With shooters like BioShock, Halo 3, The Orange Box and Call of Duty 4 hitting the market within close range of one another, companies have had to convince consumers to choose their game over competitors. After all, not all shooter fans can drop a few hundred dollars at once.
Because of perceived sales cannibalization within the shooter genre, The simExchange (a virtual videogame stock trading system used to predict industry trends) dropped its October predictions for Halo 3 from 1.4 million sold during the month to 738,000 units, down 47 percent.
"The cannibalization theory can be seen as Halo 3 sales expectations declined while expectations for Orange Box increased," states Jesse Divnich of The simExchange.
"This phenomenon will not only hinder first-person shooter sales this holiday season but will likely play as a barrier to those AAA titles pushed back into Q1 of 2008—as if being delayed wasn't bad enough on sales."
Released in early October, Valve's highly-rated Orange Box, which includes Half-Life 2, two additional episodes, Portal and Team Fortress 2, is by no means keeping the Master Chief down when looking at the big picture. Halo 3 launched September 25 and had worldwide sales of $300 million in its first week alone. But with intense competition within the genre, ongoing Halo 3 sales have been affected, according to the report.
Divnich said BioShock sales saw a similar decline after the release of Halo 3. BioShock launched just ahead of Halo 3 in August.
View: Full Story @ Next-Gen.biz
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