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

[MrFox]

Still, we had a very nice run during the PS360 lifetime as there's been many density increases without a higher mechanical/electronic cost, so it provided an almost free upgrade whenever new single platter HDDs came out. It's always been about $40 BOM for whatever single platter is being produced.

We're currently hitting a platter density limit with current tech, and all new stuff like HAMR and Helium are more expensive to make, so the new single platters with density increases won't happen for a while. New tech this time is reserved for absolute total capacity at the top.

 

[Rikimaru]

Wrong. Even with desktop drives they recently hit 6tb and 8tb drive sizes and HGST has 10TB drives set to be released.

And the price?

 

[BRiT]

And the price?

Great price per gb. Seagate 8tb could have been had for $269. Despite it being listed as an SMR drive using alternate recording technology it has exceptional performance due to several slick mitigation factors they use. They seem to have a 25 to 50 gb cache area using normal PMR tech so random writes are not an issue nor are writes of lots of multiple small files. It isnt until you torture the disk with specific data write patterns that wont happen in real world situations that you start seeing the theoretical performance issues manifest into real performance issues.

But what that has done is drop the price on 4tb down to $130 to $150 depending on 7200rpm and 3 or 5 year warranty duration. So within that price range, the capacity of hdds has doubled from 2tb to 4tb over a 5 year period.

I recently replaced my aging drives (7 5 year old 2tb drives) in storage server with 4tb drives. I nearly replaced them with 6tb models because the cost was almost as good.

 

[Rangers]

I think the current generation shipping consoles will have 2Tb as standard in a few years. Look at the first PS3 models which came in 20Gb and 60Gb configurations. You can't get those anymore although perhaps Sony still be selling that flash-based thing with a piddling amount of space.

I think before Sony announce a PS4 price cut they'll bump the standard HDD to 1Tb to increase the value proposition compared to the XBO.

There was already a 1 terabyte XBO listed/leaked on a Brazil retailer or something a ways back. Wouldn't be too surprising to see it at E3 for both consoles. It's inevitable.

Neither side in PS3/360 gen seemed to use hard drive space as a marketing weapon at all, they just maintain very boring parity. IMO it might behoove MS to spend a few bucks this time around gaining an advantage there (say, a 2TB HDD at e3 instead of 1) given their other performance issues this gen, but I strongly doubt they'll do it. Probably wouldn't matter anyway.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Neither side in PS3/360 gen seemed to use hard drive space as a marketing weapon at all, they just maintain very boring parity. IMO it might behoove MS to spend a few bucks this time around gaining an advantage there (say, a 2TB HDD at e3 instead of 1) given their other performance issues this gen, but I strongly doubt they'll do it. Probably wouldn't matter anyway.

It wasn't the norm last gen for the full games to be installed from disc to the HDD, whereas it is this gen so HDD space is more important. Of course, most PS4 games are playable from anywhere between 20 seconds to a minute after beginning install from disc process so maybes it's not that big a deal but more HDD space is always good. Not having to manage space is preferable than having too.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

HDDs do not increase in capacity very much nowadays. Cost does not drop too.

Actually there is still quite a bit of movement, both in price and capacity. HDD's are up to 8 TB now, which is double what they were 4 years ago. And 10 TB HDDs have started sampling. There's movement in the 2.5" drive market as well. 1 TB 2.5" drives should approach the cost of 500 GB 2.5" drives in the next 1-2 years. And they are likely already the same cost (for manufacturer's) as 500 GB 2.5" drives were 2 years ago.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rangers]

The Nvidia Shield has rocketed up the charts to become the top selling console at Amazon...no doubt a sign of things to come

 

[DrJay24]

Ouya 2.0, what a waste of $200.

 

[DieH@rd]

PS4 + 3months of PS Plus + Witcher 3 + TLOUR + Project Cars = £263.97 @ Amazon

That should move a few bundles.

 

[Newguy]

Best deal for a PS4 I've seen by a mile, ridiculous value.

 

[Nesh]

PS4 + 3months of PS Plus + Witcher 3 + TLOUR + Project Cars = £263.97 @ Amazon

That should move a few bundles.

