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

[temesgen]

This particular deal is North American.

Hence my comment, the notion that Sony was steamrolled based of data that is largely being extrapolated off Amazon and anecdotal reports from retail mainly in North America is myoptic. I guess its possible but I haven't seen enough about Europe and Asia to offer an opinion.

The comments this weekend from the Playstation Experience suggest PS4 is doing quite well but as Shifty rightly pointed out yesterday there is reason to believe that PS4 sales might be slowing down from the record setting pace it's enjoyed last year up until the holiday season.

 

[temesgen]

No, but that's the thing, even if they did or didn't whatever MS did was enough to elicit a response.
You feel that because Sony is the leader that we are interpreting this bundle as a response, when it could just be status quo. I get that, except Sony isn't exactly swimming in cash either. Why make less money when you can make more?
MS had to drop the kinect, bundle in games, and drop the price all in the course of the year to meet expectations.

And that's all it is.

If Sony feels that they aren't meeting their business goals then incentives need to be made to reach those goals, but to think that Xbox (for the last 5 weeks) had no role in influencing their ability to meet those projections, I'd disagree. How do you go from being #1 and #4 always top 20 on Amazon to 41 and 49, it is quite a swing considering Microsoft was in the reverse position for the last 10 months.

I based my comments off Shawn Layden's interview with Gamespot last month, he was asked about impact of MS price cut on Sony's business and he said they weren't concerned and went on to discuss the WW sales numbers. You keep pointing to North America and Amazon sales rank as if it means something. I'm inclined to think its an interesting data point which facilitates our discussion but I think its dangerous to assume that set of data offers enough insight into what is happening world wide.

Further going by Shawn's comments WW seems to be what Sony is focused on. All companies offer bundles and discounts for the holidays, perhaps its a reaction as you say but again in that article Shawn mentioned they would be engaged so take that as you will.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I based my comments off Shawn Layden's interview with Gamespot last month, he was asked about impact of MS price cut on Sony's business and he said they weren't concerned and went on to discuss the WW sales numbers. You keep pointing to North America and Amazon sales rank as if it means something. I'm inclined to think its an interesting data point which facilitates our discussion but I think its dangerous to assume that set of data offers enough insight into what is happening world wide.

Last month was last month. Publically we have more recent reports that in North America there appears to be different sales ratios, at least on key consumer days, and they have subsequently launched a new promotion specifically in that region.

Further going by Shawn's comments WW seems to be what Sony is focused on. All companies offer bundles and discounts for the holidays, perhaps its a reaction as you say but again in that article Shawn mentioned they would be engaged so take that as you will.

USA makes up a key proportion of WW sales. Additionally, if this were just a "holiday promotion" then it would be more likely to be applied WW.

 

[ramr]

I based my comments off Shawn Layden's interview with Gamespot last month, he was asked about impact of MS price cut on Sony's business and he said they weren't concerned and went on to discuss the WW sales numbers. You keep pointing to North America and Amazon sales rank as if it means something. I'm inclined to think its an interesting data point which facilitates our discussion but I think its dangerous to assume that set of data offers enough insight into what is happening world wide.

Further going by Shawn's comments WW seems to be what Sony is focused on. All companies offer bundles and discounts for the holidays, perhaps its a reaction as you say but again in that article Shawn mentioned they would be engaged so take that as you will.

North American numbers are vastly more important than WW. North America + UK probably has 3 to 10 x the value as the rest of the world combined. The lifetime value of those customers is so much higher.

 

[Jwm]

                      J    F    M    A    M    J    J    A    S     O     N     D
PS4                   3    3    1    5    6    8    11    4    11    8    31    41
PS4 Destiny Bun       -    -    -    -    -    23    24    8    6    23    48    -
PS4 GTA                -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    11    -
PS4 BF Bun            -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    79    -
X1 w/K                16    23    76    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -
X360                  74    -    -    90    87    83    78    -    -    -    -    -
X1 TF Bun            -    71    11    24    39    50    -    -    -    -    -    -
X1                   -    -    -    -    -    49    46    58    28    35    -    -
X1 Madden             -    -    -    -    -    -    -    50    -    -    -    -
X1 COD                -    -    -    -    -    -    -    89    -    38    100    -
X1 Unity Bun           -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    78    2    1
X1 w/K Unity          -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    82    -

Ok, how do I post a table? Anyway, this is NA Amazon best sellers for 2014.

 

[Newguy]

Not sure, but if you still can't find how then a few screenshots of it maybe?

 

[Jwm]

Not sure, but if you still can't find how then a few screenshots of it maybe?

