NPD April 2017 Sales Results

G

Goodtwin

Veteran
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http://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...-News-Nintendo-Switch-Best-Selling-Video-Game

A solid second month for Switch in the US. Mario Kart doing over half a million in two days is pretty darn good. Not sure how long momentum can be sustained. Zelda and MK8 are huge titles that really sell hardware. Nintendo is hoping ARM's is another Splatoon like success, but I am not convinced it will be. Switch is still supply limited, and if this months sales are any indication, the allocation of the US is going to be under 300k per month. Japan numbers from Media Create look similar to the US. I would think this puts the total sales for Switch closing in on 4 million.
 
So if I'm getting it right, 280k Switch and 68k 3DS. Nintendo states this makes up "almost half of consoles sold.

Assuming everything but PS4 and XBO have negligible sales, that makes PS4+XBO~348k. That's pretty low.
 
Nice, they actually gave out rough Switch numbers. Hopefully they will do the same for May NPD. I expect Switch to easily win May NPD as well, but I'd like to see how much sales increase due to Nintendo's increased supply. Demand at Amazon seems to have stabilized again at between 390-430 USD depending on time of day for scalping.

With demand not appearing to slow anytime soon, it should give a good idea of how much supply has increased if someone releases rough Switch numbers for May.

Regards,
SB
 
What a horrible depressing month. Can't believe people continue to buy wretched Nintendo crap.
 
ramr said:
What a horrible depressing month. Can't believe people continue to buy wretched Nintendo crap.
Click to expand...

Its still within the core Nintendo Fan numbers and will be for the first 10 million. Besides the too high of prices for the hardware and software, limited software availability, and poor online experiences, the Switch is a solid mobile product.
 
At least the Switch only has one screen!
Closest thing to a normal game play experience, which is everybody has wanted since the Game Cube was terminated so many years ago. I think of the Xbox One there : it took off somewhat when they ceased bundling it with the expensive big brother camera.


I guess it might be time buying some used 3DS or 2DS and bunch of games, if high prices is a concern.
Like in this about playing games with a 5-year lag :
https://www.xkcd.com/606/
 
Overall Results:

April game sales are up 10% year over year.

Hardware was up 37% year over year.

Console and Handheld game sales were up 6% year over year.

Physical and Steam PC software sales (for AAA games from participating publishers) were down 57% year over year.


Software:

To note, these charts are by revenue.

April 2017:
  1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe*
  2. Persona 5*
  3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
  4. MLB 17: The Show
  5. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands**
  6. Grand Theft Auto V***
  7. Mass Effect: Andromeda**
  8. NBA 2K17
  9. Overwatch**
  10. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Yes, Black Ops 2, from 2012.)
  11. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
  12. Horizon Zero Dawn
  13. Lego City Undercover
  14. Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix
  15. Lego Worlds
  16. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege**
  17. Battlefield 1**
  18. For Honor**
  19. Nier: Automata
  20. Minecraft
*Does not include digital sales
**Battle.net, uPlay, and Origin sales not includes
***No non-Steam PC sales included

Notes:
- “Persona 5 experienced the strongest debut month for any title in Persona franchise history, with packaged dollar sales five times that of the previous best-selling debut, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4,” said Piscatella.
- "Finally, you may have noticed that 2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II outsold Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. That’s because you can now play the Xbox 360 version on the Xbox One, and that juiced the game’s sales."
Click to expand...
 
Hmmm...

- "Finally, you may have noticed that 2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II outsold Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. That’s because you can now play the Xbox 360 version on the Xbox One, and that juiced the game’s sales."
Click to expand...

If backwards compatibility on only one platform is enough to boost a previous gen title into the top 10... I'll leave that thought there.

Regards,
SB
 
ramr said:
What a horrible depressing month. Can't believe people continue to buy wretched Nintendo crap.
Click to expand...
You have issues. It's a quality made device playing quality titles (Zelda) in a portable device, for which there's no real competition. There's nothing crap about it, even if the design and specs aren't to your tastes. I suggest you source either adequate therapy or a decent supply of happy pills, if people buying and enjoying a product different to your interests is enough to be horribly depressing to you.
 
Horizon on one platform sold better than Mass effect on 2 during 2017:

Best selling games of 2017 through April

  1. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
  2. For Honor
  3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  4. Horizon Zero Dawn
  5. Mass Effect: Andromeda
  6. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
  7. Grand Theft Auto V
  8. NBA 2K17
  9. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
  10. MLB 17: The Show
Also apparently people buy a lot of exclusives on PS4:

PlayStation 4, April sales:
  1. Persona 5 (without digital)
  2. MLB 17: The Show
  3. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
  4. Horizon Zero Dawn
  5. Grand Theft Auto V
  6. Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix
  7. Mass Effect: Andromeda
  8. NBA 2K17
  9. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
  10. Overatch
 
BRiT said:
Its still within the core Nintendo Fan numbers and will be for the first 10 million. Besides the too high of prices for the hardware and software, limited software availability, and poor online experiences, the Switch is a solid mobile product.
Click to expand...

