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

[Globalisateur]

Taken from the leaked NPD figures: the comparative YTD 2014 hardware numbers of X360/PS3/XB1/PS4 are really interesting:

(X360 / PS3) < (PS4 / XB1)

In the first 6 months of 2014 X360 sold ~38% more than PS3
During the same period PS4 sold ~43% more than XB1 (with the latest ratio from june 2014 being ~37%).

 

[London Geezer]

Taken from the leaked NPD figures: the comparative YTD 2014 hardware numbers of X360/PS3/XB1/PS4 are really interesting:

(X360 / PS3) < (PS4 / XB1)

In the first 6 months of 2014 X360 sold ~38% more than PS3
During the same period PS4 sold ~43% more than XB1 (with the latest ratio from june 2014 being ~37%).

It would follow that more ps3 sales are being lost to ps4 than from 360 to One. That's my logic anyway, and it seems like the general sentiment everywhere.

 

[JPT]

I know this is a very simple pov, but could it be that PS/XB brandname really has no bearing. And what really did it for XB last time was 1 year headstart and a much lower launch price. All the early adopters last time around, only had 1 choice.

This time both where available at the same time and the price for the PS device was lower. And if the brand name really is not a differentiator, except for the fan boys, could that be the whole reason this time around?

 

[London Geezer]

I know this is a very simple pov, but could it be that PS/XB brandname really has no bearing. And what really did it for XB last time was 1 year headstart and a much lower launch price. All the early adopters last time around, only had 1 choice.

This time both where available at the same time and the price for the PS device was lower. And if the brand name really is not a differentiator, except for the fan boys, could that be the whole reason this time around?

Uhm... Aren't what you call 'fanboys' exactly the same people that would prove that brand recognition DOES have a bearing, which is surely hard to quantify but very much alive?

 

[DrJay24]

Uhm... Aren't what you call 'fanboys' exactly the same people that would prove that brand recognition DOES have a bearing, which is surely hard to quantify but very much alive?

I think you two are agreeing, he is saying that the people going from 360 to PS4 are not fanboys, just core gamers. Some others would buy the XB1 at any price with any features, as we saw at launch with the initial spike of XB1 sales that dropped off quickly.

 

[London Geezer]

I think you two are agreeing, he is saying that the people going from 360 to PS4 are not fanboys, just core gamers. Some others would buy the XB1 at any price with any features, as we saw at launch with the initial spike of XB1 sales that dropped off quickly.

Well, aren't core gamers also fanboys, and vice versa? I'm confused.

 

[JPT]

Uhm... Aren't what you call 'fanboys' exactly the same people that would prove that brand recognition DOES have a bearing, which is surely hard to quantify but very much alive?

But if the shift between brands are as big as the comments in here indicate, then it either means that brandname value is not very relevant or that the fan boy population that actually care about it are in a very small minority. Even with the early adopter crowd.

Or has the mainstream already bought into the next-gen and the early adopters only get it within the launch windows. Then it suggests that brandname again has no real value compared to price, when it comes to sales volume.

Totally 180 direction, but here in Norway, the stores have started advertising that they have PS4 in stock. During launch they expected to be able to fulfill pre-orders by march/april.
X1 is not officially available, but you can buy imported X1s, official release is september I think.

 

[DrJay24]

Well, aren't core gamers also fanboys, and vice versa? I'm confused.

Some, but I'm guessing most just want the best gaming platform for the best price. What does being loyal to a company get you especially when that company went all TV TV TV Kinect on you and stopped supporting your favorite console with core IPs circa 2010?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

So with 80m Xbox 360s out in the wild, and maybe 4-5m XBones sold, you would like MS to eat a $100 loss on about 75-76m XBones?

Even if they managed to only get half that number to upgrade with the offer, that's about $3.6-3.7billion MS has to eat to give away $100 to get 360 owners to upgrade.

So are you assuming/suggesting that they are/should keep this current price level forever? It's better to sell a console with a slight loss and have that console bring revenue in the future than not sell a console at all. Of course it would be great to sell lots of consoles for a high price, but they just won't ship at the same pace.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I know this is a very simple pov, but could it be that PS/XB brandname really has no bearing.

That's pretty much it. As I've said, there's a cadre of loyalists for any brand who'll buy only their choice, whether that's for MS, Nintendo, Sony, Apple, or whoever. Then there's everyone else who'll make a somewhat informed decision based on whatever market forces direct them. For consoles, the most brand fanatical (and most hardcore, own every platform) gamers bought the new machines ASAP, resulting in holiday sales of 3-5 million for Wii U, XB1 and PS4. There'll be more platform fans who are waiting to get their platform when it's the right price/value (waiting on specific titles). Everyone else will get the machine that offers the best games for their money. And as I've said numerous times, PS4 is clearly the best bang for the core gamer, multiplatformer's buck. What's somewhat interesting is that even then, the sales disparity isn't that lopsided, at least in the US, which means some of the USPs of XB1 still have draw.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

.. Sony have been a little bit lucky with their platform choices that they are all panning out, although we'll have to see the effect of Destiny before we can really compare Destiny vs Titanfall business decisions. Destiny may end up a turkey and not shifting boxes.

