2K vs Live Sales Comparison (IGN)

[JaoSming]

heh



I'm surprised 09 was that close to 2k9.

[shadowgrin]

2K is going to be injured next year! NOOO!


2K cover players represent (and switched).

[rise]

Live sales went down when they discontinued it for the PC.

That should tell them something?

[The X]

Live also moved a lot more units than 2k did in previous generation (notably PS2).

Live was living off its reputation but after a few bad years in a row, people started to try the competitor & now it is an uphill battle to win them back.

[[Q]]

well to be fair, i don't know the exact numbers, but i would imagine live owned the ps2 era especially live 06 but 07 was the first on ps3/360 and they royally effed up on that one and have been paying for it since.

[JaoSming]

and then we can talk about how they chose to "reboot" each year of the 360, people liking 2k more after the $20 2k5 year, upgrading the PS2 game for NG rather than start from scratch, and of course factoring in the quality of 06 and 07.

[Patr1ck]

Yes, Live was beating 2K on the ps2. They had very good numbers. Actually sold a million for Live 07 on the PS2 alone. According to vgchartz, Live 08 on the ps2 outsold the 360 version.

Just looked at vgchartz, and it looks like IGN is looking at overall sales across all platforms. EA has not beaten 2K since 06 on the current gen consoles.

2K8 1.93 million on 3 platforms.
Live 08 2.24 million(+ PC sales) on 6 platforms

2K9 2.07 million(+ pc sales) on 4 platforms
Live 09 1.9 million on 5 platforms

2K10 2.68 million(+ pc sales) on 6 platforms
Live 10 1.12 million on 3 platforms

NBA 2K11 3.63 million on 6 platforms

The overall sales are around 4 million for these basketball games. I wonder how many sales EA lost out on by not releasing. Did they all just buy 2K11?

Now, about those NBA Jam sales....

[JaoSming]

Now, about those NBA Jam sales....

For those that dont want to look it up, NBA Jam has sold only 460,000 on WiiPS360

[Andrew]

Creative.

I wholeheartedly agree the constant desire to reboot the series has been one of the main (if not the main) causes of NBA Live's downfall. A few missteps on their first couple of releases for the current generation certainly didn't help, but instead of correcting them and building upon what they have, they've taken too many steps backwards resulting in more bugs, fewer game modes and features and lost ground on the NBA 2K series. Not that "fixing the cracks in the foundation" (as they once put it) is a bad idea per se, but rebuilding every year hasn't been the right way to go.

Even if it wasn't a huge money maker, dropping the PC version definitely had to be a blow. Perhaps the expectation was that people would migrate to NBA Live on the consoles but by that point a lot of people felt burned by the product so if they did pick up a console, they went with NBA 2K anyway. And of course, NBA 2K has had a PC release each of the last three years so they've been able to sweep in and win over a good portion of PC gamers who were previously Live players.

Based on the feedback I've been getting through the Wishlist Survey, a fair amount of people still want to see NBA Live/Elite succeed so there's two strong brands out there and support a PC release; most of the people who have responded to the survey have also indicated that they have PCs that can run the latest games, so that should no longer be an issue. I hope we haven't seen the end of the brand and that they can bounce back strong with NBA Elite 12.

[Axel The Great]

2K is going to be injured next year! NOOO!

Elite was injured this season!

I like the creativity in those charts. Hopefully one day, there'll be a chart with two players of the same height representing each game.

[JaoSming]

err, Live 09 vs 2k9 isnt close enough?

[Axel The Great]

Yao and Manute Bol would be good enough.

[kibaxx7]

Interesting idea Hopefully one day Live returns...

[Andrew]

Given the negative connotations associated with the new Elite brand, an actual return of NBA Live might not be such a bad idea. If they do continue to make the games I expect they'll stick with Elite though.

[The X]

I'd like to see Live return

[Andrew]

It rolls off the tongue better, if nothing else.

[[Q]]

i did like how NBA Live 95 had a nice rhyme to it

[Andrew]

It did, the likes of which weren't heard again until NBA Live 2005.

[benji]

Just looked at vgchartz

Why?

You know that 95% of their numbers are made up right? (And the only ones that aren't are because they "correct" them with NPD data, which itself only covers two-thirds of the market.)

Also, for everyone, PC numbers basically don't exist. Only the companies know.

[Patr1ck]

I know that. Weren't they sued by npd or something for directly reposting their figures?

But if you look at those numbers and compare them to the article, they should be accurate enough since ign probably uses npd and the vgchart figures and the ign scales are similar.

[benji]

It's irrelevant, vgchartz is made up.

NPD is far from accurate anyway. Even if IGN uses it they apparently don't know the game was renamed NBA Elite in the first place.

But the primary point remains, vgchartz is made up.