INFO-BITE 1

The Dreamcast top three for the first three months of this year was Crazy Taxi (with 40,000 sales), Virtua Striker (13,000) and Soul Calibur (10,000) – all coin-op conversions. The only other DC game to break the 10,000 barrier (by just 12 copies) was Tomb Raider 4. Five out of the DC top 11 are coin-ops. Playstation has no coin-ops in its top 50, the N64 none in its top 60, the PC none in its top 70.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That Sega has a single unique strength in the battle against Sony and Nintendo – its arcade heritage. The company can’t compete with Sony’s financial muscle or Nintendo’s unparallelled powers of brand creation, so it really ought to be putting a lot more effort into bringing home some of its hugely popular arcade titles instead of twatting around doing – well, whatever the heck it IS actually doing at the moment. Coin-op conversions are (relatively) dirt-cheap and super-quick to produce (most of the work having been already done by the arcade division, after all), and hence profitable, and lord knows, if there’s one thing Sega needs right now it’s a quick injection of cash. (Also, a few more decent games would do wonders to raise the DC’s public profile. And if we’re waiting for Sega’s marketing department to do that, we’re going to be waiting a long time.)

INFO-BITE 2

In the same period, other format No.1s were Gran Turismo 2 (PS) on 330,000 copies, Pokemon (GB) on 183,000 copies, The Sims (PC) on 62,000 and WWF Wrestlemania (N64) on 22,000.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That in its first six months, the Dreamcast has managed to claw its way to the giddy heights of... second bottom. Most of its big-name bolts have already been shot, and there’s about 62p left in the marketing kitty. PS2 is months away. Sega are flatly denying any possibility of hardware price cuts. High Street shops are already widely discounting the hardware by up to 25%, online retailers by even more, in a desperate and mostly unsuccessful attempt to shift stock. Dead man walking, viewers. Dead man walking.

INFO-BITE 3

The most successful Game Boy Color game was also WWF Wrestlemania, on 11,000 copies, followed by Super Mario Bros DX on 7,000.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That we’re rearing a nation of dimwitted children who will surely lead us all to Hell. When a hastily knocked-out, shit-awful game about the world’s most risibly poor form of entertainment conclusively trounces a superb and much-enhanced version of one of the most universally-acclaimed and justly-successful titles of all time, starring the games industry’s most famous character ever, we might as well all pack up and go home. Or at the very least, start taking a much more responsible attitude towards contraception.

INFO-BITE 4

Sonic The Hedgehog was the top-selling Neo Geo Pocket game with 1,800,
narrowly edging out the much older Metal Slug on 1,600.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That the baby Neo urgently needs some more decent software, and fast. If you take Pokemon out of the Game Boy equation (since it’s clearly a phenomenon and not part of the normal order of things), NGPC sales are actually pretty good. Despite the GB’s 10-year head start and 80-odd million user base, Neo games were shifting, on average, a third to a quarter as many as their Game Boy counterparts, which is a pretty impressive start off the blocks against such an all-conquering adversary. (Incidentally, Pokemon aside, Game Boy Color titles are comfortably outstripping ordinary GB games, echoing your correspondent’s suggestion last year that Nintendo were being overly conservative in predicting that the mono machine would outsell the newer model by 3 to 1.) Third parties, however, have been extremely slow to support SNK’s handheld, and the little machine is in severe danger of being strangled to death for want of a few games. Sonic’s sales are very encouraging, given that the game was only available for a very short time during the three-month period, and the Card Fighters Clash games look like grabbing themselves a little piece of the Pokemon collecting-craze action, but otherwise the schedules are pretty barren. SNK have done a good job so far, but they can’t do it all on their own.

INFO-BITE 5

The PC was the only format whose game sales were down (by about 10%) on the same period last year.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That slowly but surely, the never-ending idiocies perpetrated by PC publishers (stupidly high minimum specs, horrendously bugged products, ludicrous packaging limiting shelf space) are finally beginning to take their toll, as much-abused consumers vote with their wallets at last. At this rate, we’ll be entirely free of the curse of the PC game by 2010. Let’s hope so, eh?

INFO-BITE 6

The market leader by value in the PC field was, by miles, Mattel Interactive. (Whose market share of 21% was higher than the No.2 and No.3 firms – Hasbro and EA – put together.) At the same time, the division lost such a staggeringly huge amount of money that it drove its enormous parent company into the red, and has now been put up for sale at what’s expected to be a knock-down price.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

To get the hell out of PC game publishing way before 2010. Either that, or that someone’s currently running away very fast indeed from Mattel’s offices in the direction of Rio De Janeiro with a really big suitcase full of £50 notes.

