Monday, December 7, 2009

Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest: Tony Hawk: RIDE, Console Conversations


 (click comic to enlarge)

     I showed a few weeks back how Tony Hawk: RIDE on the Wii was selling better than the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Tony Hawk: RIDE.  I explained how I wasn't sure what Wii owners were buying it, other than the "casuals", because I couldn't figure who would buy a $120 game without looking at reviews.  I decided to keep track of the game over the past week, and see how the sales data was comparing between the different versions on Amazon.com.

Tony Hawk: RIDE Sales Data:
So how has Tony Hawk: RIDE continued to perform well on Amazon.com's sales chart, after the horrible review scores for the game?
Take a look at Tony Hawk: RIDE's Amazon.com sales data for the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii, over 8 days, taken at random times during the days.

(Click photo to enlarge)

Things to Consider

Tony Hawk: RIDE Advertising:
As of my searching today, I found only one TV commercial for Tony Hawk: RIDE and you can watch it for yourself.


I don't know if there are other commercials for Tony Hawk: RIDE, but this commercial shows a lot of board movement, with very few in game moves associated with the board's motions.  Is this sole TV commercial the reason for Tony Hawk: RIDE's sales data on the Wii, and even PS3 and 360, to rise from their late November sales rankings on Amazon.com?  Are there other TV commercials for the game I didn't find?

Tony Hawk: RIDE Reviews:
The last time I posted up Amazon.com's sale data for Tony Hawk: RIDE, there were only a few review scores for the game on each console.  As the "comic" strip showed, Tony Hawk: RIDE is currently averaging less than 50% on review scores for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Take a look at the average review score for each console version of the game:

Now you may be thinking after seeing the average review scores, "Well, the Wii version does have a higher average, so maybe it's the better game and that's why it's selling better?"  Well, if you take a close look at the picture, it shows that the Xbox 360 version has been reviewed by 19 reviewers, the PS3 version by 9 reviewers, and the Wii version by only 4 reviewers.  The reason for some of this, is that when a PS3 copy is reviewed, they often will count it as the Xbox 360 review as well, and vice versa.  This means that lot of reviewers, though Tony Hawk: RIDE is essentially the same game on all consoles, aren't showing a review score for the Wii version.

Questions:
Do you think the Amazon.com data shows that a Wii game can sell well, regardless of review scores, as long as it's advertised on TV?  Should Wii owners(and others) be able to return the game and board, if it doesn't perform like it's expected?  Or, are people buying the game responsible for knowing how the game plays, before they buy it?
If you've purchased Tony Hawk: RIDE and believe the reviewers are way off base, like Tony Hawk himself does, please leave a comment and let me know what you think of the game!


What do you think?


7 comments:

  1. You're using Amazon numbers as reference for this article??? Well I guess this's what set the line between a random gaming fan blog and a professional site.

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  2. @Alfredo Froylan: Thanks for the comment. The reason Amazon.com is used, is because it's the only place I know with a "video game sale chart", that updates hourly. What sites do you use for sales data?

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  3. @coffeewithgames
    NPD numbers are actually the most reliable source for sales data. Of course it doesn't update hourly but it's more accurate for the US sales (after all Amazon is just a store and we don't know how many games they have in stock or how many are they selling). Check the gamasutra analysis on the NPD, they're quite good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Alfredo Froylan:
    Thanks for the reply again! I do look at NPD numbers, I did a write-up on Madden on the consoles back in November.
    The reason for using Amazon.com is their "live" chart of sorts, and I'll definitely update if the NPD numbers show anything. The main thing with NPD though, is they don't usually show but the Top 10 or 20 games per console, I think(let me know if I'm wrong).
    Also, they do it monthly, and part of the reason for doing this, was to see if the NPD data will reflect Amazon.com's sales, and vice versa, because I don't believe that NPD numbers actually take Amazon.com sales into account.

    Thanks again for the comments! If you think I need to correct something, let me know.

    ReplyDelete
  5. um its a tony hawk game? and the fact is the reason people buy the wii is for games like this, the board may not do what its supposed to at first but if you work on it just like any other game you get better, i personally feel reviews are given out way too early and yes bad reviews may be a warning sign for casual gamers not to buy something as it may just take a hardcore gamer who's willing to work at it to make it fun, but then the problem is really only hardcore gamers see the reviews so your point is a good one that wii can sell games with bad reviews if they are a new concept but really the bad reviews are taken with a grain of salt with ppl who play more often and are huge fans of tony hawk games since the begining

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  6. point being anyone will still buy the game regardless of casual or hardcore

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  7. @Wagon:
    Do you mean that Tony Hawk fans will be the game regardless?

    ReplyDelete

Keep the comments clean. Rated "E" for Everyone. :)

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