Jesse Divnich, former analyst for The simExchange and recent EEDAR hire, says that the simultaneous success of Army of Two and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (according to March NPD numbers) prove that as long as games target slightly different niches, “the next-generation market has matured enough to where several AAA releases can be launched in a given month without much hindrance on each others sales.”
In an exclusive analysis at Gamasutra, Divnich describes his thought process in more detail. Although a title like Super Smash Bros. Brawl crosses many traditional market boundaries, he argues that
a different and deeper analysis is needed for Vegas 2 and Army of Two as they share the similar shooter/action genre. Because Vegas 2 and Army of Two have a large discrepancy gap among their Xbox 360 to PS3 sales ratio (Vegas 2 - 4.86 to 1; Army of Two — 2.71 to 1), can hypothesize that there were likely two different sub-markets at play in driving each other’s sales.
Based on Vegas 2’s large ratio gap, we can make the assumption that it targeted a more hardcore gaming demographic, which favors games with a strong online component (the most recent Xbox Live rankings put Vegas 2 at #3 in online play and Army of Two at #10).
On the other hand, Army of Two’s ratio gap is more in-line with current trends, and given that GameTrailers.com data from last month indicated a bigger and more successful marketing campaign than its competitors. So, we might assume that it was more receptive among the mainstream and mass-market audience.
You might ask, hasn’t it been like this all along? Well, apparently not — just seven months ago, according to Divnich, “titles like BioShock and Half-Life: Orange Box were quickly cannibalized by Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.”
What do you think? Do Army of Two and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 really appeal to different people? Or, perhaps, do higher-scoring shooters appeal to different people than lower-scoring ones?
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