How do these guys profit? Profit margins on console hardware are almost non existent. I dont understand how they pull it off

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is that price sans VAT or something? The link is for £320.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

How do these guys profit? Profit margins on console hardware are almost non existent. I dont understand how they pull it off

I wonder if this is a mistake and it should be £363. A hundred ponds is crazy.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just tried sticking the items in my basket and it lists the full price, no discount combo price.

 

[BRiT]

So pricing error designed to drive traffic?

 

[DieH@rd]

I don't think this was deal that was offered directly by amazon. Maybe it's reseller who has some second hand units. Who knows.

 

[Rangers]

It's NPD time

GAF summary so far

Overall:

Overall retail sales are down 13% year over year.

Hardware sales were down 18% year over year.

Retail software sales were down 25% year over year.


Software:

1.) The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
2.) Mortal Kombat X (PS4, Xbox One)
3.) Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, PC)
4.) Minecraft (360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4)
5.) Splatoon (Wii U)
6.) Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4, 360, Xbox One, PS3, PC)
7.) NBA 2K15 (360, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, PC)
8.) FIFA 15 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, Wii , 3DS, Vita)
9.) MLB 15: The Show (PS4, PS3)
10.) Super Smash Bros. (3DS, Wii U)

Notes:
-PS4 was the leader in software sales for the month.


Hardware:

PS4: Best selling console.
Xbox One: Up 81% over May 2014. This would imply 139K.

Looks like another painfully slow month with GTA V and Splatoon so high in the charts. Hard to say how much digital sales are making these retail charts look bad though.

Good month for PS4, they won every multiplat over Xone (I guess except Minecraft).

I'm going to wild hunch Splatoon sold just something like 80k. I dunno why but my first hunches are usually right

At least it was pointed out 2014 was up 57% over 2013 on the strength of Watch Dogs and Mario Kart 8, so maybe the YoY software drop is a bit explainable, although X1 hardware (which obviously cant be affected by digital) still looks anemic.

360 did 155k this month in 2007, so X1 wasn't down much gen over gen. June 2007 360 did 198k, but you'll get a ~25% raise in June just because it's annually a 5 week NPD month so X1 should be able to compete with that as well.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Software:

1.) The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-w...-copies-1-3-million-were-from-the-pc-version/

Makes me wonder why NPD bothers to track PC physical sales anymore as it's not even remotely representative of PC software sales. 1/3 of all Witcher 3 sales were on PC.

And as more and more console sales shift towards digital distribution, NPD (and all other sales trackers around the world) will become less and less accurate or relevant.

Anyway, interesting numbers. PS4 went back to being on top as expected. Wasn't expecting XBO to sell that much better YoY, however. A little better but not over 80% better.

Regards,
SB

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

And as more and more console sales shift towards digital distribution, NPD (and all other sales trackers around the world) will become less and less accurate or relevant.

I'd say their numbers are already inaccurate and irrelevant, because I think that physical sales to digital sales have already reached at least a 3:1 ratio. I could be completely wrong, and that is probably only applicable to NA (but that's all NPD reports on anyway).

Regardless, those numbers are still definitely not positive for the XB1. They're losing the multi-plat shooters and they're losing the multi-plat sports games and those are essentially the tentpoles for the XB1. But, on the positive side (without knowing the actual numbers that separate the rankings), the issue with the XB1 is the same as it has been - they haven't done a good enough job convincing 360 users to upgrade to the XB1. Sony doesn't seem to have that same problem, the PS3 is only outselling the PS4 in minecraft. MS needs to do more to move those 360 sales to XB1 sales. Ending the $100 trade in deal will not help and raising the cost of entry by $50 for the new 1TB model won't help things either.

 

[DrJay24]

Wasn't expecting XBO to sell that much better YoY, however. A little better but not over 80% better.

Regards,
SB

You didn't expect a $500 version to fair that much worse than a $350 bundle version?

Edit: Even worse, MS announced a June $400 Kinectles SKU in May, so most everyone stopped buying it until June.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/399-xbox-one-without-kinect-launching-in-june/1100-6419601/