I think the Nintendo fan base is massive, and the hardcore Nintendo fanbase is rather small. There are maybe 3 million people who will lineup to buy a Nintendo platform even when the value proposition isn't very good, AKA the Wii U. Think about how long it took Wii U to sell 10 million. I feel like Switch has appeal that extends well beyond the hardcore Nintendo fan. It has the luxury of being the only modern portable gaming console. A game lineup of exclusives, two of which have very broad appeal. I do agree that Nintendo will eventually need to address the value proposition. $199 has always been what I thought was the sweet spot, but until sales start to slow down considerably, I doubt Nintendo will be in a big hurry to do any price drop. Certainly not before their first Christmas holiday where they are certainly going to sell a few million units. This early momentum is also getting more third party support on board, and this will bring additional appeal. I think Nintendo has a winner on their hands with Switch, but I believe the long term success will come at $199 or less.
 
So Horizon :ZD was 4th on PS4 but only 12th overall for April? Shows the power of multiplatform I guess. But it's still very strong for the 2017 rankings.

And Blops 2 made 10th because it was made BC. First indication that BC moved the sales needle that I've seen. And the NPD exec on GAF pointed out this is in revenue terms, so that's even more impressive in unit terms for Blops 2. It's 20 bucks, so it has to sell around 3X more units as a full price title to make the same revenue. Of course I wonder if this month Xbox was reporting digital and Sony wasn't yet, which could have helped the ranking. I dont recall. I think by next month both Sony and MS will be reporting digital.

This should help publishers decided to make more stuff BC I suppose.

And yeah Andromeda was basically a disaster, why EA has already mothballed it.
 
Globalisateur said:
Also apparently people buy a lot of exclusives on PS4:
Click to expand...

Is that something that was ever in doubt? If a game is good people are going to play it. If those games were multi-platform, they'd sell significantly more copies.

If the publisher is also the console manufacturer it makes sense to give up sales in order to boost the attractiveness of your console. For 3rd party publishers it usually just comes down to the cost involved not always being attractive or a console holder has paid for exclusivity. Persona, for example, typically sees sales far lower than what Persona 5 achieved and it is the largest project that Atlus has ever developed. While they like to do multiplatform titles when they can, it was determined that they could not afford to make Persona 5 multiplatform (PC was originally targeted as a launch platform but dropped soon after the development scope of the project became apparent). Basically they expected sales closer to how Persona historically sells, and that combined with the scope of development meant they did not think it wise to focus on more than the PS3/PS4.

Regards,
SB
 
GAF April NPD hardware calculations from prediction contest for April:

PS4 >200k
XB1 <127k

As they mentioned it seems likely DF Scorpio announcement hurt XBox sales.

Personally I still have misgivings about the UHD drive in Xbox S. I expect it's keeping the price $299 (rather than potentially 249), same as PS4, which IMO for Xbox this gen with the power disparity has never been a great place to be.
 
Rangers said:
GAF April NPD hardware calculations from prediction contest for April:

PS4 >200k
XB1 <127k
Click to expand...
PS4's best April. PS4 is also up overall in 2017, probably thanks to its strong lineup of games, helped by Pro a bit, too.

As they mentioned it seems likely DF Scorpio announcement hurt XBox sales.
Click to expand...
Or maybe the lack of compelling games? Or both?
I also think MS announced Scorpio a bit too early.

Personally I still have misgivings about the UHD drive in Xbox S. I expect it's keeping the price $299 (rather than potentially 249), same as PS4, which IMO for Xbox this gen with the power disparity has never been a great place to be.
Click to expand...
I think it should've been in MS' best interest to reduce the cost of the XB1 as much as possible. UHD may have helped a bit initially, but clearly it's not helping now.
 
djskribbles said:
I think it should've been in MS' best interest to reduce the cost of the XB1 as much as possible. UHD may have helped a bit initially, but clearly it's not helping now.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's exactly been my stance. Whenever XB1 base model has been the same price as PS4 this gen it's kinda struggled IMO, understandably.

And something like UHD Blu Ray will only decrease in relevance from whatever niche it has now going forward, with all the emphasis on streaming now.

I think the branding of the S as 4k was definitely a no brainer and inevitable, but IMO they should have done all that just with streaming and output, as well as play up the HDR. Basically everything as is now except UHD.

And yeah PS4's best April ever, but the previous high was 199k. That's crazy how low April is. I know every year I'm "surprised" by how high February is then how low April is. I know it's tax returns but this pattern seemingly only became defined about 4-5 years ago that i recall.

Personally I attribute any PS4 growth more to Pro than software. I've never been a big believer in software moving hardware. There's only about two instances I can recall of one month hardware spikes caused by software, those being MGS on PS3 and Halo a couple times.
 
System sellers are definitely rare these days. However PS4 had Nioh, NieR, Horizon, The Show 17, Persona 5, Kingdom Hearts, Gravity Rush 2 as console exclusives/exclusives alone; and all but Gravity Rush charted in the top 10 IIRC. Pair that with Mass Effect (marketing rights), RE7 (great VR support), For Honor, Ghost Recon etc., and that's probably one of the strongest Q1 lineups ever.
 
Last edited:
Goodtwin said:
I disagree with that. I just think the biggest system sellers are no longer exclusives. The biggest system sellers on Xbox and PlayStation are multi plat games like GTA and COD.
Click to expand...

Yup. Console sales get the greatest sales boosts with anticipated multi-platform franchise releases.
 
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