All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2021 Edition]

European games market generated €23.3 billion in 2020
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...n-games-market-generated-23-3-billion-in-2020

Of €23.3 billion spent, 44% was made up from console revenues, while smartphones accounted for 40%. A lower 14% came from PC revenues, and less than 2% was made up from on-demand/streaming.

  1. FIFA 21 (Electronic Arts)
  2. Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
  3. FIFA 20 (Electronic Arts)
  4. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Activision Blizzard)
  5. Animal Crossing New Horizons (Nintendo)
  6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (Ubisoft)
  7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Activision Blizzard)
  8. Assassin's Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft)
  9. Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)
  10. ?
 
I'm no longer surprised when I see something like that, but I still find it amazing when you have
  1. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  2. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  3. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  4. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  5. Single platform single-SKU game by Nintendo
  6. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  7. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  8. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
  9. Multiplatform multi-SKU game
And even more when you look and see that just a few developers/franchises own the top dollar sales in the EU.
  • 2 of the top 3 are FIFA
    • one of which was released in 2019
  • 2 of the top 9 are by RockStar
    • one of which is a game originally released in 2013
    • the other one is a game released in 2018
  • 2 of the top 9 are COD
    • one of which was released in 2019 and is a remake of a game released in 2008.
  • And the rest are a couple of UBIsoft titles.
    • one of which was released in 2015, but to be fair it's basically a game as a service.
5 of the top 9 weren't even released in the past year!

Also, by this point anyone that doesn't think the sky-high PC GPU prices and prevalence of crypto-mining on PC are impacting PC game sales ... they're just sticking their heads in the ground as PC game share continues to decline.

It's a shame as PC was gaining significant ground on consoles back when PC GPUs were still relatively affordable.

Regards,
SB
 
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Call of Duty: Warzone makes $5 million every day | KitGuru
As researched and reported by NetBet, many of the current most popular games were analysed, with the company observing “24 months of sales and revenue data to reveal how much the most popular games in the world are raking in per second, minute, hour and day.”

NetBet then published their discoveries, which can be found HERE. Some of the more interesting things to note is the fact that Call of Duty’s free-to-play Warzone game makes over $5.2 million dollars every day. As with most free-to-play games, Warzone offers cosmetic microtransactions as well as seasonal Battle Passes.
...
Even so, Call of Duty wasn’t the biggest game researched, as according to this data, Pokemon GO, Roblox, and the Chinese exclusive version of PUBG mobile (named Game for Peace), all make more revenue than Warzone.
 
That sounds fantastic. I'd be interested to know how Sony and Microsoft are planning their manufacturing, since XSX and PS5 are both difficult to find commercially. Are Sony making more machines or is it somewhat equal and the manufacturing of the XSS is hampering potential XSX sales?

I know it's a bit OT, it's just these types on numbers without context are difficult to make sense of what's happening.

Are Microsoft adjusting their manufacturing so that it's always slightly behind the relative sales, or simply that Sony are able to make more machines from their suppliers?
The story around silicon chips lately is pretty nuts. CEOs begging the CEO's of silicon to prioritize their orders, a great deal of markets are being left out.
I do believe that Sony has ordered something substantially larger than MS because of their larger install base, and that MS splitting their orders between Series S and X probably didn't help.

Then again, many chips are being used to fulfill Azure blades, so who really knows.
 
The story around silicon chips lately is pretty nuts. CEOs begging the CEO's of silicon to prioritize their orders, a great deal of markets are being left out.
I do believe that Sony has ordered something substantially larger than MS because of their larger install base, and that MS splitting their orders between Series S and X probably didn't help.

Then again, many chips are being used to fulfill Azure blades, so who really knows.

Microsoft is doing well with their hardware . I also wouldn't worry about the S I am sure in the fall a lot of people will start picking it up when halo is out.
 
The story around silicon chips lately is pretty nuts. CEOs begging the CEO's of silicon to prioritize their orders, a great deal of markets are being left out.
I do believe that Sony has ordered something substantially larger than MS because of their larger install base, and that MS splitting their orders between Series S and X probably didn't help.

Then again, many chips are being used to fulfill Azure blades, so who really knows.
The X|S split is probably hurting the volume of Series X consoles, but they can fit a lot more Series S chips on the same sized wafer, so it should be helping with overall volume even if the S doesn't sell quite as well. Well that's assuming the SoC is overwhelmingly the bottleneck, and thinking on it, it might not actually be. If other components, like Bluetooth modules, are also in very short supply the S is going to be a bigger drag on the X.
 
