In yesterday's post about Wii bombs, I went through all the math to let you know how I developed the AURA (Achieved Under Review Aggregate) scoring system. The discussion was light on the games, but there will be plenty of time to talk about Wii bombs when I combine data from across all consoles. Today, I present the Top Ten Xbox 360 critical hits/commercial failures, using the same scoring system. Hit the above link to find out a little (or lot, if you like reading) about the scoring system. As with yesterday, the larger the number, the bigger the bomb.

TOP TEN XBOX 360 CRITICAL HITS/RETAIL BOMBS
10. The Bigs - .55
9. College Hoops 2K7 - .58
8. College Hoops 2K8 - .67
7. Virtua Fighter 5 Online - .82
6. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection - .83
5. Tales of Vesperia - .87
4. Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise - 1.18
3. NHL 2K7 - 1.24
2. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assualt on Dark Athena - 1.29
1. FlatOut: Ultimate Challenge  - 1.60

 Lots of sport titles, so I will include an alternative list, excluding them:

10. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - .45
9. Peter Jackson's King Kong - .49
8. Unreal Tournament 3 - .51
7. Pure - .56
6. Virtua Fighter 5 Online - .82
5. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection - .83
4. Tales of Vesperia - .87
3. Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise - 1.18
2. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assualt on Dark Athena - 1.29
1. FlatOut: Ultimate Challenge - 1.60

These scores came from data supplied by gamerankings.com and vgchartz.com, and reflect North American sales data only. The 107 Xbox 360 games that scored 80 and above were examined.

To get it out of the way first, the sports titles make sense (and in my alternative list, I excluded The Bigs and NHL 08). College Basketball is much less popular than NCAA football. In fact, 2K has stopped this line of games, no trouble to see why. And my Canadian heart bleeds for the NHL, just can't catch a break. Year in and year out, both NHL franchises are some of the best sport video games but the North American market is not determined to buy them.

Next, if you compare these AURA Scores to theWii games, you'll notice that Wii games are bombing much harder, something everyone in the video games industry knew already. Xbox 360 has a remarkable attach rate with its consumers. What we can say here is that Xbox 360 owners are buying the good games, with very few being passed up. And with almost 3 times as many games with a review aggregate over 80 than the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 owners are spoiled for choice and are still buying the games. One would expect that with fewer good games, the Wii would have lower AURA scores, as the market would concentrate on the smaller pool of games.

Anecdotally, we know this isn't the case with the Wii.

By now, you can start to see what a specific AURA score means. As you get over .50 you are getting into bomb territory, and by 1.00, things are looking grim. A score of 2.00 and above is a catastrophe.

As for the games themselves, Banjo and Kazooie's lower price point didn't seem to do the trick. Unreal 3 seems to follow trends we saw on the PC (incredible low server populations). Adding online play to Virtua Fighter didn't get the sales for the Xbox 360 port.

Sonic's Ulitimate Genesis Collection is interesting. Are retro gamers using the Xbox 360, or have they sunk their dollars into the Wii and its Virtual Console? Maybe they already picked up the few games they want on the dozens of other retro collections out there. That said, it is hard to imagine that this was some sort of failure for Sega, giving the (assumed) low cost of development.

Tales of Vesperia, while one of the highest rated JRPGs on the system, it did poorly in America, trumping once again efforts by Microsoft to secure this segment of the video game market.

Viva Pinata's sequel fared even worse than the original. The cartoony garden sim with amazing amount of depth is a hard sell, despite praise. The original, it should be noted, scored a .36, much better than Trouble in Paradise's 1.18.

The recent release of the second Chronicles of Riddick game has faired very poorly in the early going, despite good reviews and the inclusion of a remake of the first game, Escape from Butcher Bay, a critical hit in its own right.

Finally, FlatOut is the biggest bomb. This may be due to any number of factors: it is a remake of a FlatOut 2, FlatOut is not a popular nor storied franchise, many alternatives to its gameplay exists in the Xbox 360 library, and it is developed and distributed by Bugbear Entertainment and Empire Interactive, respectively. These two companies are not considered "A level", and may have limited marketing and distributions capabilities.

Next, I will do the same for the PlayStation 3, and we'll have a look at how each console's bombs compare to one another.