All purpose sales and sales rumors/anecdotes thread next gen+

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Not much point buying Forza if you own a PS4 instead of an XB1. Even if it's less buggy, it'd be unplayable. And DC is now less buggy, not bad by some accounts. Plus a very different game style and appearance.

Rain makes all game better and dilutes the bugs.
 
DC is actually great. Now. As I said many times before, they should have just delayed it a couple months and released what would now be known as the great game it is, instead of 'the broken game' everyone will never forget about.
 
Rain makes all game better and dilutes the bugs.

The online work now and the weather is great. It is a very good game now. I think in January of February the last missing feature the replay will be done. After only more event and content until July 2015.

The game came back last week in uk Chart in top 10. And it was gaining momentum since a few week.

But I hope Evolution will launch the next game after a public beta for online and feature complete. Not with missing feature and broken online...
 
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Back on topic any thoughts on what the November sales might have cost MS? Taking the games out of the equation BC I don't know the nature of the agreement. It seems to me it might be pretty close to a wash especially if you consider that most will be inclined to buy a Live membership. If I'm MS the subsidy might very well be looked at as a marketing cost BC we all know each sale at this point in generation has some multiplier associated with it when friends decide to buy. I'm thinking the cost over time might not be that bad.
 
I think the situation is complex and I highly doubt the standard Xbox One pack price will go back to 399 dollars.

The November PS4 sales are very good. The true question is how many people switch from buying a PS4 to buy an Xbox One because of the discount.

I think some buyer wanted an Xbox One but not at 399 dollars and they jump in because of the price earlier than planned.
 
I think the situation is complex and I highly doubt the standard Xbox One pack price will go back to 399 dollars.

The November PS4 sales are very good. The true question is how many people switch from buying a PS4 to buy an Xbox One because of the discount.

I think some buyer wanted an Xbox One but not at 399 dollars and they jump in because of the price earlier than planned.
It's probably safe to say the the X1 sales were not people switching from thinking of buying a PS4, but 360 guys or anyone who knew they would get one but were waiting for the right price.
 
I think the situation is complex and I highly doubt the standard Xbox One pack price will go back to 399 dollars.

And the November PS4 sales are very good. The true question is how many people switch from buying a PS4 to buy an Xbox One because of the discount.

I think some buyer wanted an Xbox One but not at 399 dollars and they jump in because of the price earlier than planned.
Yeah, I'm guessing there's a lot of gamers in the US who were waiting for a price drop to upgrade from their 360. This was the perfect moment to do it with all the great bundles and lower price. Maybe at launch the lower price of the PS4 wasn't a factor important enough to jump ship, but the high price of the XB1 was high enough to wait it out. Specially since there was a rumor and expectation that it was coming.

By saying it's a limited time offer, MS could keep the option of bringing back to price up (i.e. if the rebate wasn't enough to ignite the sales, which would have meant the price wasn't the issue). It's also a pressure sales tactic. But since it work very well, MS would be stupid not to leave it at this price after xmas.
 
Why would the momentum continue?

I was talking about momentum of games, but of course, with the games coming out that would give buyers more reason to buy PS4 over XBO which was my point. I'm just saying looking at the games we know about next year XBO seems light compared.
 
Back on topic any thoughts on what the November sales might have cost MS? Taking the games out of the equation BC I don't know the nature of the agreement. It seems to me it might be pretty close to a wash especially if you consider that most will be inclined to buy a Live membership. If I'm MS the subsidy might very well be looked at as a marketing cost BC we all know each sale at this point in generation has some multiplier associated with it when friends decide to buy. I'm thinking the cost over time might not be that bad.

Interesting question - I've never sold consoles, but I used to work in Telecomm marketing.

Cost of Acqusition of a new client was expensive, but each time we sold an iPhone, that generated $6000 revenue over the lifetime of the contract. It was absolutely critical to be stocked full of handsets prior to any launch. You are almost always better to have excessive inventory (cost of iphone is 1000) than to lose the sale ($6000 revenue lifetime).

