In-Depth: PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, July - August, 2011

[Console digital editor Ryan Langley examines PlayStation Network's debuts and successes during the months of July and August 2011, using leaderboard and chart data to analyze their sales and downloads.] Over the past couple of months, we've seen quite a number of new releases on PlayStation Network. Unfortunately, the majority couldn't be followed via Leaderboards, so instead we've merged both July and August into one big analysis. Thanks to the help of our friends over at PSNStores.com, we're able to give you as much data as we can find. We've looked at the Leaderboards for the games we could follow, noting how they may fare against their Xbox Live Arcade cousins, while also checking what sort of effect the PlayStation Plus service is offering, and determining how well the games are faring in the Metacritic rating system. Leaderboard Analysis 14 new titles were made available on the PlayStation Store in July and August, but unfortunately, we could only follow three of them, thanks to the lack of Leaderboards on the majority of titles. The three games we could follow were Dead Block, Galaga Legions DX, and Cubixx HD. Dead Block had only 7,778 players on the Leaderboards. Compared to the XBLA version, which added 22,095 players in its first month, it hasn't done so well. On the other hand, Galaga Legions DX appears to have done much better on PSN than XBLA. Galaga Legions DX only had 13,099 players after 5 weeks, while the PSN version had 18,905 within 4 weeks, likely thanks to the Japanese market. The last game we could follow, Cubixx HD, was only available in Europe, and after two weeks of being available, it added only 2,728 players despite a high Metacritic score. Hopefully it'll make its way over to the states sometime soon. Other big releases included Limbo and Street Fighter III, also available on Xbox Live Arcade. Magical Pinball Here we can look at some of the earlier releases from June and a little bit prior. Magic: The Gathering 2012 continues to do very well on PSN, though it is still seeing roughly 80,000 sales less than the Xbox 360 version. Marvel Pinball also has continued to do well, and even the DLC, which requires the full version unlike the XBLA edition, has a very high rate of purchase alongside the main game. Castle Crashers had a huge push across the months, thanks to being free to PlayStation Plus users in July. Still, it's at only 86,000 users for the month, which likely means that the amount of PSN Plus subscribers is still very small compared to those on the Xbox Live Gold subscription service. Dancing In September September should be an interesting month for the PlayStation Store -- the majority of the "PSN Play" promotion resides within it, including Renegade Ops, BloodRayne Betrayal, and The Baconing. Hopefully the promotion will do for PSN what Summer Of Arcade has done for XBLA.