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

[Rangers]

My Amazon MoM "prediction" worked out surprisingly well.

April 2014 X1=115k, PS4=199k, SKU's in top 100: Titanfall X1=#24, PS4=#5

May 2014 (NPD Monday) SKU's in top 100: Titanfall X1=#39, PS4=#6

So based on those rankings changes from April-May you'd expect, well I called it 180k PS4 and 80k X1, just by looking at it. Reality was 197/79 so, not bad.

So far in June it's PS4 9th (we ignore the Destiny bundle, it wont be released in June), X1 Titanfall 47, X1 no-Kinect 51. So basically I'd look at that and say PS4 down a bit (from 6th to 9th), X1 has now two SKU's that should both be down a bit from the 1 SKU in May (#39 in May, #47 and #51 in June), that we then add together.

So for a 4 week month maybe like, 170k PS4, we'll say 65k per X1 SKU, total=130k. Adjusted for an extra week, 212.5k PS4 and 162.5k X1.

Pending the fact it's only June 17 and the June Amazon rankings are not final.

Of course it just nonsense prediction, but since it actually seemed to hold water last month might as well try it again. If it's way wrong for June as I expect, then no harm no foul.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Forza Horizon is late sept which runs into sunset over drive in what late oct which is quirky and different enough from the other stuff that hits on all the platforms later in the year which runs into Halo collection in early nov.

That's a pretty great fall line up of exclusives.

Then you follow that up with exclusive AC content and COD content first and its pretty damn good.

I think your right that Destiny will be a bigger push for sony than ms , it has exclusive content but to be perfectly frank it doesn't look very interesting. But i'm not sure it matters for battlefield , I think that one will be more evenly split.

The other stuff you listed , I don't believe will be system sellers and they will all be on both systems.

I also think MS will have bundled games heading into the fall. They have a few things from earlier in the year that would make great ones. You have dead rising 3 , forza , titan fall and ryse that they can throw into different bundles.

And if MS is still trailing in sales by a large margin in 2015 , i'm sure they will be more aggressive with the price.


But I really think Halo will blow the doors off the barn. Its an amazing value at $60 bucks and I can see it pushing a lot of people towards the xbox .

Thanks, I forgot about Forza Horizon. However, again I wouldn't consider it a system seller for XB1, given a) Forza isn't a traditionally big seller anyway and b) driving games are traditionally mucvh more popular in Europe which is MS' weakest market at the moment by far (until they launch in Japan in Sept, lol).

Halo is simply a collection of games everyone has already played, so whilst it's great value and a solid package for existing XB1 owners, I can't see it selling systems either. Ultimately I think that's what the XB1 will need is system sellers.

Granted the MS promotions on COD:AW and AC:U will probably do them some good. Unfortunately for them however, general gamer mindshare seems to be with Sony. And so that combined with the better multiplats this fall could still see the XB beaten handily in sales despite having more exclusive game releases.

 

[djskribbles]

Forza Horizon is late sept which runs into sunset over drive in what late oct which is quirky and different enough from the other stuff that hits on all the platforms later in the year which runs into Halo collection in early nov.

That's a pretty great fall line up of exclusives.

Then you follow that up with exclusive AC content and COD content first and its pretty damn good.

When did Ubi say Xbox One would get exclusive AC content?

And who says that lineup is definitively better than the competition? I would say the PS4's lineup from now until the holidays is at least arguably just as 'strong'. PS4 has the Destiny Beta in mid July, TLOU coming in late July, Infamous First Light and Hohokum in August, Destiny bundle with exclusive content and marketing rights in September, Driveclub in October, LittleBigPlanet 3 in November, exclusive coop mode (where the second player doesn't even need the game to play) and most likely marketing rights for Far Cry 4 (and probably Battlefield Hardline since it got an exclusive beta). Sony says that there will be certain perks for GTA V on PS4, too. They already announced an exclusive feature where you can transfer your PS3 OR 360 data to PS4. Considering the PS3 got early marketing rights for GTA V, I think the PS4 will as well. PS4 also gets exclusive content for Diablo III. Plus Guilty Gear Xrd releases sometime in the fall and possibly even The Witness, Singstar and Planetside 2. Not to mention the indie titles.

I think your right that Destiny will be a bigger push for sony than ms , it has exclusive content but to be perfectly frank it doesn't look very interesting. But i'm not sure it matters for battlefield , I think that one will be more evenly split.

That was my opinion of Destiny as well. But the Alpha completely turned it around for me and many others. Mark my words, Destiny will be huge, especially for Sony with the exclusive white PS4 bundle (which is actually a decent value and a color many people like) and exclusive content.

The other stuff you listed , I don't believe will be system sellers and they will all be on both systems.

