From your posts, it seems that your high expectation is based on the following key points : - Halo brand awareness - official bundling by Microsoft
For Halo brand awareness (that increase Halo Wars sales #), has there ever been history of games that also use Halo brand in their title and doing well of it ? I think Mario brand has been proven again and again, and there are lots of games that have Sonic brand, so we can analyze the effect of Sonic brand for those games, but Halo brand is not a proven concept yet, AFAIK. You are expecting Halo brand to have 1.4 Million effect (1.6 million - 200K), while there was no solid evidence for it in the history ?
There are two type of official bundling, one that increase the price, one that is not increasing the price (essentially mean free game).
In the case of increasing the price bundling, it might not happen. Why ? PS3 price is not too different compared to X360 now, compared to the past. Why should Microsoft run the risk of bundling this game, which practically mean they are increasing X360 price by $50, and decreasing X360 platform price difference against PS3 (assuming no PS3 bundling was done) ?
In the case of free bundling, why should Microsoft suffer loss ? Microsoft is trying to get a profit out of its entertainment division, and doing this free bundling made that target more difficulty.
With all due respect, I think you know quite a small portion of the 5 mln who bought Halo. If the game was called Ijaki 7 and had the same gameplay, it would have sold between 100k and 200k.
Viva Pinata is a fairly complicated strategy game that was bundled recently with a console. Bundles are sometimes determined not by the desirability of the game itself, but also on things like how much financial or brand-image investment there is in the game itself which the publisher needs to recoup in some way. It's one of the few first-party games for Microsoft this year, I see no reason why their marketing machine should pass on this one.
@Gaara42, My opinion on this title is that a large part of the sales depends on whether Ensemble Studios (the developer) is able to nail the controls for a RTS on the 360 and whether it ends up being ported to the PC (which I believe many RTS players prefer over consoles for playing RTS games). I would be cautious with this stock because the controls have yet to be throughly tested. I also doubt that being part of the Halo brand will help the sales of this very significantly, but there will still be some people that pick this title up because of the Halo brand.
I would strongly disagree with that statement. Not a single person I know who bought Halo 3 bought it for the brand, they bought it because they heard it was better than Halo 2, they loved Halo 2's multiplayer and so they bought Halo 3 for the multiplayer, it is a very solid experience and the knew what to expect. If the game had been called Ijaki 7 but had the same exact gameplay, they would have picked it up regardless. Due to this, I don't know of many who would switch from the much loved multiplayer in the FPS Halo games to a RTS game on the Xbox360. Due to this I think initial sales will greatly disappoint those who think that the Halo brand carries over to any genre of video games.
Also, when was the last time a RTS was bundled with a console? They are much to complex a genre for a bundle, bundled games are almost always ones that can be picked up and played easily by just about anyone.
Due to this I stick with my statement that this game should be below 140DKP.
Unless the game shows to be a major disappointment just before release - which I don't believe will happen, even if the game is not that good, if the marketing is even half-competent - it will easily sell a million in its initial rush of 2-3 months, then another in the form of bundles, Platinums etc. The 5 million people who already bought Halo 3 didn't do it for competitive multiplayer, they bought it for the brand.
"We don't generally turn to developers for our game reviews, but if we trust Ensemble Studios' Graeme Devine, lead designer on Halo Wars, then the game is gonna be pretty good. ...Devine mentions controls, because I'm not so certain that any console has gotten the RTS interface just right. And an RTS that has perfect controls on a console may be a little piece of magic after all."
This stock is due in again for a drop, it has slowly risen back to its pre-correction levels. The following post illustrate why this should be below 140DKP: Comment 1, Comment 2, Comment 3 (Comment 3 gives a further list of post that have reasons as to why this should be at around 140DKP or less).
Due to all the reasons given in the above comments, this should be at or below 140DKP.
For console players the C&C series might not be as popular or well known but C&C is one of the premier PC franchises, any person who plays PC game has either played games in the C&C series or heard of the C&C series. Saying it is not as famous as Halo is almost like saying Starcraft, AoE, or Warcraft is not as famous as Halo. If Halo Wars comes to the PC it will probably end up like when Microsoft released Halo 1 and Halo 2 for the PC, they felt dated compared to other PC shooters that were coming out at the time, and if Halo Wars is released on the PC I see the same thing happening.
Does anyone know if halo wars will come to the PC? If it ever comes, would it likely outsell PC classics like the recent CC3 and Mideast Conflict? http://www.thesimexchange.com/stock.php?id=23
thats predicted to sell over 1.6 million... and its nothing as famous as Halo.
3
From your posts, it seems that your high expectation is based on the following key points :
- Halo brand awareness
- official bundling by Microsoft
For Halo brand awareness (that increase Halo Wars sales #), has there ever been history of games that also use Halo brand in their title and doing well of it ? I think Mario brand has been proven again and again, and there are lots of games that have Sonic brand, so we can analyze the effect of Sonic brand for those games, but Halo brand is not a proven concept yet, AFAIK. You are expecting Halo brand to have 1.4 Million effect (1.6 million - 200K), while there was no solid evidence for it in the history ?
There are two type of official bundling, one that increase the price, one that is not increasing the price (essentially mean free game).
In the case of increasing the price bundling, it might not happen. Why ? PS3 price is not too different compared to X360 now, compared to the past. Why should Microsoft run the risk of bundling this game, which practically mean they are increasing X360 price by $50, and decreasing X360 platform price difference against PS3 (assuming no PS3 bundling was done) ?
In the case of free bundling, why should Microsoft suffer loss ? Microsoft is trying to get a profit out of its entertainment division, and doing this free bundling made that target more difficulty.