Ahead of the Xbox 360 and PS3 releases next week, Ubisoft has revealed the Wii, DS and PSP versions of Michael Jackson: The Experience have sold 3 million combined copies worldwide.
“We’re delighted with the sales success of Michael Jackson The Experience to date," Ubisoft's UK marketing director Murray Pannell told MCV in revealing the new sales numbers.
Just over 10 percent of the title's sales have come from the United Kingdom, according to data from Gfk Chart-Track.
The game reached the 2 million sales milestone in early January, just before the game's launch in Japan. Over 90 percent of those first 2 million sales came from the motion-controlled Wii version.
The pending Kinect and Move-powered versions of Michael Jackson: The Experience will include new songs and new features like co-op and battle modes on the Xbox 360 and Facebook integration on the PS3.
I wonder if this game will continue the trend of the Move and Kinect versions of multiplatform dance and party games doing a lot worst than the Wii version.
Absolutely. Kinect and Move are getting late ports of these games, which usually don't fare too well. And the barrier to entry is higher. To play this game on the Wii, all you need is a Wii. But as far as I'm aware, the ports require the add-ons for the two HD systems on top of owning the systems themselves. Kinect's install base is pretty good, but 10 million or whatever is nowhere near as big as 85 million for Wii.
@Mike: it depends. A significant percentage of Wiis are now likely to be sat idle [*], whereas it's likely that the majority of Kinect units are still in active use: it's still a shiny new toy.
[*] Personally, I suspect the active Wii userbase is somewhere around 25-30 million, based on the sales volumes for recent high-visibility titles. Admittedly, it's still three times as big as the Kinect market, but it's not as big a delta as the headline figures would indicate...
Zumba wasn't a late port.It was actually advertised for the Kinect first. You are right the Wii has a higher userbase so the sales should be higher. The game still could have performed a lot better on the Move and Kinect when compared to their install bases.
The Wii got a very late port of COD 4 and the game sold a little over a million. Zumba could keep selling over time and reach better numbers. The MJ game will be an enhanced port so it should do a little better.
I didn't mention Zumba, so I don't know why you're talking about that. I was aware that it was out at the same time on all home consoles. I saw them all charting on Amazon earlier this year. I was referring to the Michael Jackson game.
this is a Michael Jackson game, which i think seats perfectly with the "wii crowd". I don't think the "wii collecting dust" arguement is a good arguement here.
There is no need to buy expensive plastic parts with the new music games and dancing games are more of a mix of music and fitness. That is two popular genres this gen in one game. Ubisoft is lucky Nintendo did not release a Wii Fit Dance game.
[*] Personally, I suspect the active Wii userbase is somewhere around 25-30 million, based on the sales volumes for recent high-visibility titles. Admittedly, it's still three times as big as the Kinect market, but it's not as big a delta as the headline figures would indicate...
Subtracting 50+ million units to create an "active" userbase isn't appropriate.
Zumba wasn't a late port.It was actually advertised for the Kinect first. You are right the Wii has a higher userbase so the sales should be higher. The game still could have performed a lot better on the Move and Kinect when compared to their install bases.
The Wii got a very late port of COD 4 and the game sold a little over a million. Zumba could keep selling over time and reach better numbers. The MJ game will be an enhanced port so it should do a little better.