Manufacturer of those sets also provided discounts etc. But that being said, if the attach rate is _very_ good with Xbox, or they anticipate many purchases through their Video, Music, Live Services, game services (ie EA Access) and just a lot of purchase of games, they could rate the revenue off each customer being potentially very high. Once you surpassed your own lifetime revenue, I believe you are considered 'gravy', much like how we treat home land lines that we charge $50 a month for an infrastructure that was paid for umteen years ago.

To date I've already bought 18 titles ($400+) in 2014, a year of live, 1 seasons' pass for TF and I've rented several movies off Xbox Video. There is still 5+ years left. If there was ever a time to do a fire sale, that time is now, the value of the customer is going to drop as time goes on. For both consoles having tremendous sales now or front loading it should lead to higher revenues than dispersing it over the life time, as everything in gaming appears to depreciate very quickly. (ie, look how fast the barrier to entry to X1 dropped!)
 
Back on topic any thoughts on what the November sales might have cost MS? Taking the games out of the equation BC I don't know the nature of the agreement. It seems to me it might be pretty close to a wash especially if you consider that most will be inclined to buy a Live membership. If I'm MS the subsidy might very well be looked at as a marketing cost BC we all know each sale at this point in generation has some multiplier associated with it when friends decide to buy. I'm thinking the cost over time might not be that bad.

For the holiday quarter, it's quite likely that Microsoft's Xbox division will have record revenue but that margins will be lower than they were in the launch holiday quarter. This usually doesn't happen as launch entails many costs which aren't there for subsequent quarters or even YoY quarters.

However, in many ways MS are treating this holiday quarter as similar to a launch quarter, but one where the competition is well entrenched and successful. In other words, they are throwing more marketing and more promotions towards this holiday season than they did during the launch.

So in the short term, it's going to hurt their margins and profitability (they should still be profitable). However, in the long term, it should boost their profitability significantly versus not doing the promotions and marketing. Depending on whether they keep the current price or raise it back up to 399 USD will determine how much and how quickly their margins will rise again. If they keep the current price, margins will increase slightly, but may not increase significantly until there's a revision of the console.

A lot will also depend on software and accessory attach rates. As well as VOD and other online services. Both of which greatly rely on a healthy install base with active consumers. The promotions helped with one aspect, but it's always hard to judge how active consumers will remain.

Regards,
SB
 
For the holiday quarter, it's quite likely that Microsoft's Xbox division will have record revenue but that margins will be lower than they were in the launch holiday quarter.
Depends on how the discounts and bundles are accounted for. They may be accounted for as Cost of Goods, which will lower the hardware margins, or they could be accounted for as Marketing costs, in which case the hardware margins would be similar (or higher) while the cost of business is still high.

I think this is why the discount is classed as "temporary", because they may not have actually lowered the selling price to distributer/retailer, and then giving backend rebates to the retailers for number of units that go through the PoS.
 
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Depends on how the discounts and bundles are accounted for. They may be accounted for as Cost of Goods, which will lower the hardware margins, or they could be accounted for as Marketing costs, in which case the hardware margins would be similar (or higher) while the cost of business is still high.

I think this is why the discount is classed as "temporary", because they may not have actually lowered the selling price to distributer/retailer, and then giving backend rebates to the retailers for number of units that go through the PoS.

This could be very true, I remember retailer prices near the mid & start of gen 7. Mom and Pop stores like mine never got the special rates back though, a console was almost a loss leader to get someone in the door and hope they would buy a game with a $5 to $7 margin. ;) Ahh the good old days of hitting up black friday sales to later sell in store for a profit.
 