INFO-BITE 7

Console full-price sales by value were up around 5% on the same period, despite games being on average 30% cheaper than this time last year.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That, as some of us have been saying for the last decade, lower prices DO ultimately bring in more money (and now that Sony have finally sorted out their price structuring, some of it should actually be spread around a little). Six years old, with the DC out and the PS2 loudly imminent, Playstation sales should be in a terminal decline. And yet, despite the pessimism in the industry, and a release schedule that for the last 18 months has been bereft of almost anything except would-be last-gasp cash-in sequel titles, PS game sales are STILL on the up, and dramatically lower prices would seem to be the only plausible explanation. Sadly, too many publishers still see sensible prices as something to be employed only at the end of a machine’s lifespan, a view whose folly can be clearly seen in the horrendous 1999 losses posted by so many "premium"-price-only publishers.

INFO-BITE 8

Full price unit sales were 1.5 million (PS), 1.1 million (PC), 211,000 (DC) and 172,000 (N64). Which means that for possibly the first time, the Playstation is selling more full-price games than all three major rivals put together, despite being older than any of them. (And before you say anything, a PC of today’s minimum realistic spec is a much younger beast than the PS.)

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

To be afraid. Be very afraid. And also, to realise that whether we like it or not, a "single" format IS coming. Within a decade at the most, more likely the next five years, there will only be one console format, and it’ll be a backwards-compatible Playstation. The developing economic model of the business - and elementary common sense - allows for no alternative. It’s not 1993 any more. Things have changed. Stop pipedreaming about the X-Box and get used to it.

INFO-BITE 9

The long-awaited and hysterically-reviewed Quake 3 only managed to limp to No.5 in the PC charts (22,000 sales), between Delta Force 2 and Norton Antivirus. Ultima Online comes in with a bullet at No.190, selling 1,900 copies.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That – surprise! – the ordinary gamer in the street STILL doesn’t give a wet dog’s arse about online gaming. The specialist press has been telling us every year since 1995 that online gaming was about to explode in a big way, and every year they’ve been talking bollocks. For one thing, the average punter (and remember, gaming is getting more mainstream every year) can’t even program their VCR properly, never mind going through all the palaver necessary to set up or join an online game. (Even downloading a new level for Dreamcast Sonic Adventure turned out to be a ridiculously confusing and unwieldy process when I tried it, so God knows how much of a mess it'll be trying to play online DC games.) Secondly, they just won’t put up with all the lag, connection-dropping and general sluggishness that we tend not to notice because we’re used to it. And thirdly, if they do ever manage to join in a game, they’ll be killed 20 times in a minute by one of the appalling tossers who inhabit the world’s Quake and Ultima Online servers and take great sniggering pleasure in annihilating newbies before they’ve had a chance to figure out which is the fire button, and will bitterly vow never to try it again. Multi-player gaming is supposed to be social, and it’s not social if there’s no-one else in the room with you. Ordinary people know this perfectly well already. The sooner WE all realise it too, the better.

INFO-BITE 10

There are nine driving games in the console full-price top 50, seven first-person shooters, five platform games, four football games, four wrestling games, two football management games and two beat-'em-ups.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That despite endless front covers and hype, only 13-year-old boys and magazine journalists still care about beat-‘em-ups. The specialist press, however, are stuck in a timewarp at 1994 or thereabouts, having completely failed to notice that fighting games as we know them are no longer the dominant chart force that they were in the days of the SNES. In fact, they’re the least popular identifiable genre there is. Even Soul Calibur – probably the most press-trumpeted game of recent years, eclipsing even Gran Turismo in terms of sheer hyperbole – was only a minor flash in the pan when it finally reached the shelves. And yet, can you read two sentences in a games mag without some dribbling juvenile idiot yabbering on about Dead Or Alive 2? ("It’s Soul Calibur – with breasts!!!") Can you buggery.

INFO-BITE 11

According to the Chart-Track figures, Game Boy games in total sold 185,850 full-price units. Of those, 183,532 were apparently accounted for by Pokemon. Which, by a simple process of arithmetic, would leave the other 28 games listed in the GB top 20 selling just 2,318 between them, or approximately 82.79 copies each, although even the No.30 actually shifted 274.

WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US?

That you can’t believe everything you read. Especially statistics. Goodnight everybody!