Xbox Live leaderboard data shows how House Party promotion fared

GamerBytes did a little number-crunching on the Xbox Live Arcade leaderboards for last month, and while we don't have exact numbers on Xbox Live titles (other than Major Nelson's usual list of most-played and purchased games), these are usually a rough indication of what business was like on Microsoft's network last month.

Bionic Commando: Re-armed 2 was the biggest disappointment, picking up fewer than 10,000 players on the leaderboards, compared to over 130K first-week sales for the first title. Hard Corps: Uprising, the first game to come out under Microsoft's "House Party" banner, brought in a few more players, at around 27K, and Bejeweled Blitz Live did pretty well (for a game that's on nearly every platform known to man in its basic form) with over 14K new players in the single week of February it was out.

Sales were big drivers -- Hydrophobia picked up over 10,000 new players thanks to a sale, and Geometry Wars 2 saw a huge bump as well. Outside of the new titles, Pinball FX 2 and Trials HD continue to grow their leaderboards.

Reader Comments (32)

Hmmmmm, interesting. This makes me wonder how the current House Party promotion is doing. The games are good but typically they offer discounts if you buy all or most of the games; I don't recall that being offered this time. I forget the name of the last promotion, but it was the Ilomilo+keflings+raskulls one; I wonder how that did with the whole cross-game unlockables promotion? Would be interesting to see.

@Acosta02

I don't think a more stupid post will be made this week. Ay-oh.

@Acosta02 why? I thought it was fine.

@Acosta02 There just was.

@Jack Kevorkian

I feel like I didn't make it clear that this partially does cover the house party. Also a quick google search would have revealed that the last promotion was called "Games for the Holidays." I just got super lazy while making this post, I guess.

@Acosta02 well i knew exactly what you were talking about.

I hope the promotions remail strong.

Hard Corps: Uprising could have pulled in a lot more sales if they charged 800msp for the game instead of being 1200msp + 400msp for two day-one dlc characters.

Wasn't Beyond Good and Evil part of House Party? How come there ain't no data for it? Is it because it had no multiplayer component?

Also, it's been a few weeks since it came out. If there was a BG&E2 teaser somewhere in the game, someone would have found it? Was I completely wrong in assuming there would be one? That seems like a no-brainer!

@ch3burashka

I'd like to know how well BG&E did, too. It would be a good indicator for the interest in the sequel. Speaking of which, has there been any news on BG&E2 since that teaser? Is that even happening still?

@ch3burashka it came out in March.

Those Bionic numbers are worse than I could have imagined they would be.

@ch3burashka

It came out this month.

@ch3burashka

All that data is for febuary.

Only 1 house party game came out in Feb.

i was gonna buy Hard Corps....but then I didn't.

@bshido so you kept baaackin'up backin'up backin'up...cuz your daddy taught you well?

(:D

(...sorry...I know...I'll go now...)

what about BGAE?

@briscott nevermind BGAE was 3/2 and not part of this.

lol

I remember when I beat BCR2 I checked my time on the leaderboards, I was in the top 15 for just about every level even placing 2nd on one.

That's when I realized I wasn't good, but this game hardly sold.
It was a sad day when I realized that.

I can tell from the lobbies that the Poker Game didnt do all that well. It really isnt an easy task to find a game. Very suprised at that. Its a shame it is a really competent game.

@Jack Kevorkian

I'm on the fence with this game. I like poker, but I'm afraid it'll be too addicting and I'll play until dawn. From a marketing perspective, I'm not too sure a lot of Xbox gamers are poker players, so you're already limiting your audience right there (as opposed to shooters and platformers which gamers of any age can pick up). And the hard core poker fans are probably playing poker on the internet.

@FlashJS The blind timers take too long on the game imo so even after its two people you can bet low stakes which keeps each match going on far too long. Point being, is you wouldnt play until dawn because the matches arent nearly fast enough and you get bored after one or two.

Texas Heat (each season has a special game) being the exception. really like that version of poker.

@Jack Kevorkian A single game of poker tends to last hours on end. I don't see what is wrong with that.

Hydrophobia would of been helped through the title update as well as the sale.. I tried it, found the water scarier than Dead Space 2 (can't swim because I don't have enough bouyancy).. but I couldn't get past that you couldn't climb downwards (you had to drop) & and that terrible accent impressions

I'm think it had to do with the games more than just the promotion. BC R2 had lackluster reviews. HCU was a bit overpriced and maybe scared off the not so hard core. Bejewled seems to be on everything already. I didn't even check out TNT racers, for whatever reason, and I guessing that's what everyone else did.

BGE was also part of this promotion so I'd like to know how it did. I didn't pick it up though as I already played it last gen.

"Bionic Commando: Re-armed 2 was the biggest disappointment ..."

In more ways than one. What a terrible follow-up to one of the best downloadable games and one of the best remakes ever.

Also, this article doesn't to clarify that the source article was only covering the month of February. That's why BG&E HD and Full House Poker aren't covered.

headline doesn't clarify*

I usually buy my anticipated XBLA games at launch. I was going to buy BCR2 and HCU, but since they apparently weren't stellar, I am waiting for the inevitable sale where I will buy them for 800 MSP. This is the first time I've decided to wait like this. I'm also waiting for a sale on Pixeljunk Shooter 2.

Really interesting numbers, cool that they keep track of info this way. I especially like how many more sales the "Deal of the Week" creates, showing that a lot of XBLA gamers are still looking for value.

I think the poor sales can be chalked up to a combination of so-so games and a not-so-amazing promotion. Back in 2010 with the Summer of Arcade and the Winter promo, there were better incentives to buy more games, and the games were definitely better than these ones.

The figures here are inaccurate because there is no mention of Torchlight which released March 9th for House Party.

I bought the first BCR after hearing and reading how great it was. Turns out I hated it. Going by the sales of BCR2 I bet I'm not the only one that felt burned after buying BCR1.

Hydrophobia

Xbox Live leaderboard data shows how House Party promotion fared

Reader Comments (32)

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:09PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:29PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:39PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:51PM Hong Dong said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:06PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:16PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:15PM FinalOutrage said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:21PM ch3burashka said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:26PM Uncle Jesse said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:30PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:06PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 8:06PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:23PM bshido said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:48PM Nomadic0ne said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:24PM briscott said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:25PM briscott said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 2:36PM The Cole Train said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:21PM Jawmuncher said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:31PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:41PM FlashJS said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:19PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 5:41PM Robborboy said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 3:51PM Mazrael said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:41PM BizarroPete said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:53PM Epoque said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:59PM Epoque said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 5:00PM Epoque said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 4:58PM GordoJones88 said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2011 5:09PM tylerh1701 said

Posted: Mar 24th 2011 12:42AM Trojan said

Posted: Mar 24th 2011 12:14PM SaintV said

Posted: Mar 25th 2011 9:33PM Migz7 said

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