Killzone 2 would have sold 4 million on Xbox 360

Mike Ferro Writes:

"Sony recently announced that Killzone 2 sold over a million units. A million during the middle of the year is great by any measure, but it does seem a bit low for the title. The game is without a doubt a AAA title with excellent reviews, so what went wrong? If the title was on the Xbox 360 undoubtedly it would have sold at least four million units.

Killzone 2 is probably the biggest title to hit 2009 thus far, yet its sales were not as high as expected. Don't get me wrong a million units is a great achievement, but it doesn't really match the reviews given by the vast majority of the gaming community. With over 21 million PS3s in the wild there is something fishy going on here."

[Expy]

No it wouldn't have because it's first party.

[pwnsause]

first party games sell. the marketing for this game was just not there. they lost so many opportunities to sell this game (ex. Super Bowl) they could of advertised the game there, not to mention it was at approx around a month before the game was to launch. yet they advertise it a week prior. seriously, people need to get fired for that.

[gaffyh]

I don't care how much it sold, as long as I got a great game, nothing else matters really does it? Or do you guys seriously think WiiSports is the best game ever because it has sold the most?

[MURKERR]

lets not kid ourselves with fanboy crap considering the SPUs needed, after 3 years the best 360 has produced graphically is gears which is 360s benchmark,MGS4,uncharted and definately KZ2 have way surpassed that

kz2 will sell great over a sustained period as history as proven with 95% of ps3 games

[table]

but the games graphics would suffer on the 360 so we are speaking hypothetically here. I want to play a great game for my own enjoyment, not because of how much it can sell.

I don't understand why people on this site care so much for sales. These major companys must be lighting their cigars with £20 notes and laughing so hard that they crap themselves when they read some of the comments you get on this site - fanboys cant really get their heads around that statement...

A note on sales;
The PS3 will always have a variety of games that will sell well. Rarely do we see a none shooter on the 360 selling, but we see this all the time on PS3 e.g. street fighter and resident evil selling better on the ps3 with a smaller install base.

[heroicjanitor]

They would've had to cut the development budget, which microsoft would definitely have no qualms about considering their first party policies, so yeah it would've been advertised better on the 360. Would've been a worse game though.

[Labwarriorbot]

What? You mean like how the Lost & Damned has sold 4 million at least...Oh wait.

Speculation and fanboy dreams do not mix. Halo wars has barely sold 1 million. Keep talking trash about Ps3 yo.

Fact is, 360 is done.

EDIT: You can disagree but the 360 is done.
- 9 billion in red
- MS fired half of the XBOX division
- Sony has 9 Triple A blockbusters lined up for 2009. Microsoft has zero.
- Blu Ray has taken over as the standard medium
- Bungie is gone. Guerilla, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, ICO, Santa Monica, Naughty Dog are just WARMING UP.
- RROD and ERROR 74.
- How long do you want this list to be? I can name 40 other items.

[7thNightvolley]

dude please dont try to compare kz2 and gears2 coz in the time which killzone2 was made gears1 and gears 2 came out that is less that is 2 years each for dev...! what do u think would happen if gears2 took 5 years like killzone2 did and they had all the time to even make a new engine for gears2.. what do u think would happen do u even sit and think of this i dont think so.. coz ur fanboy hat is on and u are not looking at the big picture here. All i am saying is this if MS decides to make a proper proprietary engine for the 360 just as sony is doing ppl would be shocked what they can pull off.

[7thNightvolley]

ps3 is most suited to muliti games that are not fpshooters, games like res5 and gow and car racing etc would do so well on the system not as such as fps .. unlike the 360 that is a FPS heaven, no matter how u look at it that is one genre 360 audience 95 percent of the time play at least i know all my ppl i have met that play a 360 love to shoot stuff. so if they say kz2 would do 4 million on 360 well personally i would beileve it would do even 6 mil.

[ravinash]

I sure it may have sold more in the US if it was on 360, but as time goes on and more people start getting PS3s, it will keep selling.
in the rest of the world the total number of PS3 is equal to 360 (higher in some countries, lower in others) so it would make much difference there.

It might not be a kid friendly as Halo, so it won't get the same numbers, but I know there are a lot of people who want to play it but are just waiting for the price tag on a PS3 to go down.

[Doctor_Doom]

GG need to add "The Movie" to KZ2 cover so, it will look like this Killzone 2 : The Movie and trust me guys it will sell like no tomorrow

[Trollimite]

would have sold 7 million copies on the wii. that dosent mean it belongs on that system.

amirite!