Source: GAF

  • 1.) Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (360, XBO, PS4, PS3, PC)
  • 2.) Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)
  • 3.) Super Smash Bros. (NWU, 3DS)
  • 4.) Madden NFL 15 (360, XBO, PS4, PS3)
  • 5.) Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)
  • 6.) Far Cry 4 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3, PC)
  • 7.) Pokemon Omega Ruby (3DS)
  • 8.) NBA 2K15 (PS4, 360, XBO, PS3, PC)
  • 9.) Assassin's Creed: Unity (PS4, XBO, PC)
  • 10.) Halo: The Master Chief Collection (XBO)

Interesting. Destiny has already fallen out of the Top 10 after 2 months. Far far short of coming even close to being a replacement franchise for Activision in the event COD tanks (as some people have alluded to in the past). As even COD: Ghosts managed to chart for at least 10 months and held the top spot for at least 4 of those. It'll be interesting to see if COD: AW manages to replicate the better COD titles that would stay in the top 10 for up to a year or more. Or if the brand has been forever tarnished by COD: Ghosts.

And damn, people do like them some Pokemon and Smash Bros. Nintendo has to be quite ecstatic about that.

As well Halo: tMCC charting as a single SKU. Not totally unexpected, but interesting none-the-less.

I'm also interested to see how long it takes before we stop seeing X360 taking the top SKU for for some multi-platform games that chart. It's now been one year since the next gen has come out and X360 is still leading sales for certain titles. PS2 doesn't seem to have done anything similar one year after its replacement (the PS3) was out. But that comparison is awkward as X360/PS3 weren't launch aligned in quite the same way as XBO/PS4.

Regards,
SB
 
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It'll be interesting to see if COD: AW manages to replicate the better COD titles that would stay in the top 10 for up to a year or more. Or if the brand has been forever tarnished by COD: Ghosts.

It'll be interesting to see if it has legs, but from the current release sales it has not sold near the gang-buster numbers that the franchise once has. I think it was under 4.5 million. That's still great numbers but far less than prior COD titles. I wonder what numbers they were realistically hoping for.
 
I read on GAF Sony actually referenced Amazon in their PR? They said they were #1 at Amazon on Black Friday...

I'm not finding this PR in a quick google, but I guess it's real. So hard to tell when somebody posts PR, because people often try to make up their own mock PR to make fum.

That's crazy.
 
Just for reference (and the record of if VGchartz is relevant), right now on VGchartz,

for the week ending November 1st, the tally is
XOne 3,707,354
PS4 4,894,147
1.2 million in favor of PS4

for the week ending November 29th, the tally is
XOne 5,146,519
PS4 5,950,954
~.8 million in favor of PS4

VGchartz is apparantly claiming ~1.45m for XBone and ~1.05m for PS4 for the month.
 
It'll be interesting to see if it has legs, but from the current release sales it has not sold near the gang-buster numbers that the franchise once has. I think it was under 4.5 million. That's still great numbers but far less than prior COD titles. I wonder what numbers they were realistically hoping for.
It's believable at least for Amazon. We saw that GTAV a bundle come out of no where to land just behind the unity bundle for month sales. That was quite impressive.
 
MS pulled impressive win this month and LTD difference is only about 0.7-0.75 million units in US. MS might catch Sony by next e3 if they continue with their current strategy.

I can't belive over 1.2 million Xbones were sold in US last month tracking perioid. They really love that ugly black box :)

Now that "should Xbox stay or go" tug-of-war in MS is over, warchest is open. Sony don't have any sensible strategy to counter it. Xbox will take US, while Sony gets rest of the world. And somehow I feel like that how it should be.
 
I can't belive over 1.2 million Xbones were sold in US last month tracking perioid. Xbox will take US, while Sony gets rest of the world.
And I can't believe the amazing conclusions people jump to! Maybe the US is swinging around to XB1. Maybe MS's result are a shift in unit distribution and they're going to collapse back to near nothing over the coming months while PS4 steadily sells more, making up the difference. And as for Sony not having any sensible strategy to counter, they can do the same as MS - provide the games and the marketing and maybe even cut the price, although clearly Sony will stave off that for as long as possible.

If anything, November shows how dubious predictions are, considering the general predictions were that Sony would trounce MS everywhere. Have a guess, sure, but claiming such an absolute outcome as 'XBox will take US' is quite possibly setting you up for egg on your face.
 
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