NPD November 2017

All the attention is on the huge budget games Sony is announcing and presenting. Ms seems more and more like an outcast to me, in the console business. They had their chance with the reasonably hyped x and they blew it by not having stuff ready for it that would capture the imagination of gamers.
 
Embarrassing for ms to loose in the u.s in the month they launched the x, and yeah I know it costs 500$ blablahblah, but still it should have been enough to at least give them a win in November. I bet that the x sold quite good (over 500k) and if it wasn’t for that the Xbox one would have sold badly ( well not badly cause selling around 900k wouldn’t have been bad but mediocre). The damage they did on the brand seems to be permanent and they keep chasing one fad after the other, first it was motion controls, now it’s Gaas .

Suits them right for not having new AAA games at launch or in the foreseeable future.

Embarrassing that despite going against a sub-200 USD PS4, they still managed to have a record Nov. and still came that close to PS4?

More than any time of the year end of November is dominated by deal seeking consumers. IE - more than any time of the year, price is key to winning sales.

Despite that they were able to do extremely well with a 500 USD XBO-X as their primary advertising point.

Also, considering how badly they were losing to PS4 the past few months (it was really bad for XBO), it's remarkable that they were able to keep things that close despite Sony offering the PS4 at a very attractive price point.

XBO was never going to win the month for them. XBO-X might have been able to push them over, but only if Sony didn't offer an attractive price for the PS4 during BF/CM. And that was never going to happen.

Regards,
SB
 
People, families have budgets.
Well, precisely. That's why I don't understand the idea of buying big ticket consoles and big ticket portables. I'd have thought families would buy one or the other a year to give at Christmas, by and large.
Nov. and Dec. are prime gift shopping holidays. Families often budget for gift purchases during BF/CM and then separately budget for gift purchases during Dec. In that situation, they aren't going to spend their Nov. gift budget on something that isn't on sale on BF/CM.
Okay, that's not a behaviour I've ever heard of. I can see how that logic could apply to deferring purchases if there are separate Nov and Dec budgets.

The really aggressive sales the Xbox One and PS4 enjoyed (still enjoy really) have caused a big surge in sales for those platforms...
I wasn't arguing about sales not being relatively better (one assumes they would because XB and PS sales will drop/normalise after sales), but about the notion people choosing between PSXB and NSW would get one Nov and the other Dec. As I say above, I'd have thought by far the average behaviour would be one major gaming device a year, so everyone who bought a PSXB wouldn't then get an NSW the following month as Silent_Buddha seemed to be saying.
 
Well, precisely. That's why I don't understand the idea of buying big ticket consoles and big ticket portables. I'd have thought families would buy one or the other a year to give at Christmas, by and large.

Yeah, like I mentioned, I don't expect families that may have purchased an XBO/PS4 during BF/CM to buy a console in Dec. It's about the families that didn't buy an XBO/PS4 during BF/CM that are most likely to get a Switch in Dec.
Okay, that's not a behaviour I've ever heard of. I can see how that logic could apply to deferring purchases if there are separate Nov and Dec budgets.

Yeah, if you live outside of the US, then you'd be unlikely to understand the historical significance of BF in the US.

To put it into context. Historically people would camp out at stores 1-2 days in advance of BF to ensure they were front of the line to be able to purchase items before stock ran out on those items. Additionally, many families would plan out shopping itineraries to account for every hour of the entire BF day in order to snag as many deals as they could with priority given to stores that either had the best deals, or an item they wanted particularly badly.

These are people that at no time would ever even conceive fo camping out for a release of something. For example, these are people who would look down upon people that would camp out at a game store for a midnight game release.

Things have calmed down significantly WRT to BF madness in the US with shoppers moving more to BF/CM week online sales (Amazon record sales this past BF/CM) versus camping out at retailers.

But BF is still huge in the minds of traditional US consumers and many people and families will save up their entire Nov. budget and sometimes Oct. budget to buy things on BF/CM.

