NPD April 2008 (Post #16)
- Thread starter Rangers
- Start date
Wasn't expecting these numbers. I guess most of the people that wanted GTA already had a console they could play it on. Gran Turismo didn't seem to stir much either. Mario Kart really seemed to move the Wii. 700k? Where the hell did that number come from? I believe it's extremely rare for a game to push hardware (Guitar Hero, Wii Sports), but it seems like the Wii's big titles always push up their sales. PS3 and 360, on the other hand, don't seem greatly affected by individual titles. Halo3 did a good job, but they've sold quite a few consoles since that title came out. It's probably easier for a game to move hardware if it comes out early in the life cycle, when people are waiting for a reason to jump on the system.
iceberg187
Regular
Wii games aren't going anything. Initial demand is still outstripping supply.
Who would've thought that Wii Sport would still triumph GTA4 as consoles mover. Wii Fit next month, it'll be interesting how things pans out.
Also it'll be interesting to see the market size different between the casual and hardcore market by the time of next gen console launch. Both Sony and MS probably will gear their next gen consoles more toward casual right from the start ala Nintendo.
Also it'll be interesting to see the market size different between the casual and hardcore market by the time of next gen console launch. Both Sony and MS probably will gear their next gen consoles more toward casual right from the start ala Nintendo.
I take it back. You are entirely right. They've sold every unit they've ever sent to retail in North America. Wii Sports really is a system seller though, but SMG, Mario Kart and Smash Brothers were not necessarily needed to guarantee those units would move.
quest55720
Regular
Wii sales = how many nintendo can ship not new games. It was not mario cart that moved 700k it was just having 700k in retail. I still don't see Wiis on the store shelves in my area so nintendo is not even close to matching demand. Nintendo just seems to ship more months big titles hit is all.
I don't agree, MS has to fight Sony but also has to maintain profitability.
They will cut the price when the DLC will be pushed out (along with lot of games I guess before the end of the year).
More I suspect MS to want to clear the channel before the jasper revision hit the streets.
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TheMightyPuck
Newcomer
Nintendo wow.
quest55720
Regular
Well I wish them good lucky recovering from sub 100k months that will be coming( it only took sony taking 1/3 off the price to recover). The DLC won't be ready till atleast september. The 360 will be dead in the water if they wait that long for a price drop. I mean really 50k units a week the month GTA4 launched how bad will it be in june or july with no big time games. Add to that sony stealing sales with MGS4 bundles and being the only decent blu ray player out there. MS can worry about a few dollars in profit now and be forced to launch in 2010 because of lost momentum. This is MS last stand they were easily destroyed in japan. They were just passed in europe by sony. This is it for MS this is the last stand of the 360 right here and now in NA.
The PS3 was a blu-ray player this month too... If MS needs a price drop, so does Sony. And MS does have some decent titles scheduled for this summer. The ultimate goal of Sony, MS and Nintendo is to make money, not to sell the most consoles (especially if they are at a loss).
Sony was equal with he 360 , they are side by side now in sales, and i guess they are still the most expensive console of the bunch?
Now they just have to pass them and keep the momentum going for a 5 years and the XBOX will have lost again.
At least the war isnt over, and maybe Microsoft will have to cut the expected life span of their console shorter than planned.
I dont understand the Wii, really i dont.
Now they just have to pass them and keep the momentum going for a 5 years and the XBOX will have lost again.
At least the war isnt over, and maybe Microsoft will have to cut the expected life span of their console shorter than planned.
I dont understand the Wii, really i dont.
All this talk of the Wii "winning" this generation reminds me of a "Gone with the Wind" quote, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a ...." A more succint version of an above post. The following may come off a little harsh, probably because I just do not understand the draw. The same way I don't understand how what passes for "comedy" movies actually have anyone pay to see them rather than the other way around. Say the Wii grabs 120 million market share, so what? Does anyone really see it affecting the way MS, Sony, Sega, Bungie, Epic, Bioware, Turn 10, Konami, Capcom, EA, Ubisoft, etc. etc approach the industry? Maybe they try for a piece of that market share, but do our favorite core games get the Disney treatment as a result? Do we really believe that the Wii is some kind of turning point for the industry due to its success? (Warning: The following contains generalizations which are not applicable in all cicrumstances. - The simple fact that I felt the need to include that line bothers me.)
