Oh, Aaron Greenberg: PS3 'hemorrhaging at retail,' GTA IV DLC would have beaten Killzone 2 at retail
Citing February NPD numbers against those in the past couple of years -- and Microsoft's own, mysterious Xbox Live numbers on GTA IV's exclusive downloadable expansion -- Xbox 360 product management director Aaron Greenberg did quite a bit of chest pounding to Gamasutra's Chris Remo yesterday. Broaching the subject of competitors head on, Greenberg says, "What we hear from our partners is that it's not just PS3, it's also PS2 down 62 percent year over year. With that business declining, and with the PS3 business declining, it's been described to me as hemorrhaging at retail right now, and it just keeps getting worse."
Moving right along to the subject of Killzone 2 -- a game released on the 27th of a 28 day month -- Greenberg compares the title to the aforementioned GTA IV mystery numbers, "If that content was sold at retail, it would be one of the best sellers across all platforms. It would have outsold Killzone 2." Considering GTA IV's astronomical sales numbers, if even half of the game's owners have the 360 iteration and a quarter of those people bought the expansion, that's over 1.5 million downloads. Still, without hard numbers to back up his statements, Greenberg's words amount to little more than our monthly rendezvous with executive smack talking.
Update: SCEA responds to February NPD numbers on Joystiq PlayStation. "We have no doubt [Killzone 2] will deliver a next gen experience and will be responsible for driving hardware sales throughout the year."