Regards,
SB
 
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Certainly, odds of buying two consoles in a single Christmas is out of the question for the majority of consumers. People in the market for a Switch could be holding out hoping for a sale to come around. We are also a society of credit cards, so for many people, they may hold off on purchasing so they aren't paying an extra month or even two interest on that item. Sony and Microsoft have given consumers a reason to pull the trigger and buy, Nintendo didnt, and many consumers will hold out hoping for a sale until they can wait no longer.

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Embarrassing that despite going against a sub-200 USD PS4, they still managed to have a record Nov. and still came that close to PS4?

More than any time of the year end of November is dominated by deal seeking consumers. IE - more than any time of the year, price is key to winning sales.

Despite that they were able to do extremely well with a 500 USD XBO-X as their primary advertising point.

Also, considering how badly they were losing to PS4 the past few months (it was really bad for XBO), it's remarkable that they were able to keep things that close despite Sony offering the PS4 at a very attractive price point.

XBO was never going to win the month for them. XBO-X might have been able to push them over, but only if Sony didn't offer an attractive price for the PS4 during BF/CM. And that was never going to happen.

Regards,
SB
Yep, for me having a new console that gained them some extra sales from the hardcore and an 189$ Xbox one s should have given ms the win. The 1.5 million that the PS4 sold is a very good number but not an unprecedented one that the Xbox one, with the extra non-regular for November x launch sales number, couldn’t overtake.

Big fail for ms.
 
What makes the xbox situation look worse is that sales were down significantly throughout the year, which was not because they were waiting for scorpio after all, and sony didn't have any drop in sales after the Pro upgraders bump from nov 2016.

So sony will end the year with about 1.2 million hardware sales advantage in the US, and worldwide will be more than the previous 2:1 ratio.

Sony should accelerate it's lead throughout the next year with no launch bump from anyone.
 
Embarrassing for ms to loose in the u.s in the month they launched the x, and yeah I know it costs 500$ blablahblah, but still it should have been enough to at least give them a win in November. I bet that the x sold quite good (over 500k) and if it wasn’t for that the Xbox one would have sold badly ( well not badly cause selling around 900k wouldn’t have been bad but mediocre). The damage they did on the brand seems to be permanent and they keep chasing one fad after the other, first it was motion controls, now it’s Gaas .

Suits them right for not having new AAA games at launch or in the foreseeable future.
Why?
Sony played their cards perfectly as they could. They moved all their games out of PSX (later tonight) and premiered all of them at Paris Game Show right before 1X launch. Got the hype meter going and put both PS4 and 4Pro into a price bracket that was in the impulse purchase territory. And bam, huge success. You can't blame them for playing it right, if MS has been riding hard on platform based features, which has brought them pretty far considering their lack of library. But this wasn't going to be year to shine in the software space. At earliest would be 2018, since i expect titles to bake for 3 years, and Phil had to have green lighted games in 2015 for this. It's probably closer to 2019 to be honest, they green lighted a lot of MP games, but who knows where his mind was at for SP games. But at least this is where they can put a lot of their focus on.

Xbox One X, or Xbox in general, was never meant to ever come back from this deficit. It is their attempt to bring that platform back into relevance and set themselves up for a successful next generation. It's foundation rebuilding. They aren't going to catch Sony in the units sold this gen. But they can certainly build themselves some good will and customer loyalty and excitement during this period.
 
I'm curious to know how PS4 Pro did. At least here in Canada that was arguably the best bang for the buck imo. There was some cases with promo/coupon code you could get one for $360...for reference an Xbox One X costs $600 here...
 
I'm curious to know how PS4 Pro did. At least here in Canada that was arguably the best bang for the buck imo. There was some cases with promo/coupon code you could get one for $360...for reference an Xbox One X costs $600 here...
yea man 399 + HZD.

I was so close on pulling the trigger.
 
is that a good price? Euros are 1.5x CAD dollars lol so I think it's super expensive.
Not really, but it's still the best price I have seen here. We also have Destiny 2 Pro bundle + Crash at 330€, or the BF2 Pro bundle (that nobody wants :LOL:) + wolf 2 at 340€ which could be considered of better value.
 
Ps4 is really beasting. Xbox might have had it's best November ever, if it did then it's great/good sales all around.