It is rather hard to describe how I feel about the Wii. Good for Nintendo. Great business move, make pile of cash selling titles like Wii Sports or whatever. They smashed the PS3 and 360 this month when, perhaps, the biggest title of this generation was released. The Wii is playing to a different crowd. The only people I know who have them, never owned a system previously. I really don't care how many consoles they sell or what gets sold on it. I've seen it, played around with one brought to the law school for a lunch time bowling "tourney." It feels like a step backwards. It's almost like the sales of those joysticks that have 2,000 old games in it. Any comparison to previous systems/games will be somewhat flawed, freely admitted from the above analogy. It's like someone took all the internet flash games, family games like "Scene It" or some other trivia based game, tacked on a motion controller and called it a next-gen system. I'm searching for comparisons or some way to put it into words. They have the "Tickle Me Elmo", "Laser Tag", or "Cabbage Patch" doll of this time period. It does not have a discernable effect on what I want to play or, so far at least, the games I want to play getting made.
I wouldn't get a GOW or GTAIV, probably not even a passable version of HALO on the Wii. To the core community, both developers and consumers, what does it really matter? Is Half-Life 3 not going to show up or get radically simplified so it can be placed on the Wii/Wii2? Anyone who wants to declare the Wii the straight up winner based on console sales go right ahead. How many of us care given the nature of the system and the games which are made for it?
For all those who are just starting to play, maybe the Wii is a good thing. Maybe it will bring more people overall and the next-generation it will start to show. People who had stepped away from gaming while they had children/ got their careers going, or just missed the boat on the early systems and computer games become core, consistent gamers.
I don't want a simplier game, I want a more complex game. Games so deep and complex that it is like when my mother and stepfather come back from "Vanilla Sky" and ask me what the movie was about. I want brutal. Not "slasher movie" brutal, but "Schindler's List", "Othello: The Moor" brutal. I want "The Usual Suspects" and the "Fight Club", the "Dr. Strangelove", "Network", "The Boys from Brazil", "A Clockwork Orange", "Road to Perdition". "Go", or "Strange Days" of video games. That is what I await. Something I feel Nintendo is the least likely of the 3 to bring. I do not want the Disney/ Saturday morning cartoon version. The closest I come to that is "Stardust" or "The Princess Bride."
Each of us, outside of reading numbers and trends from NPD data, occupies our own little world of friends, co-workers and acquantances. Online or otherwise, we tend to associate with like-minded people, skewing our view. Maybe not to the extent of that famous quote after Nixon won and some lady in New York stated she thought it must have been a rigged election because she didn't know anyone who voted for him. We may not be that level of isolated thanks to the wealth of information, but information is not experience. Those I surround myself with are well educated, intelligent and, almost universally, cynical and sarcastic. People who prefer wit to humor. They are people who do not look back to their childhood with wistful thoughts and rush out to see Narnia or the latest Harry Potter. Of those I know, those who have a DS or want a Wii are invariably the opposite of those I associate with. They still have a kid in them that enjoys messing around with Floam and Play-Doh. That system brings it out (either one.) It is their version of escapism. Fine, good for them and Nintendo, but what does it matter? The Wii(or DS for that matter) has given them some easily accessible step back into that time. Nintendo has tapped into that group and is making piles of money. Again, does it really matter to those of us who want sim racers, FPS's with a suspension of disbelief, or Madden? Games where you mutter an obscenity at the screen when someone hits your rear quarter in a turn or you are still having trouble getting around that sniper? My joy or laughter is not provoked by Disney's rat version of "Robinhood." I laughed when the guy fell off the back of the Titanic and hit one of the props on the way down.
I just cannot take the machine seriously. The same way I couldn't take the Sims or Nintendogs seriously. Nintendo has the game console version of a Yamaguchi (or whatever the heck those idiot electronic key chain pets were.) I know I am not alone when talking of my own inner circle of people, but am I alone here when I say I don't care and hold the sytem, from a non-financial viewpoint, in a certain level of contempt? What happens to Nintendo the next-generation? That controller is easily replicated. I cannot see MS or Sony coming out with a system at anything more than around 350$ initial price, so that mistake will not be taking place again. So what really changes about what we want and what we will get for the rest of this round and the following rounds? I don't see much of an effect on the established industry as far as the Wii goes. At least not to this point. I just don't see one in the future either.
So Nintendo sells the most systems. If it has little to no real impact on games progressing in their nature, then who amongst us really cares? I've lost track of the jokes on here, Kotaku, Arstechnica, etc. about the Wii sitting around gathering dust. I see no huge threads about people posting about Wii games for online get togethers or swapping pointers and stories about their exploits and failures. Just because it sells a great deal does not mean it will change the nature of games. Games are supposed to be cheaper to make for the Wii, correct? So where are the risky titles? The one's that are not sequels and you dare not risk 30-50 million and end up with "Postal." The Wii has the numbers, a cheaper development environment, so where are the benefits one would think you would get from this? The Wii may be a financial juggernaut for Nintendo. I don't see it as anything else.