[All-3]

Sales SHOULDN'T hurt your personal enjoyment of Killzone 2... it was a great game - IMO as well... BUT..

SALES <--- can indicate how POPULAR a game is - YES?

As far as Killzone 2 goes... it WAS a super hyped game and one of the MOST talked about games leading up to its release - so stop with the lack of marketing chit-chat. The game just ISN'T as popular as many hoped it would be.

The reality so far is:

#1) It was not the PS3 system-seller it was hoped to be.

#2) It has not been the Triple-A 1st party exclusive PS3 shooter to beat or even come close to the much larger and faster selling Xbox 360 shooters like Halo 3 or Gears of War ... at least NOT within the same time frames and install base numbers.

NO - sales shouldn't matter at all concerning YOUR personal enjoyment of the game... but sales CAN show how popular a game is at the moment, and it appears that Killzone 2 with a PS3 install base of 21 Million... IS NOT as popular as Xbox 360 games such as Halo 3, Gears of War were for the 360 when the 360 install base was LESS THAN 21 million units.

Even Halo Wars reached more than one million units worldwide faster than Killzone 2... so perhaps Killzone 2 just isn't as popular as many want it to be?

[MURKERR]

i prefer ps3,but im far from a fanboy,fact of the matter is 360s best is gears which has been bested by not one but a few games graphically, and if you want to talk about timeframe then TOO HUMAN should be graphically head and shoulders above the rest

your points have now been nulled

[ZuperAmazingCooKie]

Can you prove this or are you just taking this random cypher out of your butthole?

[pixelsword]

So whatever.

[raztad]

@All-3

1) It was not the PS3 system-seller it was hoped to be.

Not it wasnt. I think is mostly a Sony's fault. KZ2 could use some advertising, KZ2 is essentially a new IP, unknown outside teh internetzz. That said, game has sold pretty well worldwide, and it will keep selling.

#2) It has not been the Triple-A 1st party exclusive

Quality wise KZ2 is beyond AAA is AAAA, but after reading a lot of comments on this furum I got the feeling that KZ2 is the game many 360 fans wish (secretly) be on their system :D, and because they know it will not then they hate it to death.

[Genesis5]

Well I guess we'll never know will we. That and GOW III, Uncharted 2 and Infamous might sell more too. Doesn't mean you'll ever get to play them unless you buy a PS3.

[edhe]

"No it wouldn't have because it's first party. "

And there you have the problem with the first party studio model.

Sony want the exclusivity, MS let them do their own thing with some cash in had deals for timed exclusives. Sony method screws great devs out of a whole other platform of sales, MS allows them to expand.

Port any first party title to the 360 effectively and i'm sure they'd earn a few more million off it. What's more.. Sony would get cash too.

First party exclusivity became a bad idea as soon as this gen got running and the crash hit. If we want good devs to get their Dues they cannot be constricted by publishers. It's only worth it if the title's blockbuster yet 'cheap' to produce, like Gears [10m dev costs, 5m+ sold.]

wonder how viva pinata for DS sold...hm, .39m, that's a fair few bob - should've released it in Japan...

Honestly, port out killzone2, LBP and MGS4 and try *not* to make money.

[Lifendz]

Very funny opening comment. Bubbles up.

[RememberThe357]

Do you understand the concept of a first-part studio?

They are entirely owned and financed by the console manufacturer. They get payed to make exclusive games, no matter the sales. Being a first party developer is a damn good deal.

On Sony's side, their first party is the only reason their console is selling right now. If Sony didn't have the first-part they did, they'd be done. Sony's decision to bulk up their first party, was the best decision they made that gen. It's paying them back immensely.

You all know that even though Killzone 2 hasn't sold as much as it was expected to, GG is already working on the next title.

[FlameBaitGod]

Lol love how the people with multiple acc's are disagreeing and putting agrees with their post. They should put the disagrees and agrees like when u have to approve articles, that u need a certain thing changed in order to be able to use another acc to approve again. Wont say what tho :P

[videogamefreak]

one thing first, i don't think anyone in this thread is a game developer, including me. most of the crap i see posted in here is all argumentative. no one in this thread has any proof that killzone 2 couldn't be done on 360.

"maybe so, one thing though...360 couldn't run killzone 2", by murkker

you guys used to say final fantasy 13 couldn't be done on 360, now look!

the only thing that is a "problem" for 360 is disk space, not graphical capability.

[FlameBaitGod]

Who said FF couldn't be done on the 360 ? Cus from my understanding any game can be done in any console, the quality of the game is the one that changes.

[ThanatosDMC]

How cute... they want it on their 360s....

