LittleBigPlanet sold 141,000 units in the US last month, top 20 revealed

The first console MMO was Meridian 59 for the 3DO.
Lovely game really the best of its time light years ahead of any other MMO.

Meridian 59 was by the 3DO company, but as I recall it was exclusively for Windows, and not released on any console platform. I may be wrong, but Wikipedia seems to agree.

I believe the first massively multiplayer online RPG to launch on consoles was Phantasy Star Online, and that was just the Dreamcast doing its usual revolutionary thing. It was a long time after that before anything else saw the light of release, only Final Fantasy XI came a time later, for both PC and the PlayStation 2 (and later, the XBox).

Meridian 59 was a good MMO, but it was simply a step up to the ongoing evolution of MMORPGs that the PC has seen, and continues to.

LBP has been solidly top ten at nearly every retailer – including Amazon and Play – since release. What’s that? It took a price drop to keep sales healthy? So what? If it’s okay for Microsoft …

Cort, maybe it has been looking good in the retailer charts but the problem is that it’s had almost no impact on the real charts other than the first couple of weeks after release.

Take the retailer stuff with a large pinch of salt.

(For the record… I own it, I’m not part of the problem!)

Can Phantasty Star Online really be classed as an MMO when it only allowed four players to participate together?

And yes, Populous sold a TON. It’s why Molyneux has remade it several times already.

I agree that Populus was a grand example of innovation and success. The problem is though that nobody seems to be able to find an example of this within the last five years, possibly even in the last ten.

Developers can’t really be blamed for this, because there are visionaries out there, and I’m sure that Brutal Legend will be another example of true genius that won’t sell well. It’s the fault of the gaming public, I suppose. Ever since gaming became so very mainstream, we’ve suffered the same malaise that seems to be affecting movies. And that’s that the average person will only usually buy a ticket to something that has plenty o’ mindless violence or overacted gushy-stuff (that wouldn’t have passed in the 60′s, the age of gushy movies), to hell with things like unrivaled plot, genius, and generally evolving the medium.

As for Phantasy Star Online, I don’t really know if it could. It’s the whole Guild Wars toss-up again, isn’t it? Oh well, if we discount Phantasy Star Online (which I’m willing to do) then consoles didn’t have an MMO until Final Fantasy XI, they went a very long time without one.

Edit: As an example of what I’m talking of when it comes to movies … hands up, how many people here have seen Day Watch and Pan’s Labyrinth? Movies are undergoing plenty of the same problems as games at the moment, success isn’t borne of incredible, wonderful efforts, but of purely average manure instead.

No Esha, not quite.

People buy games that they enjoy playing. It’s a bit silly to declare that every single game with guns or “mindless violence” lacks innovation and is somehow a bad game.

Games are for fun, enjoyment and entertainment. They are supposed to make you enjoy yourself, not make you think, ‘wow, no-one has thought of making this game before, it must be good!’

The vast majority of people have the most fun, playing the best games. That’s what makes them the best games, because they give the player the biggest sense of enjoyment.

It’s both naive and foolish to assume that you’re one of a select few in the entire world who can appreciate what a good game is.

It’s pathetic snobbery at its highest.

Seriously Esha, sometimes your comments make me think that you must either be some self righteous toff whose over inflated ego stops him from seeing just what an anti-social cynic he is, or just a small minded valley boy who was bullied throughout his life and has now gone on a mission to back the loser, no matter who or what it is.

Whichever it is, you are consistantly spouting arrogant nonsense about the masses knowing nothing and you knowing everything that there is to know about the essence of good gaming.

Lets face it, people enjoy playing COD, Gears, Halo, Resistance, etc, and they will more than likely enjoy playing later versions of these games as well as others like Killzone 2 et al.

People enjoy them because they offer an action packed gameplay that puts you on the edge of your seat.

They like playing online and working together with other human beings and laughing and joking and winning and losing (maybe not so much the losing, but it’s all part of the experience) and unlocking new things and getting achievements. They like the social aspect of interacting with other human beings and competing with them with skill and accuracy and the feeling of reward that comes along with doing well.

These are basic things that the vast majority of human beings enjoy.

If you don’t enjoy them, then fair enough, but trying to go on some sort of crusade to make it seem as if everyone is blinded to the ‘higher level of enlightenment’ that you seem to be convinced that you’re on is growing very boring.

In fact I’d even go as far as to say that it’s vulgar.

Do me a favour Esha, take your head out of your own backside for long enough to realise that people have a legitimate right to like whatever they want to.