It is rather hard to describe how I feel about the Wii. Good for Nintendo. Great business move, make pile of cash selling titles like Wii Sports or whatever. They smashed the PS3 and 360 this month when, perhaps, the biggest title of this generation was released. The Wii is playing to a different crowd. The only people I know who have them, never owned a system previously. I really don't care how many consoles they sell or what gets sold on it. I've seen it, played around with one brought to the law school for a lunch time bowling "tourney." It feels like a step backwards. It's almost like the sales of those joysticks that have 2,000 old games in it. Any comparison to previous systems/games will be somewhat flawed, freely admitted from the above analogy. It's like someone took all the internet flash games, family games like "Scene It" or some other trivia based game, tacked on a motion controller and called it a next-gen system. I'm searching for comparisons or some way to put it into words. They have the "Tickle Me Elmo", "Laser Tag", or "Cabbage Patch" doll of this time period. It does not have a discernable effect on what I want to play or, so far at least, the games I want to play getting made.
I wouldn't get a GOW or GTAIV, probably not even a passable version of HALO on the Wii. To the core community, both developers and consumers, what does it really matter? Is Half-Life 3 not going to show up or get radically simplified so it can be placed on the Wii/Wii2? Anyone who wants to declare the Wii the straight up winner based on console sales go right ahead. How many of us care given the nature of the system and the games which are made for it?
For all those who are just starting to play, maybe the Wii is a good thing. Maybe it will bring more people overall and the next-generation it will start to show. People who had stepped away from gaming while they had children/ got their careers going, or just missed the boat on the early systems and computer games become core, consistent gamers.
I don't want a simplier game, I want a more complex game. Games so deep and complex that it is like when my mother and stepfather come back from "Vanilla Sky" and ask me what the movie was about. I want brutal. Not "slasher movie" brutal, but "Schindler's List", "Othello: The Moor" brutal. I want "The Usual Suspects" and the "Fight Club", the "Dr. Strangelove", "Network", "The Boys from Brazil", "A Clockwork Orange", "Road to Perdition". "Go", or "Strange Days" of video games. That is what I await. Something I feel Nintendo is the least likely of the 3 to bring. I do not want the Disney/ Saturday morning cartoon version. The closest I come to that is "Stardust" or "The Princess Bride."
Each of us, outside of reading numbers and trends from NPD data, occupies our own little world of friends, co-workers and acquantances. Online or otherwise, we tend to associate with like-minded people, skewing our view. Maybe not to the extent of that famous quote after Nixon won and some lady in New York stated she thought it must have been a rigged election because she didn't know anyone who voted for him. We may not be that level of isolated thanks to the wealth of information, but information is not experience. Those I surround myself with are well educated, intelligent and, almost universally, cynical and sarcastic. People who prefer wit to humor. They are people who do not look back to their childhood with wistful thoughts and rush out to see Narnia or the latest Harry Potter. Of those I know, those who have a DS or want a Wii are invariably the opposite of those I associate with. They still have a kid in them that enjoys messing around with Floam and Play-Doh. That system brings it out (either one.) It is their version of escapism. Fine, good for them and Nintendo, but what does it matter? The Wii(or DS for that matter) has given them some easily accessible step back into that time. Nintendo has tapped into that group and is making piles of money. Again, does it really matter to those of us who want sim racers, FPS's with a suspension of disbelief, or Madden? Games where you mutter an obscenity at the screen when someone hits your rear quarter in a turn or you are still having trouble getting around that sniper? My joy or laughter is not provoked by Disney's rat version of "Robinhood." I laughed when the guy fell off the back of the Titanic and hit one of the props on the way down.
I just cannot take the machine seriously. The same way I couldn't take the Sims or Nintendogs seriously. Nintendo has the game console version of a Yamaguchi (or whatever the heck those idiot electronic key chain pets were.) I know I am not alone when talking of my own inner circle of people, but am I alone here when I say I don't care and hold the sytem, from a non-financial viewpoint, in a certain level of contempt? What happens to Nintendo the next-generation? That controller is easily replicated. I cannot see MS or Sony coming out with a system at anything more than around 350$ initial price, so that mistake will not be taking place again. So what really changes about what we want and what we will get for the rest of this round and the following rounds? I don't see much of an effect on the established industry as far as the Wii goes. At least not to this point. I just don't see one in the future either.
So Nintendo sells the most systems. If it has little to no real impact on games progressing in their nature, then who amongst us really cares? I've lost track of the jokes on here, Kotaku, Arstechnica, etc. about the Wii sitting around gathering dust. I see no huge threads about people posting about Wii games for online get togethers or swapping pointers and stories about their exploits and failures. Just because it sells a great deal does not mean it will change the nature of games. Games are supposed to be cheaper to make for the Wii, correct? So where are the risky titles? The one's that are not sequels and you dare not risk 30-50 million and end up with "Postal." The Wii has the numbers, a cheaper development environment, so where are the benefits one would think you would get from this? The Wii may be a financial juggernaut for Nintendo. I don't see it as anything else.
