[Sister console digital download site GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley examines PlayStation Network's debuts and successes during March 2011, using leaderboard and chart data to analyze their sales and downloads.]This March was a good month for NBA Live Coins games on the PlayStation Network, with the release of PixelJunk Shooter 2 from acclaimed developer Q-Games, the release of Swarm from HotHead Games, Behaviour Interactive's Ghostbusters: Sanctum Of Slime, and many other titles.
sequels to new intellectual property, which decided to stand out?Here we do our best to try and make sense of the PlayStation Store, and how well games seem to be selling on it - to help developers understand the ecosystem they're getting into:A Shooter SequelPixelJunk Shooter 2 is the first true sequel Q-Games have worked on previously iterating on Racer and Monsters with Second Lap and Monsters Deluxe on FUT Coins PSP. This was the first game release for the month of March.The
Shooter was released in December 2009, and over 4 weeks added 49,399 players to the Leaderboards. The sequel however has only managed 21,864 players in 5 weeks -- less than half that figure. The game has received good reviews, claiming that it's better than the original, so seeing lower sales numbers is disappointing. Weve seen sequels on digital distribution systems not do well time and time again, and this is a good example of it.The second release for the month was Beatshapers' Stardrone,
only in Europe. For the month of March it only added 1,754 players, so let's hope the MMOGO American release in April helps out those sales.Hard BoltsThe next release was Arc System Works' Hard Corps: Uprising, released a month after its Xbox Live Arcade equivalent. For the month it added 21,982 players to its Leaderboards, which is roughly on par with the XBLA version. Not a huge amount, but it should continue to sell over the next few months.Fire Hose Games' Slam Bolt Scrappers was