.
There are no exclusive system sellers this year. Halo MC will give a decent bump, but that's pretty much it.

 

[London Geezer]

Thread quickly descending into 'my exclusive it better than yours' kind of talk........

 

[zupallinere]

Thread quickly descending into 'my exclusive it better than yours' kind of talk........

With fewer and fewer differences between platforms the exclusive content issue becomes bigger and bigger. What system has the exclusive game you want to play and which of your online friends has which system becomes the largest issues besides price of course.

 

[eastmen]

Thread quickly descending into 'my exclusive it better than yours' kind of talk........

I'm not sure what else we would talk about with sales.

There are a number of multiplatform titles this fall and one system will need them more than the other.

I don't see a general person who doesn't hang out on forums all day long going to best buy and see destiny and say hmmm gotta buy a ps4 instead of that xbox one cause reasons.

I can see them going to the store , seeing that both systems have the popular titles destiny , battlefield , cod , dragon age and what not and having to decide based on other factors and one of the major ones will be exclusive content.

Now , I will admit , I don't follow the ps4 as closely as the other two systems , but I believe its big titles are a 2 year old port form the ps3 and drive club ? I'm not sure if i'm missing anything for the fall.

 

[AlNom]

Thread quickly descending into 'my exclusive is bigger than yours' kind of talk........

fixed.

 

[djskribbles]

Last of Us isn't even 1 year old yet. And LittleBigPlanet 3 also releases in November. Plus there's a bunch of smaller titles.

 

[eastmen]

Last of Us isn't even 1 year old yet. And LittleBigPlanet 3 also releases in November. Plus there's a bunch of smaller titles.

ah yes little big planet 3 that's what I was forgetting. Thank you

 

[Goodtwin]

Looks like Wii U's world wide sales for the Month of May should be higher than the X1. Considering MK8 was only out a few days, and Im sure tons of people were waiting for the MK8 bundle, Junes Wii U sales should be far more telling of MK8's impact. I am expecting Junes Wii U NPD sales to be around 200k+.

 

[Rangers]

Yes worth clarifying I guess MK8 was out for two days of this NPD.

Sales on games are of course very frontloaded though. I'd guess maybe the impact would be about equally split between May/June.

I would be very happy to a 299 dollar price point for the XB1 and I am sure they would sell a ton of them.

Yeah.

Personally I think the XO should enjoy a hefty $50+ BOM advantage over PS4 due to DDR3 usage vs GDDR5. For all the wrongs of the X1 design, that's the "right". So in theory it should be easy to undercut PS4. However, I have a little hunch that MS are giving some portion of that DDR3 savings right back on build quality. XBO looks built like a tank, the box itself is large with lots of materials, and over-engineered in terms of cooling, likely out of extreme reactionary fear of another costly RROD.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Mass ejection applied, and I probably could remove some more. This thread is for discussing sales numbers, rather than future strategies. The lack of content due to lack of numbers means this thread is starting to fizzle out, which is why alternative topics are being raised. They should be handled in other threads though, like a "what should MS do next?" thread.

 

[Wynix]

Amazon console update:

#6 - PS4 (standard)
#18 - White PS4 (Destiny bundle)
#37 - Xbox One (Titanfall bundle)
#42 - Xbox One (Kinectless)
#51 - Wii U (Mario and Luigi deluxe bundle)

Bonus:

#13 - Watch Dogs PS4
#96 - Watch Dogs XB1

 

[DieH@rd]

You should have put only Destiny bundle in "Bonus". That SKU is only one that is in "preorder" phase.

 

[Rangers]

Also I realized a new, simplistic theory on what Xbox needs to do to be competitive/even-ish with PS4 sales worldwide...


Xbox needs to cumulatively outsell PS in hardware about 1.5:1 in USA to ~tie it worldwide...

I've changed this based on a more accurate LTD from Aquamarine. As of after February 2014 (too lazy to go add the last 3 months manually, anyway it wouldn't materially change anything) USA sales stood:

41.2 million Xbox 360
25.7 million PS3

This is very close to a 1.6:1 ratio, not 1.5:1.

And we know worldwide 360/PS3 are about even. So, lets say Xbox One needs to cumulatively outsell PS4 1.6:1 in the USA to probably more or less be in a tie worldwide, very roughly. Right now Xbox One is at about 2.7/3.3=.82 ratio.

Or, to be at a 1.6 ratio, Xbox One would need about 5.3 million consoles sold in the USA tight now, vs the 2.7 they actually have. Almost double.

This intuitively jibes with what we know of worldwide PS4 sales, which are likely at maybe somewhere between 8-9 million now (the last update was 7 million at beginning of April IIRC). If the X1 was at 5.3 in the states, it would probably also be at 8-9m WW.

