The All New All Different Top 25 XBOX Live downloads of all time.

[OSweetMrMath]

I've been tracking the Rock Band sales rankings more or less daily for close to two years. My conclusion is that I can't predict sales rankings at all. It doesn't matter if I like a song. It doesn't matter if I think a song is good. (I can be honest. I like a lot of crap, and I can recognize that songs are good without necessarily liking them.) It doesn't matter if the forums are excited. It doesn't matter if the song or band seems to be generally popular. It doesn't matter if the song seems like it will have interesting gameplay. I just can't predict with any degree of accuracy.

It's fun to track the sales of songs, and be excited or surprised or disappointed when sales exceed or fail to live up to my expectations. But I don't look to sales in Rock Band for validation. I'm not wrong to like a song, just because it doesn't sell well.

Fundamentally, I don't understand people who get angry when a song does worse (or better) than they would like. Sales performance isn't a judgment of your taste in music, and even if it is, what do you care what other people think? You play music you like, I'll play music I like, and we'll all be happy.

[ThatAuthoringGroup]

When I was doing this way back when a good indicator of if a song was going to do well was how much the forums hated it

If the forums were like this is super crap, then it usually tracked really high (outside of extreme unknown bands of course. I'm talking about the radio hits, etc).

But yeah with the series slowing down I'm not sure how it would track today. I mean the reason before was because most of the people here on the forums were the hardcore fans, and we were just a small chunk of the overall players.

Now that it's been over 18 months since the last title, and the install base is dwindling you'd have to imagine that the forums make up a large majority of the players still playing the game (the 'casuals' long since moved on, etc).

So I'm not sure how to guesstimate how the tracks would perform at this rate.

[Pankrazzo]

And if Shinedown also outsells them?

Then it's still 2nd vs. 5th appearance, or 5 vs. 21 songs.

Megadeth is obviously not a huge mainstream act anymore, and HMX has already saturated their target group with two albums.

[bonethug0108]

@MrMath, I think people get upset because if stuff they like does poorly and stuff they hate does well, it's more likely we'll get more stuff they hate and less stuff they like. While that's not always true, hmx has said more recently that sales are driving some of what they go after(if an artist does well, if a genre does well, etc.).

Personally I don't care if stuff I don't like does well. I'm more concerned with the stuff I like doing well. I don't get mad if it doesn't, but it does make me a little sad to think we might not get more of something.

As for predicting the sales, I do pretty well most weeks. I'm generally in the range of where something lands, if not within the hundreds place itself(just have to remember to move the "good" range with the ppassage of time).

Things that throw me off a bit are some older bands. You can't always get a read on how popular they/those certain songs still are.

[Witticus]

Things that throw me off a bit are some older bands. You can't always get a read on how popular they/those certain songs still are.

Yeah this throws me off too like the T. Rex pack doing so poorly always saddens me.

[bonethug0108]

Yeah this throws me off too like the T. Rex pack doing so poorly always saddens me.

Personally that was one I guessed right. You never really hear about them nowadays.

[FlyGuyLXI]

i have just lost my faith in mankind

To be fair it was a pretty crappy Megadeth pack.

[bonethug0108]

To be fair, megadeth isn't really mainstream to begin with. Sure they are one of the big 4, but outside of metallica you don't hear the other 3 on the radio(unless it is a metal station).

[Bront20]

3 days grace is poised to pass huey with a 2 week head start. As much as huey was praised and 3 days grace bemoaned it was obvious that would be the outcome.

I can only hope sales stay strong and give reason for a future pack.

Huey had some huge hits but isn't current, so a current artist with mainstream appeal will give them a run for their money. I wanted Huey to do better, but I'm just happy we got some, it's still moving, and it's nice to see that it's almost entirely pack sales for Huey, which means it was a solid pack.

To be fair, megadeth isn't really mainstream to begin with. Sure they are one of the big 4, but outside of metallica you don't hear the other 3 on the radio(unless it is a metal station).

It was also what, their 4th or 5th appearance in the game after 2 albums, a few other DLC songs, and a disc song? Not to mention songs they have in some other game folks spend money on.

[M_Robbins5]

To be fair, megadeth isn't really mainstream to begin with. Sure they are one of the big 4, but outside of metallica you don't hear the other 3 on the radio(unless it is a metal station).

Yeah Metallica is the only 1 of the big 4 that I hear frequently on the radio and even then it's almost always 90s Metallica, I did hear Fuel on the radio a while back but that's a rare exception.
Once in a while I hear a Megadeth song (usually Symphony Of Destrucion) but the other 2 I never hear on the radio.