It's meaningless, yeah, but in watching amazon the 360 has improved a lot in the rankings the last two-three weeks (mostly not covered in April NPD). It used to be around #60 (Premium) and lately it's been around #30.
Also, as far as in stock, Mattrick said something a while back that stuck with me about shortages, he said stores had enough at one time so you'd see it on shelves, but they didn't have enough to advertise 360 in store, or put it in their circulars, which drives a certain amount of sales. I wonder if that had any effect for some of April (it's clearly over now).
I guess it sounds like I'm making excuses for 360, but I'd like to see May before declaring 360 dead sans price cut.
No way 360 is going below 100k a month though, come on. Some people are really crazy.
BTW, I see some people spinning doom and gloom for 360 but somehow not for PS3 which sold slightly less..with free blu ray etc and at nearly the same price..come on people how does that work.
quest55720
Regular
I agree sony does also but can't. The blu ray drive prevents it right now. The expense keeps the costs of the system to high for a price cut. That and a price cut screws over ever single blu ray CE out there. MS on the other hand has no excuse not to lower the price. Sure they might lose a few dollars but it beats having to launch years early. A 50 or 100 dollar price drop right now is a lot cheaper than launching in 2010 vs launching in 2012. With out a price drop very soon the future of the 360 looks pretty grim. NA sales need to make up for europe and japan and at 349 that is not going to happen.
Actually PS3 was ahead for two months two months ago.
But the last two months they've fallen back behind.
MS is OK in US and they need to make money, why the hell would they bleed theirselves there?
I suggest in another thread that MS could cut price in Europe this fall and face the holiday season with a product closer to the 200$ (pro pack).
Ms need to built a "fan base" in Europe, bleed themselves in US won't help, I don't see the point.
Japan... pointless, the ugly part is that they should have never put money there... useless.
There no need to be first ( and nobody will beat Ninty before quiet some time) to make money.
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iceberg187
Regular
Stop being so melodramatic.
These are media create hardware numbers from last week in Japan.
Wii 67,308
PS3 8,054
Xbox 360 1,298
Top 50 in game sales
TOP50
NDS:32
Wii:11
PSP:3
PS2:2
PS3:2
Note the two bolded consoles. Both are tracking below the Dreamcast and Gamecube, both failed consoles, just like what the PS3 and 360 are in Japan.
Looking back at historical data, April is generally the lowest in sales for this time of year. Being the only Blu-Ray player hasn't help it rise above the 360 for the past two months, has it? When it comes to sales in Europe, Sony has them beat by shipped units, not sold though. Microsoft still has a million on them there sold through at retail. When it comes to the triumvirate of games that people said Sony had for April - June, when it comes to franchise status, MGS is the weakest link. GT5P and GTA4 came out the same month to under 200k. The likelihood of it all is that you will probably never see a PS3 game approach 1 million for its first month until GT5 proper or FF13 comes out. Konami should be happy to get half that for MGS4 first month. We all know that Microsoft is in need of a price drop. It frankly makes me wonder what they want. However, for Sony, it's a different game, they have the weight of the movie industry on their shoulders and moving 187.1k a month isn't going to do it for them.
I think we can all agree PS3 is selling better in Europe.
But I dont think that automatically means 360 is dead or something, because it is losing WW. Not at all. It still has the worldwide lead from launching early (WW shipments through March 08, 360 19.0m, PS3 12.85m), and it will be a viable platform for a long time, and it's pretty dominant (10.1m vs 4.3 m) in install base in the States, and if it plays it's cards right could really dominate the US (vs PS3) for this whole generation.
But I dont think that automatically means 360 is dead or something, because it is losing WW. Not at all. It still has the worldwide lead from launching early (WW shipments through March 08, 360 19.0m, PS3 12.85m), and it will be a viable platform for a long time, and it's pretty dominant (10.1m vs 4.3 m) in install base in the States, and if it plays it's cards right could really dominate the US (vs PS3) for this whole generation.
Are MS playing their cards right though? GTA is out and hasn't shifted tons of units for any platform, despite expectations it would, while PS3 has crept up to match XB360 sales. At current trends, PS3 is growing faster in all markets than XB360 and will slowly overtake. Why aren't MS turning early lead into snowballing growth? That's what's supposed to happen, and AFAIK the theory behind the 'first to 10 million consoles wins'. That install base is supposed to drive interest and more sales. Is it just a matter of Wii upturning everything, and if not for Wii XB360 would be selling that strongly?
iceberg187 in regard to the price cut in US, I'm sure that Ms is just opportunist there, Sony is just able to match them while the difference in pricing is only 50$.
And with Sony announcement lately, it's clear that MS will wait till october before cut the price in US.
And with Sony announcement lately, it's clear that MS will wait till october before cut the price in US.