Do E3 Awards Translate into Big Sales?

Yesterday we reported on the Game Critics E3 awards, which honored Bethesda’s Fallout 3 as Best of Show. The full list of winners had a number of high-profile titles including Spore, LittleBigPlanet, Gears of War 2 and others, but how many of these games are destined for big financial payouts? According to UBS analyst Ben Schachter, the E3 awards are actually a pretty good indicator of what games will perform well on the market.

"Do awards translate into higher sales? The answer is yes, but not always. Additionally certain categories have a higher correlation between awards and sales. Since these awards began in 1998, the Best Console title has sold an average of 2.42 million units life-time in the U.S., according to NPD," Schachter explained.

"Each of the nine winners has gone to sell well above 1 million units, with the exception of Sega’s Jet Grind Radio in 2000. Notably, each of the winning titles over the past nine years has been either first-party developed or an exclusive to a single platform, including 2007’s winner Mass Effect from Microsoft," he continued. "Winning the higher-profile Best in Show award, however, has not always signaled sales success, particularly when the win was for hardware. Although the Wii (2006’s Best of Show) has been very successful, 2004’s Sony PSP has stumbled vs. the Nintendo DS, and the GameCube (2001’s Best of Show) did not sell well despite generating a lot of buzz at the conference in 2001. 2007 winner Rock Band has had stellar sales with 1.1 million units in 2007 and 2.8 million since inception."