Silent_Buddha
Legend
That's not quite true, and is entirely misleading. There is a lot of Move-enabled titles. Which people may or may not have bought because of Move. Move required titles however seem to be quite few, or at least there's no buzz and thus I don't know about them. So there is absolutely no way to know how many sales were due to Move and how many sales there would have been if Move had never launched. Move's impact with such titles will be far less than titles that are Move only.
In other words, Move owners probably own a lot of Move enabled titles. But turn that around and if Move had never launched and those owners thus did not own Move, how many of those owners would still own those games. That is an unknown quantity and thus cannot be used for discussion. Or to put it another way, many people may have bought Move because of the software rather than buying software because of Move.
Thus it's far better to focus on Move required titles as you then know that every single title sold is a title bought because of the controller and not the other way around. And that's where the Move completely fails currently. It doesn't appear to be moving software and thus generating additional revenue nearly as much as you would hope.
That is irrelevant to that article and actually supports his point to an extent. People buying Move to play games they already own, rather than buying games to use their new peripheral.
And when you start to consider the ramifications of that it makes PS Move's showing in the US even more lackluster. PS Move had there been a focused direction on Sony's part should have been able to attack consumer from 2 points.
1) Existing owners looking to enhance games they own or games they already plan on buying. IE - the group that buys Move because of the games they already own or plan on playing.
2) New owners looking for a different/move casual experience. IE - the group that buys software solely due to Move.
And yes, I realize there may be some overlap between the two.
The first part should already gain you rapid adoption but won't bring as much additional revenue (over and above hardware Move sales) as the second group who you know will be buying new software.
PS Move has done relatively well with the first group, but hasn't done well with the second group. That second group again being the one Pachter is focusing on. As that second group is the one that has the potential to bring Sony the most money.
Kinect was only targeting the second group for Holiday 2010. Razor sharp focus. Clear and coherent marketing. New owners and casuals targetted, core users put off until the next year.
And thus far, if we are to compare the two, Kinect is doing far better both in Hardware and Software. In the two months there have been head to head sales Kinect has handily outsold PS Move. From a software sales POV, it's even more in Kinects favor, although there's no way to know exactly how much.
With Kinect you know that 1 Kinect = 1 household potentially buying software.
With Move the picture gets cloudy. 1 console Bundle = 1 household that's easy. And 1 starter pack probably equals 1 household. With the stand alone Move however, how many are being bought to pair up with an existing PS Eye to equal 1 household? In the US probably not that many. In Europe probably a fair bit more. So in the US (and thus NPD) at least it can be argued that most of the stand alone Move's are likely to be paired up with with another Move thus not greatly increasing the number of households buying software. He even states he didn't subscribe to peripheral data, and thus implies why he doesn't give Move data, only console bundle data which he should have.
Which again goes to support Pachter's analysis. While that article is certainly a bit sensationalist focusing on the numbers such as the 13:1 comparison of top two Kinect titles to top two Move-required titles, the message is valid.
There are more Kinect enabled households in the US than there are Move enabled households in the US. That already is going to mean that Kinect software purchases should outpace Move (required or added on) software purchases. Add in the case that many people may be buying Move in order to play existing games or games they were already planning to buy even if Move had not been released, and new software purchases due to the accessory moves more in Kinects favor where all software purchases are due to the accessory and software must be purchased in order to use it (above and beyond the included title).
In this case, he isn't necessarily wrong. His 13:1, sensationalist as it is is absolutely correct with regards to the top two software titles on each platform where every single purchase was due to the controller. His bundle numbers should also be correct, as IIRC, the hardware console numbers if you purchased the report from NPD should feature SKU breakdowns. Thus he doesn't need the peripheral report to know how many bundles were purchased. Especially since he isn't even speculating on the number of Move peripherals sold in that article, only on the number of Move bundles. Hence his disclaimer that he didn't subscribe to the peripheral data and thus cannot give numbers for the Move stand alone units and starter packs.
Sure, that does unfortunately happen quite often on both sides. But it doesn't preclude proper analysis of even a bit of a sensationalist piece such as the one linked.
While it's probably not true that Kinect related software purchases outnumber PS Move related software purchases 13:1, there is certainly a good chance that it's somewhere between 2:1 and 13:1. It's only a question of how much more software is selling due to Kinect versus sold due to Move. And that's not something anyone will ever know since there is absolutely no way to know how many Move-enabled (not Move required) software would have sold if Move had never been released.
Regards,
SB