I just made it in excel, was going down each month of the NA Amazon best seller list. Something of interest is that X1 has never been placed higher than 16th unless it was bundled with something, vs the PS4 that had the main sku in the top 11 until the Unity bundle really kicked off with some pricing advantage.

Just a hunch, but November sales might be rather close between the two. PS4 had a bunch of Sku's for example and some speculation from other sites that they were actually handling stock well while X1 was not be restocked quickly enough.

 

[AzBat]

Ok, how do I post a table? Anyway, this is NA Amazon best sellers for 2013.

Only way I could do it was by using the "Copy as Picture" option in Excel. Use the Bitmap format & then paste into the Rich Text Editor.

Here's an example...

Spoiler: Table

Tommy McClain

 

[Rangers]

There's been some discussion on GAF wondering why nobody (Sony/MS) released a Black Friday sales PR this year. I guess current speculation thinks it's because neither is sure they "won" BF (implying close sales). Not sure I buy that, anyway. AFAIK MS usually does one shortly after BF, but not this year. Somebody on GAF seems to think MS will do a PR today (Wednesday, presumably with early NPD results in hand). Dunno.

Also, I'm curious about Dark Below expansion sales, and if Activision will say anything.

 

[DieH@rd]

Activision will most surely say something.... They will tell us how many monsters have died in Dark Below or some other irrelevant stat.

 

[Rangers]

Yeah, like when MS used to say "users have played 5 billion minutes on Xbox Live!" or whatever. Useless PR.

 

[London Geezer]

So we don't have the official November numbers? Or have I missed them?

 

[BRiT]

So we don't have the official November numbers? Or have I missed them?

Gone, like tears in rain...


No, nothing has been posted yet. I think it will be on Thursday and even then it seems like NPD numbers won't be released directly. It'll be another day or two before rough guesstimates have a range that people will be happy with. That's assuming either side makes reference to numbers at all, like percentage increases or percentage of all hardware sales.

 

[iroboto]

Tomorrow at 7est

 

[east of eastside]

PlayStation experience was obviously a planned PR response to anticipated Xbox holiday price cuts. SFV exclusivity bomb was probably confirmation of Sony's NPD loss.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PlayStation experience was obviously a planned PR response to anticipated Xbox holiday price cuts. SFV exclusivity bomb was probably confirmation of Sony's NPD loss.

So SFV going platform exclusive only happened towards the end of November? That up until October it was multiplat and then, come November, Sony were running around panicking that they lost one month as the top-selling console in NA and decided to spend a small fortune buying up SFV exclusivity and also pay for Capcom to claim it was a Sony collaboration from the beginning.

Sure, that makes sense...

 

[MrFox]

PlayStation experience was obviously a planned PR response to anticipated Xbox holiday price cuts. SFV exclusivity bomb was probably confirmation of Sony's NPD loss.

Let me get this straight. They planned the 20th anniversary of playstation to coincide with an expected price cut from the competition. Capcom went fishing for a co-production deal, which MS refused, to hide Sony's expected NPD numbers.

For all we know Mark Cerny killed JFK.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Yah, that Street Fighter deal would have had to have been negotiated for a long time before the papers were signed, and then the announcement would have to be planned after all the paperwork and legal was taken care of. I doubt it would happen in a short time frame as a response to sales in November.

 

[Nesh]

PlayStation experience was obviously a planned PR response to anticipated Xbox holiday price cuts. SFV exclusivity bomb was probably confirmation of Sony's NPD loss.

I totally doubt it as a reactive response to that. Such events take months of planning and effort. The keynote would have happened regardless of XBOX's holiday price cuts. It was most likely a pre-planned PR/marketing effort to strengthen their sales for the holidays.

I dont remember such events during the PS2 and PS3 era, but Sony was doing such events many times during the PS1 era despite their obvious sales victory. They are repeating what they were doing in the past.

I also doubt SFV has anything to do with Sony's NPD loss for just one month considering that they have been "winning" every other month

 

[dobwal]

PlayStation experience was obviously a planned PR response to anticipated Xbox holiday price cuts. SFV exclusivity bomb was probably confirmation of Sony's NPD loss.

LOL.

I consider it one of the smartest marketing move done this generation. Whats better for console manufacturers than getting potential users hyped up for the near future during the summer with e3 and gamescon? Getting potential users hyped up for the future during the holiday season when there is a lot of disposable cash floating around.

If it weren't for the fact that I have a son (my holiday priorities are different now), the UC4 video would have made me jumped early than planned on a PS4 purchase.