the market after the arrival of is successor) the likes of Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Evolution were encouraged to put established brands such as Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank and World Rally Championship on the backburner in favour of new titles such as Resistance, Uncharted and MotorStorm.