[pain777pas]

Shooters audience is a 360 audience and I think that Sony wanted to bring some 360 players to the PS3 with this game showing them that we have great shooters too. Xbox was founded upon shooters and shooters continue to be the big sellers for xbox owners IE gears and COD series. Truth is it would do better on the 360 because that is the taste of the user base. PS user base is not for shooters more RPGs and all types of games. I think that shooters will always sell better on the xbox because the NA market the largest videogame consumers will gravitate towards that for entertainment. This is not a bad thing. Sony is making games that will last. If COD MW2 is graphically close to KZ2 I will be suprised I played the demo again yesterday to show someoneand was alittle shocked at how everything looked so good the lighting and water and ground textures etc......... KZ2 is definitely a me too game but a really good one surpassing the champ in everyway though as always I have a soft spot for the champ and Halo is still very fun to play and listen too.

[Grown Folks Talk]

How many more times am I gonna see that BS? The friggin slo mo commercial was on every 5 minutes of every day. The game just didn't appeal to as many people as they thought it would. & don't start with the "Smart people think it's great, xbots just are scared of it." crap either. Everybody doesn't have the same tastes & likes. Everybody doesn't like the same foods, movies, music, cars, women/men, clothes, ect. Video games are no damn different.

[Sharingan_no_Kakashi]

........................

[Sharingan_no_Kakashi]

stop approving monotonous articles bashing sony's marketing. We already know they suck at marketing. We already know their marketing causes bad sales.

[Says you]

Just look at Halo 3 the only exclusive that XBox 360 fans care about since it sold 10 million Sony doesn't concentrate on one game to sell 10 million they can do what Microsoft did but since Sony has so many first party and second party studios they would like every game that is made from first party and second party to sell a million or more

and again Killzone 2 it would look like crap just like most of the XBox 360 games are! and if Microsoft promised that Killzone 2 will look like the trailer they will fail just like there doing this gen with there XBox 360 RROD and Er74 losing studios and third party exclusives and there exclusive and time exclusive and there no need for HDMI or 720 is the sweet spot or no need for 1080p, games that are sub HD hell Sony has more people online then them and they have been out longer then Sony's PS3

and of course not to mention it only took the PS3 2 years to reach 21 million but since it sold 2 million in the UK and 3 million in Japan that would mean it would be 23 milliion or 24 million considering PS3 might already be 22 million since Sony announced that they were at 21 million worldwide

and the XBox 360 only sold like what in 2 years 16 million but PS3 sold in a faster rate then that console.

[OmarJA]

Bubbles...

Well the bots are too dumb to realize that, i guess their just a little desperate this year.

[felidae]

lolol yeah eaxctly ... desperate ...lolol

[Insomnia_84]

a game sells 1 million in one month and a half on ONE console with just an ad on TV...how is that a bad thing??? 0_o

I bet you anything the developers think the opposite.

Remember this game has only been in one console not even on PC, there was no KZ condoms, no KZ toilet paper, no KZ on 7Eleven cups, no KZ cereal.

PS3 players are not paying for things that are supposed to be free like online gaming, themes, and there are no over-priced add-ons.

At the end, all that marketing and DLC deals on 360 come from the gamers pockets.

[Labwarriorbot]

WHEN the Lost and Damned and Halo wars finally sells 4 million units at least.

Until then, stupid xbots need to remember that the 360 is DONE FOR.

[JasonPC360PS3Wii]

Yet the PS3 has had more shooters in the past 7 months, SOCOM, Resistance 2 and Killzone 2. The 360 has had action games like Ninja Blade, RTS like Halo Wars and a bunch of JRPG's and one shooter "Gears 2"

Thats why droids are dumb, now go play Killzone 2... opps my bad none of you bought it.

[OmarJA]

I guess theses xbots will buy anything even flops as long it has good sales... :D

[Defectiv3_Detectiv3]

Sony is still one of the top publishers in the market. They don't pay for 3rd party exclusives, which are becoming obsolete anyways. They build infrastructure and make games w/ their in house devs, which they have a lot more of.

All the prophet from these games go back to Sony. Sure, they have to pay for the dev. costs, but since they own so many devs they can share resources. Sometimes they use multiple devs. to make one game(KZ = Santa Monica/GG)

MS has Halo, Fable, Forza, and whatever crappy game Rare is working on. Those are pretty much all of their 1st party exclusives. Sony has Uncharted, GT, Motorstorm, MLB the Show, Resistance, Killzone, Folklore, Yakuza, inFAMOUS, - I would say a majority of the exclusives on PS3 are 1st party.