Really, you're going with "luck". Like Sony and Microsoft employ people just to flip coins and hope for the best ? ;-)

 

[iroboto]

And as I've said numerous times, PS4 is clearly the best bang for the core gamer, multiplatformer's buck. What's somewhat interesting is that even then, the sales disparity isn't that lopsided, at least in the US, which means some of the USPs of XB1 still have draw.

Absolutely - end of the day the difference in computing power between the two consoles is a gap that shouldn't change*. Therefore the expectations are set, it's becoming less of an unknown now. Reality is, the X1 can only go up from here in terms of performance, I don't expect it to drop back to the pits of launch day games.

Many must have considered the unknown potential/markets in console apps, online services/multimedia and kinect [ and heck free SDK] as part of their comparison. Apps, SDK and Kinect was the biggest draw for me. Kinect has failed me for now, the gesture UI is terrible. Honestly I"m confused why they opted for a mouse style UI, when it's capable of so much more.

I still use X1 as a gaming device only, but it's changing. OneGuide is quite an amazing feature, a few more iterations of OneGuide and a revamped UI, additional multimedia features and X1 will be really solid in the mainstream space.

 

[London Geezer]

Really, you're going with "luck". Like Sony and Microsoft employ people just to flip coins and hope for the best ? ;-)

Should be banned.

 

[Rangers]

But if the shift between brands are as big as the comments in here indicate, then it either means that brandname value is not very relevant or that the fan boy population that actually care about it are in a very small minority. Even with the early adopter crowd.

I definitely am sure it has some bearing. Just maybe it is 1/3 of the people who buy consoles, or something like that. Thus it doesn't have bearing for the majority of the market, who dont have a lot of brand loyalty.

You could probably argue it was responsible for much of X1's sales pre-$399. At that point there wasn't much to recommend the $499 box, but it still sold pretty well early on compared to other consoles historically.

 

[McHuj]

From GAF. Apparently these are legit. US NPD summary for June and LTD.

http://www.gamecrate.com/playstation-4-dominates-june-sales-npd-reports/

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Really, you're going with "luck".

In some cases, yes. There's no way of knowing if a game is going to be big or not, just as there's no way of knowing which horse is going to win a race. So you either bet on one title and cross your fingers, or don't get involved. MS bet on Titanfall from a serious pedigree. They were unlucky. Sony has bet little less on Destiny. It remains to be seen if that's a winning move or not. But netierh can be faulted for actually trying. If Titanfall ended up being the next COD, this'd be a whole other story. Function wouldn't be claiming an oversight by MS. Instead, we'd have the likes of Rangers I reckon saying MS made a really smart move, the 3:1 sales of XB1 over PS4 as everyone wants to play TF showing how forward thinking they were securing Respawn's new title.

So yes, luck. Sony have been a little lucky in some of the choices, like going with GDDR5 and finding they'd be able to pull of 8GBs in the final hour, and possible securing Destiny PR (again, that all depends on whether Destiny is a success and shifts boxes). In contrast, last gen they were a little unlucky in planning for a smaller node to be available for their processors only to find that process shrinks hadn't progressed as hoped. No matter how intelligent and well planned a business strategy may be, there's still a significant element of luck involved which is why we have such things as high-risk ventures. The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That titchy bump for Vita shows why Sony aren't supporting it with AAA titles!

 

[London Geezer]

I could not disagree more. Decisions are not made out of luck. Everything is a calculated risk and luck has nothing to do with a business. The fact that something might not work out is not because of 'bad luck' but because of one (or more) bad decision taken somewhere down the line, even when you can't see the connection, indirectly there would be a factor that makes something succeed or not.

 

[steveOrino]

Common. Luck? Bungie+Activision+online FPS, hardly finding your way through a pitch black labyrinth.

TF was never going to be as big as CoD since EA thought it would be a GREAT idea to limit the game to a platform with limited install base effectively killing its mindshare.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I could not disagree more. Decisions are not made out of luck.

All decisions have an element of luck unless you have precognition. One can weigh probabilities in the balance, but probabilities aren't absolute indicators. When Nintendo spent on Wii, they didn't know for certain if their idea would be a success or not. It was a far bigger success than they anticipated. For Wii U, their plan wasn't a success. They couldn't be sure until they tried both, and that's very true in a lot of cases.

If your philosophy was true, it'd make every poor outcome the result of poor judgement, and as such one should be able to make flawless business choices and never, ever fail at anything. That's clearly not possible. Hell, you could come up with a great product, a perfect business strategy, only to find someone else has the same idea and beats you to the punch by a month. Just bad luck. Cell was designed for a 65nm launch. 65nm wasn't available on schedule, which no-one could have predicted (otherwise they'd have planned differently). Ergo, Sony got unlucky with the launch price of their hardware. Oh, and the blue laser diodes. They hit engineering snafus with that pushing up the price. They had plans to launch a console at a price using cheaper diodes and 65nm, and had to launch a lot more expensive due to circumstances beyond anyone's ability to control or predict. They got unlucky.