@kspraydad, In case anyone is wondering, this has been confirmed. Release date is October 7th. Contents and price exactly as 1up said (including PGR4!).
@Gaara42, Valid point. I'm not sure how bundling works in terms of what factors come into play when a company decides to bundle a 3rd party game, like does MS make a request to said company, do they offer the opportunity to 3rd parties and see who is interested, etc? I remember when MS bundled 2 Sega games for Xbox 1. I don't think Nintendo has ever bundled 3rd party games. Nor Sony either. But someone do tell if they have. Do companies that have their games bundled have to pay MS or does MS pay them to have their game bundled?
You'd think it would be in the best interests of a company to bundle games that are 1st party in order to build a greater userbase for their IPs. Of course this is assuming that the games to be bundled have already been available for a while and are no longer selling in big numbers.
PGR5 could be a ways off since a new developer has to be found. Given that & my previous post 'I think MS would be more likely to bundle a game where the same developer will be onboard for the sequel' I think PGR4's chances of being bundled are not very high.
What happens with the previous PGR game assets (track & car models, game engine, audio, etc)? Does MS retain those or Bizzare Creations? I think it would be MS but it all depends on the actual contract they had. I ask this question in relevance to how soon PGR5 is from release.
I do not have any shares held in this game, so I'm just writing from my objective beliefs.
@Mushashi, I think you are right. Given that, I think MS would be more likely to bundle a game where the same developer will be onboard for the sequel. I think other games are more likely to be bundled than PGR4 at this point in time, i.e. any new bundle this year.
According to ELSPA sales data, Both PGR1 + 2 passed 200K sales in UK, PGR3 has passed 300K sales and PGR4 has passed 100K sales in the UK since launch.
Raven is a subsidiary of Activision, Activision published Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the Xbox360. Yet Microsoft bundled this game with the Xbox360 over the holiday. That argument then does not hold up in light of this fact. Also, notice that Bizarre Creations is owned by Activision also (like you said) so why would Microsoft bundle Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and not Project Gotham Racing 4, of which they have bundled games in the series previously and Bizarre Creations continues to produce games for the Xbox360 and has been for awhile. Due to this I think that Project Gotham Racing 4 will likely be bundled at some point in the future. Even besides the bundle, I still believe that this game will be able to reach 90DKP +.
Vgchartz overestimated it by 50% for all their figures, including Europe? How do you figure? Do you have sales data other than first month sales in America?
Due to these charts (I will try to find more charts for Europe, Japan and Australia), I think that the game is doing relatively well.
The figure you cited for the last couple Project Gothams, do you know how much of those sales were due to bundles? I figure that this game will continue to sell at a slow burn until it reaches around 90DKP +. If it is bundled like Forza and the last Project Gotham racing games were, then I have no reason to believe that this won't reach that estimate.
I think MS may be more likely to bundle a game that they own the publishing rights to in the future. Part of bundling games is so that the sequel will get more sales because of a userbase having played the earlier [bundled] game. Given that Activision now owns Bizzare Creations, I think MS would be more likely to bundle a game they still own the next publishing rights to. Conclusion= MS won't bundle PGR4. Unless they want to really recoup the money they spent on publishing a title that bombed. I think that's a less likely scenario than the former though.
@Gaara42, I dont see why they should bundle it now.The last project gothems sold really well (about 1.5million) 4dkp is not good if it had a full month of sales. 67dkp so far . VGC over estimated it by 50%. So its sold about 40dkp so far. Its been out for 4months. Even with a bundle i cant see it picking up another 40dkp. 55-60dkp is my estimate.
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In case anyone is wondering, this has been confirmed. Release date is October 7th. Contents and price exactly as 1up said (including PGR4!).