Haven't posted any graphs up here on NeoGAF for quite a while, so I figured I'd treat anyone who's still reading this thread to some historical (and current) analysis of UK software sales across various systems. While we don't get either weekly or LTD numbers from Chart-Track, what we do have as a resource is
this listing of sales awards from ELSPA. ELSPA get their data from Chart-Track, and while it's far from exact, it gives a rough idea of the LTD sales of any awarded game, based on the following award structure:
Silver - >100k
Gold - >200k
Platinum - >300k
Double Platinum - >600k
I got these numbers from
Captain Smoker's post above, but can't find the criterion for a diamond award on the website. Smoker, could you fill us in? I'd imagine it's most likely to be either 1 million or 1.2 million sales, but given how few games reached it, it's of limited relevance in this analysis.
Basically, I took the lists from the ELSPA's awards pages, threw them into Excel, and broke them down by system. Hence, I've come up with the following table of data:
Code:
Silver Gold Platinum Double Platinum Diamond
PSX 65 31 18 1 0
N64 2 0 0 0 0
DC 1 0 0 0 0
PS2 291 152 78 25 4
XBOX 38 9 3 1 0
GC 7 2 0 0 0
XB360 43 17 8 2 0
WII 18 9 6 1 0
PS3 9 6 1 0 0
GBC 10 6 5 1 0
GBA 47 12 2 0 0
DS 56 20 14 3 1
PSP 38 9 3 1 0
PC 166 56 27 2 0
(Apologies for the slightly messy formatting) This shows the number of games that received each award on each system. For instance, on the Wii, 6 titles have received Platinum awards (sales over 300k) in the UK.
Of course, everyone prefers big fancy graphs to having to sift through tables of actual data, so I've broken it down further by console generation, to give you an idea of how things have compared historically.
PSX vs. N64
As one might imagine, the Playstation whipped the N64 in terms of software sales in the UK. It is worth noting, however, both in terms of comparing one generation to the next, as well as comparing the PSX and N64 here, that this data only goes back to the end of 1999/early 2000. This both means that PSX is severely underrepresented compared to PS2 (see next graph), but also that the N64 would have been even more underrepresented, as the less successful console would generally have more front-loaded software sales (third-parties had effectively given up on the N64 by this stage, whereas PSX saw a few years more support).
DC vs. PS2 vs. XBox vs. Gamecube
This, however, is data for the full generation (almost, as PS2 software is still selling). Once again, Sony was well ahead on all accounts. Gamecube did particularly poorly, without any games reaching Platinum status (Wii has already had 6). The reasons for Sega's withdrawal from the console race are quite obvious here as well, with only a single game getting above the 100k needed for the lowest award (Silver).
XBox 360 vs. Wii vs. PS3
As expected, the XBox 360's year head-start has given it the early lead in software sales. The lead diminishes, though, as we look at the larger awards (Wii is at less that half the Silvers of the XBox 360, but has almost caught up in terms of Platinums). PS3's position compared to the Wii can be partially explained by the fact that it came out about 5 months after the Wii in the UK (including missing out on a Christmas period), but if the Wii's current domination of the UK charts continues, we'll be looking at the gap widening rather than narrowing over the coming months.
GBC vs. GBA vs. DS vs. PSP
I've lumped all the handhelds together for simplicity's sake, and a few observations spring rather quickly to mind. The main one is how close the PSP, DS and GBA are in Silver awards, compared to how far the DS is ahead of both in Platinums. Also, we can see that the PSP has actually had more Platinum sellers than the GBA did, despite not yet reaching its levels in the lower categories. DS shows very good software sales here, but it's still got some way to go before moving software on the sort of levels we see on the consoles above (particularly PS2).
It's also worth pointing out that, like the PSX and N64 above, the Gameboy Colour was released before ELSPA started giving out these awards, so it's going to be somewhat underrepresented here also (although it had a relatively short lifespan anyway).
PC
Not much comparison to be done here, but I thought people might like a chart regardless.
. Well, I'm part of the problem though, having not bought the game yet due to lack of gaming funds... However, just a few more days 
), but they might have something to do with the lower price. What i know, Capcom said that their business model allowed them to sell the Xbox 360 version cheaper. I dont know exactly what this means, but maybe MS are sponsoring them (or something like that) so they will still make the same amount of money now if they sell it for a lower price. 