 

[Rangers]

Weirdly thinking about the previous post's numbers, I noticed something. It seems like Playstation's ratio of international sales has dropped.

Take a few simple numbers. Microsoft just announced 84 million 360 shipped. PS3'll be right around there, I happen to believe 1 or 2m below, but we'll call it 84m as well to avoid controversy. PS3 was at 25.7 NPD LTD through Feb, they've done 138k in the three months since, so lets call it 25.8.

PS3 as of May: 84WW/25.8 USA~3.25:1 (worldwide shipped vs USA end user sales)

Now, Sony announced 7 million PS4 sold WW as of April 6 I think it was. At that time, PS4 USA lifetime was at ~2.9 million. Now, the 7 million was a sold figure, not shipped. HOWEVER, in this instance PS4 was still basically sold out. So up till that point for PS4, one could reasonably expect sold and shipped to be the same thing, perhaps. So, we could reasonably take 7 million as a shipped number for our purposes.

PS4 as of April: 7m WW/2.9 USA~ 2.4:1

That's quite a statistically significant decline, from 3.25 to 2.4.

In contrast the Xbox ratio seems stable. About 2:1 total WW:USA for both 360 84/41.4~2.03:1, and for Xbox One at end of March 5.1/2.5~2.04:1 (Note: this is worldwide shipped versus USA end user sales)

Weird, and I'll not read too much into it. It's early. Perhaps some of it is down to PS4 having been "more" sold out in Europe, and it'll catch back up some. Perhaps it's just an anamoly based on a limited sample size. Perhaps some of it is sell through (PS4 7 million number) vs shipped discrepancy.

It's just that, if there's one trend I think we can reasonably expect it's that Japan will continue to decline as a share of Playstation sales. However, since PS3 only sold ~10m in Japan, even say only 7 million lifetime PS4's wont threaten the worldwide numbers too much.

 

[HTupolev]

Weird, and I'll not read too much into it. It's early. Perhaps some of it is down to PS4 having been "more" sold out in Europe, and it'll catch back up some. Perhaps it's just an anamoly based on a limited sample size. Perhaps some of it is sell through (PS4 7 million number) vs shipped discrepancy.

Playstation's greater popularity in the US might be a significant factor. If an early console adopter transitions from 360 to PS4, buying a PS4 as an alternative to XB1, that's going to shrink the ratio.

But yes, it's pretty hard to read into anything at the moment.

 

[DieH@rd]

Weirdly thinking about the previous post's numbers, I noticed something. It seems like Playstation's ratio of international sales has dropped.

...

That's quite a statistically significant decline, from 3.25 to 2.4.

...

I don't think you can easily compare lifetime PS3 vs current PS4, even if you only look ratios. PS4 is only sold at a premium price, but PS3 went though so much pricedrops. Vast amount of customers will NEVER purchase console that costs more than $300, and a lot will wait for $250. And there is possibility that US has larger ammount of "hardcores" who are willing to pay for more, console was cheapest there, economy is good, and that territory received largest Sony shipment priority for winning the "war", skewing the ratios in the early period. Also this calculation is covering only 6 month of data, with little over 4 months of Europe receiving minimal shipments (except in UK where Sony spent nice coin to airlift a lot of consoles).

Your calculations are good exercise in math, but ultimately, pointless.

edit - lots of little edits, but now I'm done

 

[zed]

Take a few simple numbers. Microsoft just announced 84 million 360 shipped. PS3'll be right around there, I happen to believe 1 or 2m below, but we'll call it 84m as well to avoid controversy.

shipment numbers
2013-Q3 xbox360 : 79.4 million
2013-Q3 ps3 : 83.5 million (includes 4 quarters of ps2 numbers)

aha I hear you say but sony were including ps2 numbers with the ps3 numbers for the last 4 quarters until the ps2 got discontinued start 2013.
thus we dont know the last 4 quarters on this graph here
ps2 shipment numbers

for the ps3 to have shipped > 4 million less (thus 83.5-4million = 79.5million same as xb360) means you're saying the ps2 was actually growing at the end of its cycle? Very unlikely it was shipping >a million per quarter.
In its christmas quarter 2011 it only shipped 0.9 million (christmas normally is the biggest quarter)

 

[djskribbles]

Weirdly thinking about the previous post's numbers, I noticed something. It seems like Playstation's ratio of international sales has dropped.

That's probably because Sony was supply constrained in many parts of Europe until fairly recently. It's pretty clear that Sony allocated more units to the US and UK in the first 5-6 months. They also gave Japan a big shipment for launch, while countries like France and Germany had supply issues.

With the PS4 significantly outselling the XB1 in the US, I can't imagine how big the gap is in Europe.

edit: Pretty much what DieH@rd said.