Except switch is rather disappointing, considering.
Switch is pretty core though, IMO, and if you add them all up probably nearly 4 million core consoles were sold in November. that seems really huge. Core console gaming not dead yet...

Apparently there is some doubt about any actual numbers though, although the Xbox~90% of PS4 which~2X Switch seems valid.

Seems PS4 should take December with no trouble at all, then. Xbox wont get as big a Xbox X bump this time for one thing. Amazon rankings for december so far are another.
 
I'm curious to know how PS4 Pro did. At least here in Canada that was arguably the best bang for the buck imo. There was some cases with promo/coupon code you could get one for $360...for reference an Xbox One X costs $600 here...

Depends on how relevant you think Amazon is as a reflection of general US spending. It was 82nd for Nov. Unlike the PS4 Slim, I don't think it was out of stock at Amazon for Nov. The PS4 Slim was out of stock for much of BF/CM on Amazon I believe, which likely explains why it ended Nov. lower than XBO-S on Amazon.

By comparison the XBO-X was 29th and 49th (Project Scorpio Edition).

More interesting perhaps is the yearly rankings so far. XBO-X Scorpio Edition at 62, PS4-P at 78, regular XBO-X not charted yet. If XBO-X stays around it's current position of 32 for Dec. then it may chart for the year as well.

So sales of PS4-P, at least on Amazon has slowed considerably since launch. It ended 2016 at 46th with a strong Nov. (22nd) but bad Dec. (92nd with possible supply issues). NOTE - this isn't directly comparable to anything as we don't have sales numbers. However, it's possible it'll sell less in 2017 (currently 96 for Dec. and Nov. was only 82nd) than it did in 2016, at least on Amazon and/or the US.

Regards,
SB
 
Are you paying attention to PS4 sales worldwide where it outsold the Switch by 1.4 million units last quarter? And that number will likely be even larger this quarter? PS4 is dominating worldwide. Japan only accounts for like 8% of PS4 sales. They could literally sell zero PS4's there and still be outselling Switch worldwide.

Sony just sold over 20 million units in the past year and people still want to pretend like there is a competition going on here.

I guess folks can still keep clinging to Amazon charts to make themselves feel better though.

I am not discrediting the PS4 when I give the Switch props for its success. Sony has crushed it this generation. Sony nailed it, and has been and will remain the market leader for the remainder of the generation. With that said, a manufacture can sell less units and still be very successful. Japan may not be a huge percentage of the global market, but it is a huge market just the same. Sony is and has been doing well in Japan, so when I say Switch is selling five times as many Switch units, it isn't to slight Sony, but to show just how well Nintendo is doing in their homeland.

Sony's CEO just recently commented on how they shouldn't ignore the success of the Switch. Just because Sony is the market leader doesn't mean there is no competition. Even a two to one ratio is pretty aggressive competition. I am pretty sure Sony feels like the 30+ million Xbox One units sold felt like competition. Why? Because if it weren't a thing Sony would have sold a boat load more units than they already have.

No one is clinging to anything, but we only have so much info available to us. We must extrapolate the data available to us and make some reasonable conclusions. When I look at the available data and see Nintendo killing it in Japan, and then also taking the top spot in the NPD charts for multiple months in 2017, it brings a positive vibe surrounding the Switch platform.
 
All the attention is on the huge budget games Sony is announcing and presenting. Ms seems more and more like an outcast to me, in the console business. They had their chance with the reasonably hyped x and they blew it by not having stuff ready for it that would capture the imagination of gamers.

I'm enjoying my XB1X a whole lot for the games that I can't purchase on Steam (Forza, Gears, etc..), and hoping/praying MS can fix (probably not) the poor 4K movie quality soon. But I do agree, MS should of had some new internal IPs or third party exclusives ready for XB1X, rather relying solely on previous games with updated IQ patches. But then again, we can't really fault MS too much, as the XB1X wasn't meant to be a new generational start, but rather an extension of the current one. Hopefully in the future, MS will grow their internal IPs by leaps and bounds above their current XBOX gaming portfolio, with the next XBOX successor.
 
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