PS3 VS XBOX 360: DROUGHT

In tradition with console launches there is always a subsequent drought afterwards where a console company has to catch up. In the case for this article we are talking about the PS3 and the Xbox 360 launches and the differences between the two when you look at overall games for the first three months of each console’s life cycle. Before I get into the article I would like to say before moving on that for the sake of this argument Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network games are counted as games. All information used in this study was gathered from Gamespot. This article is about the first 3 months of a console’s life cycle highlihting on the 2 months after the launch month.

Crunching the Numbers

Xbox 360:
For the month of November 2005 (launch month)  - 25 games were released
8 of which were sports games
4 of which were shooters
0 of which were RPGs
3 of which were racing games
6 of which were arcade games
4 of which were action/adventure games
4 of which were exclusives (arcade games not included)
0 of which were fighting games

For the launch window (start of November 2005 to end of January 2006) - 35 games were released
8 of which were sports games
4 of which were shooters
0 of which were RPGs
3 of which were racing games
15 of which were arcade games
4 of which were action/adventure games
5 of which were exclusives (arcade games not included)
1 of which were fighting games

The rise of games released from the first of December 2005 to the end of January 2006 for the Xbox 360 -
10 Games (with arcade titles included)
1 Game (with arcade titles not included)

There is nothing really outstanding with the data on the launch game lineup of the 360. The one thing that is surprising about the data is that the majority of the games came from the Xbox Live Arcade - 15 titles. If you take away the arcade titles from the 3 month launch window there were 20 games released but if you look at the rise thats where things get really concerning - 1 game released from the first of December 2006 to the end of January 2007. Now lets take a look at the PS3 launch window.

PS3:
For the month of November 2006 (launch month)  - 16 games were released
6 of which were sports games
2 of which were shooters
1of which were RPGs
2 of which were racing games
2 of which were arcade games
3 of which were action/adventure games
6 of which were exclusives (arcade games not included)
0 of which were fighting games

For the launch window (start of November 2006 to end of January 2007) - 21 games were released
7 of which were sports games
2 of which were shooters
1 of which were RPGs
3 of which were racing games
3 of which were arcade games
5 of which were action/adventure games
6 of which were exclusives (arcade games not included)
0 of which were fighting games

The rise of games released from the first of December 2006 to the end of January 2007 for the PS3 -
5 Games (with arcade titles included)
4 Games (with arcade titles not included)

Huh? 21 games? So only 5 games were released in the 2 months after the launch month for the PS3. I know I counted them right. Now to give them the same evaluation as I did with the 360 I have to subtract the arcade games from the number of titles released - 21 - 3 = 18 games. So between the two systems if you do not include arcade games the PS3 had two less games which is a better way of looking at it if you’re Shane Bettenhausen from 1up. Yet there are two areas which the PS3 looks really good in when you consider this data - exclusivities and the rise of games between the first of December 2006 to the end of January 2007. The PS3 had six exclusive games that you could not get anywhere else while the 360 had five which is still not that big of a difference but it IS a difference nonetheless. The 360 however, when the number of titles are considered, is still on top.

The success of the 360’s amount of titles is almost solely due to the success of Xbox Live Arcade early on with 15 titles in the first three months but when you analyze the data the PS3 did better when it came to spreading out the amount of titles between the three months (look at the rise for the ps3 vs 360) if you do not consider the arcade titles as games that you would want to consider. It surprised me and I am that dude they call the Microsoft fanboy.