You don't think some of the money they're making of Blu Ray movies is going back to support games?

It would be interesting though if the devs. were holding back until the user base got bigger. They probably don't want to drop a gem like GT5 until they have a price cut and get more users.

[Narutone66]

Soulja Boy game?

[Sir Ken_Kutaragi]

Hmm...are there 4 Million working ChatBox 360's out there tho??? ;-D

+ The ChatBots are High today, just because they think the U.S.of.A is the only place in the World??? Bunch of imbeciles. How SAD.

+ COMING SOON to the ChatBox 360 at E3 09'!!! -

'NPD' DLC!!! ;-D ;-D ;-D

[Deadman64]

You all say how 'dumb' xbots are. But look at yourselves, just feeding off of each other. It's so sad. It is time to accept the fact that Killzone 2 did not do as well as it was hyped to be. Nothing wrong with that.

[green]

With Microsoft marketing power behind it, yes it would.

[-EvoAnubis-]

Maybe it would have sold 4 million on the 360. Only problem is the game ISN'T POSSIBLE on the 360, so it's a non-issue.

And as far as advertising is concerned, let me quote myself from yesterday:

"And I'm not saying absurd advertising doesn't work, because it does. What I am saying is that just won't cut this this generation. You can't just toss that much money at one game when you have over a dozen 1st/2nd party games coming out in a fiscal year that also need advertising. MS put that money into Halo 3 because they knew they could. Sony can't afford it; they have too many other games to advertise as well.

I'm not knocking MS for this....Sony has done it too. When they were starting out, they put a 100 million dollar advertising campaign for Final Fantasy VII. Because they had to. They didn't have the dozens of games and developers they had to worry about. Now they do, and the reason they made that happen is because they probably had a good idea things were going to come to a point like they are now, where multiplatform games just don't happen."

[green]

And as for marketing i believe it had enough marketing to warrant more sales,, after all they spent 2 million pounds (approximately 3.5 million dollars) on marketing in the UK alone http://www.rewiredmind.com/... .Now imagine that figure to be replicated for the rest of Europe and almost double for the hole of North America, and then you can see there is a problem.

EDIT:I kind of have this feeling that if Call of Duty 4 never saw the light of day on the ps3, that resistance 2 and Killzone 2 would have sold by the truck loads.None of my ps3 owning buddies don't own killzone 2 or resistance 2 because they don't want to leave COD4.

[MURKERR]

..

[SprSynJn]

While I agree marketing would have helped it sell more, I believe it was the difference in controls that drove people away. It seems these days that if it does not follow the same formula as every other game, it will not attract consumers. In short, if it had COD style controls, it would have sold 4 million for sure.

[mastiffchild]

I'm not so sure that it's just marketing that stopped killer sales for such a fabulous game this time round. R2 maybe butthis not so sure Uncharted-sertainly, VC and Folklore certainly as well but not necessarily KZ2.

Lets face it MS marketing things to death can't help everygame-not Banjo that's for sure. Recently them advertising RE4 and SF4 without mention they were available on Playstation3 didn't help the sales of those games on 360 either(not a nice practise either, imo)so marketing isn't the only factor here.

I feel the years of scepticism among the gaming press and the lacklustre furst game took their toll on floating gamers who may've picked it up(and most still might as it spreads by word of mouth that the game's great)but aren't as avid as us that check the nets often for news. No mainstream press gave KZ2 any great coverage herein UK and even when the ads came they still went over the heads of joesephine mcpublic and a week before release is way too late for teasers in any case-so yeah even with a budget they failed with the ad campaign but, as I said that's not all there is to it.

Long running and well loved franchises(bought heavily by PS3 owners) also released with greater presense around that time. AND the PS3 demographic isn't as shooter heavy as the 360 is. SF and RE have long running heritage on PS and big existing fanbases who'll possibly pick up KZ2 later in the year when Xmas CC bills are paid off and they finish laying the two games they pucked up despite being skint-not buying KZ2 as, to them, it seemed more of a risk and isn't really their genre.

So do I reckon on 4million sales in March for KZ2 if on 360? No, not a hope in hell. However, releasing about now after the two Capcom games with PS presense might have made more sense on PS3 add in a longer ad campaign(and more bog standard axplanatory one as well)and not dearer necessarily and the hype might have spread and the game arrived in a better window for sales off the bat.

I still feel safe in saying it'll easily clear 2.5 to 3 million WW by years end but the electric starts made by the likes of Gears and Halo are rare even for MS games and while COD games do well on 360 they're also established franchises. Hell even Gears1 didn't have the millstone of following a duffer as a new IP.