Whether you personally like it or not.

@morriss
“Fable II. I’d say it was creative, unique in terms the orbs etc., and a blockbuster.”

This whole orb thing and isn’t it unique and innovative – yes it would be if it hadn’t been done by Test Drive Unlimited years before. Oh and those orb things piss me off – turn em off and the game still thinks it’s online and stops background downloads. I’ll just add that to it’s list of creative and unique bugs…

I don’t know what orbs are in this context, as I don’t have Fable II, however…

There is a slightly strange thing on the 360 in that it won’t tell you that background downloading has resumed.

Sometimes I’ll be downloading stuff, then start playing a game that is offline only, and the downloads will stop. I can only assume that this is because it’s checking for updates or accessing leaderboards or something. However, the downloads will start again briefly after that, but it’s just that if you keep playing, you won’t know about it until you get the ‘download complete’ message.

So basically, you might get the downloads stopped message, but they will resume shortly after that if the game is offline.

But obviously I can’t say that this is the case for certain with Fable II, as I don’t have it.

Irony, Gigz, my dear boy. Irony.

Are you British? You didn’t seem to catch the irony of your own post, there.

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Again, come back when I can take you seriously. If you’re going to resort to projecting in order to defend yourself against whatever perceived attacks to your person you think I’m making, then I’m just going to have to ignore you.

There’s no irony Esha.

I don’t spend my time saying how brilliant I am and how useless everyone else is.

Like you do.

Find me a quote if you can.

I might have a reputation for having a go at Sony, but I don’t say that everyone who owns a PS3 only does so because they’re intellectually deficient, or a blind sheep, or sub-human. Unlike your pathetic ways.

Anyway you know that what I’ve said about you is true, which is why you have nothing to say about it.

What’s the matter?

Truth hurt?

Pyscho, the weekly charts tell us that MS:PR has bombed. Then we are all surprised when the publisher, who *know* how how many they have sold, reveal that – in fact, not informed estimation – it has already done a million at retail.

Very surprised, yes. What Motorstorm managed to do outside of bundles is another story though.

Bundle sales do not account for those numbers – especially given the fact that there are other PS3 packs which appear to be much more popular in recent weeks. Those charts are indicative and often wrong by a notable margin – how many times have we seen NPD (note 1) etc data proved way off the mark by official data from the Big Three?

And speaking of bundles, why doesn’t that argument apply to LBP? If it *is* an IP which will shift PS3s, don’t you think that a lot of those newcomers would take advantage of the bundles and offers which give them the console cheap and the game for nothing? And wouldn’t that mean that the game was performing well but looking poor in the charts?

Note 1 – Is this the company which doesn’t collect data from the worlds biggest retailer where 80% of American families go every week?

Bundle sales have to account for those Motorstorm numbers. They’re impossible otherwise (unless they’ve sold something like 800k in a place we don’t get charts for… highly unlikely). Either that or they shipped a shitload of them which didn’t get sold and that’s the number we’re seeing. Much like the Fallout 3 number which got released.

…and yes, the same would apply to LBP. But given we haven’t had any PR on its sales yet it’s hard to tell. We do know it’s done ~400k in the US, over 100k in the UK and ~85k in Japan though.

As for NPD, yes it doesn’t track Wal*Mart – But their numbers are estimated so it’s not like they’re completely left out of the figures.

There are so many walls of text here can we start posting with tl;drs please?
@ 30 Hours of Fallout 3
By sidequests I meant the primary ones as they are the only ones I cared about.

LBP is a great game.

/thread

Average platformer where they make the general public do the levels instead of bothering themselves, then randomly delete them off the servers when they do does badly shock!

Ya, because there are no level by MM….
Oh and the deleted level all reappeared 2 or 3 days later.

This is selling about as well as I thought it would, to be honest; I never, ever thought it’d be anywhere near as big as Sony seemed to have convinced themselves it’d be. I’m sure it’ll have good sales in the long run but the attention it got always baffled me.

“Average platformer where they make the general public do the levels instead of bothering themselves, then randomly delete them off the servers when they do does badly shock!”

Average poster whom is prone to making sweeping generalisations about a game he doesn’t quite understand, then goes on to make random claims which are obviously misinformed, gets picked up on his flawed arguments shocker!

Had you bothered to research the matter, you’d find that they only delete levels which brazenly utilise existing IP, which could get them sued. Companies do tend to throw wobblies like that; Marvel, Wolverine-clones, City of Heroes anyone?

/sigh