Point is the guy just wants to use something he can't possibly know to show us something we already do-that Sony cannot advertise well these days. Come back about the sales of Killzone2 ar Xmas and we'll see a different tale anyway.

[RememberThe357]

The think that SCEA is hold their money so push Infamous.

In the end it's not about how much you spend, it's about how you spend it. Sony used to be the King of advertising. Unfortunately for them, something happened, and now they can't sell sh*t.

[zenosaga04]

... But it's not on the 360 so get the f*** over it. You say in the first frigging paragraph what a great "AAA" game it is, so why does it matter how much it sold.

You don't get paid for it, it doesn't magically make the game better, so stop acting like it's the end all be all for gamers.

[Milk is for Babies]

Sales=money=ability to make more games. If your favorite games didn't sell enough you would never get a sequel. Sales really should matter to the everyday gamer because without success we wouldn't have as many good games to play. If Killzone 2 was the best game ever but didn't sell at all, Guerrilla would go bankrupt and say bye bye to KZ3. Ultimately, sales ARE the end-all, be-all for gamers.

[7thNightvolley]

sales are really important to the industry. more sales= not just more games but better quality games.

[PotNoodle]

I really wish sony didn't get rid of their old marketing contract with that company they were with for 15 years.

The same guys that made these adverts:

http://www.gametrailers.com...

They got rid of them at the start of 2008 iirc, right when the marketing just dropped off totally.

[evrfighter]

they REALLY must have been full of themselves to think the playstation name alone would sell their games. Not surprised really considering their "next-gen doesn't start till we say so" comment.

Great commercial btw. quite a shame they let them go.

[redsquad]

And if I was good looking, rich and had a magnetic personality I'd have a supermodel for a girlfriend.

The operative word there is "IF"...

Truth be told, I absolutely agree with the article. As such, it completely debunks the 'sales are everything' attitude prevelant in the anti-Sony camp.

[ssipmraw]

would have sold 2 million if it was also on the ps3

see how easy it is to spin things

[Foxgod]

no it wouldnt, you have some legit article that states that dlc sells better on psn, then live ?

[ssipmraw]

the likely hood of selling more on two consoles is imminent

[InfectedDK]

Stop the jealousy and buy a PS3 :)

[Too_Hyped]

yeah lol, these kids need to get a life. Get a paid job, stop crying and asking mummy and daddy. Then you'll stop being jealous of PS3 users.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I want stupid moronic racist kids shouting in the mic on PSN.

Maybe it's better retards keep playing Halo 2007 on Live.

[N2NOther]

I have a PS3 and I have Killzone 2. Doesn't change the fact that it's true. This game would have sold much more on 360.

[N2NOther]

Can the "disagreer" please state why they disagree? Or would that mean they actually have to form an argument and that's far too much trouble?

[Too_Hyped]

You can't run Killzone 2 on the 360, it would instantly overheat just trying.

The only game you can play now on 360 is 'sales'. It's a very funny game, plus your 360 won't overheat... but I still prefer Killzone 2, LBP, Uncharted, Valkyria Chronicles or MGS 4, the best games this generation.

[peeps]

yes but if you could run it on the 360...

i agree tbh, not cus i prefer the 360, infact i prefer my ps3 lol but killzone 2 is a great game that deserved all the praise it got, but sony's marketing is terrible. It sold well to people that were fans of the original and got envolved in the hype (through gaming websites like this 1), problem is, alot of people who probably would have given it a go don't really know anything about it, and arn't the sorta people who research games on websites.

so i really do think it would have sold better on 360, nothing to do with the console but just simply because as a first party title you know ms as a company would do everything it could to promote it.

[360 man]

EXZACTLY

[Too_Hyped]

Bu bu but... sales and wait for E3.

[JasonPC360PS3Wii]

"Bu bu but... Killzone 2 will destroy the 360 and Failio Whores and help sell a million PS3's, you just wait and see"

[OmarJA]

B-b-b-b-but teh salez is better than gamez... ;D

[theEnemy]

But the problem is,

Can it run KZ2 w/o any loss based on the PS3 version ?

[commodore64]

http://n4g.com/RedirectToOb...

Food for thought, Sony.

[xdye017]

It's proof that the majority of people buy a PS3 for watching blu-ray movies instead of a game console.

[koehler83]

Maybe. But it's not on Xbox.. so sad.

Maybe those 3 million other people should get a PS3 for this game they apparently want so bad.

Or maybe they just don't exist.