Anecdotal I know, but I keep seeing people reselling their Xbox Series S extremely cheap local to me. Here's an example from just now:

SmartSelect_20210911-072945_Facebook.jpg

I'm surprised it wasn't immediately snapped up at that price. Anybody else seeing these around their areas?

Edit: Xbox Series X still reselling for >RRP
 
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Maybe it's just the UK then.

Series S is widely available here in stores. XSX isn't though. Definitely shows a strong preference for the stronger machine in the UK.
 
Probably new Gamepass numbers (around 30 millions) according to Zelnick in the fireside chat with Phil Spencer.
SZ: Phil didn't pitch his own service, which he could...but you've got about 30 million subs Phil. Something like that(?)
PS: *chukles* The last public numbers we announced was 18 million.
SZ: *nervously shifting* Oh for some reason I thought it was more. *laughs* It's more than 18. Anyways...
https://news.yahoo.com/thegrill-2021-fireside-chat-strauss-212854167.html?guccounter=1
~34:30Min
 
50 million? Thats guaranteed, they should hit 100 million easily
Both peacock and HBO max which exist in a market with many many alternatives have been around less than 18 months but have more than 50 million subscribers each and they only exist in the USA (HBO max also in central america).
Now Gamepass has been around over 4 years and available in over 40 countries in a market with few alternatives how can it not hit 100 million? Hell even 200 million should be achievable without much effort.

Though on the negative for game companies, gamepass is decimating (and I use this word historically accurately for once :mrgreen:) xbox game sales
 
Peacock subscriber numbers are a bit meaningless as it is a free service, and all the existing Comcast and Cox cable users were given the lowest premium tier for free (the. $5 ad supported tier). They featured the Olympics, which helped increase their subscriber numbers by 50% over a 90 day period. The other things which drove subscriber counts is WWE material and EPL matches. According to Comcast in Q2 2021, Peacock had 54 million sign-ups but only 20 million monthly active accounts.

The actual reception of Peacock has been lackluster, folks sign up for free, check it out, see a few things, then bail on the service.
 
fair enough, remove that then and add disney+ 116 million paid subscribers in under 2 years
Sure the games market aint as big as TV but theres a hell of lot less competition, no netflix, amazon prime etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streaming_media_services. (apple tv is doing pretty bad for their standards?)
What competes with gamepass? something on playstation, stadia (do these actually compete as I think they are different) anything else?
I guess what Im saying is theres a hell of lot left in the market to grow, 500 million or even a billion subscribers (divvied up) I dont think is beyond the realms of possibility.

EDIT: Gamepass is incredible value, if I played games I would get it, and are fact semi seriously thinking of getting it just to try some things out for the Gfx (not actually play games as I don't have the time)
Why have not more ppl got it? Its a bit of a mystery, Do ppl just not know of the service? I'm sure evryone on these forums know of it, but in the wider gaming community, perhaps not?
 
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Oh right, I didn't mean for my response about Peacock to take away anything from your main point. I only wanted to add some additional details about Peacock. They should be doing absolutely better than they are, but somehow NBC just can't get much of it right.
 
Oh right, I didn't mean for my response about Peacock to take away anything from your main point. I only wanted to add some additional details about Peacock. They should be doing absolutely better than they are, but somehow NBC just can't get much of it right.

NBC tried to get Youtube TV to buy Peacock subscriptions for all Youtube TV subscribers in recent negotiations.

Google is threatening to drop all NBC channels from YouTube TV and cut the price by $10 a month.

Peacock has few originals. Most of the content is from NBC and their affiliated channels -- CNBC, Bravo, etc. Brave New World got a lot of pub but it was mediocre, other than some attractive female nudity.
 
fair enough, remove that then and add disney+ 116 million paid subscribers in under 2 years
Sure the games market aint as big as TV but theres a hell of lot less competition, no netflix, amazon prime etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streaming_media_services. (apple tv is doing pretty bad for their standards?)
What competes with gamepass? something on playstation, stadia (do these actually compete as I think they are different) anything else?
I guess what Im saying is theres a hell of lot left in the market to grow, 500 million or even a billion subscribers (divvied up) I dont think is beyond the realms of possibility.

EDIT: Gamepass is incredible value, if I played games I would get it, and are fact semi seriously thinking of getting it just to try some things out for the Gfx (not actually play games as I don't have the time)
Why have not more ppl got it? Its a bit of a mystery, Do ppl just not know of the service? I'm sure evryone on these forums know of it, but in the wider gaming community, perhaps not?

A big factor was that Xbox One sold a bit over 50 million consoles. And some of those were to households that bought multiple Xbox Ones during that generation. And for subscription services, not everyone is going to opt in. I don't have a Netflix sub just because I don't watch movies and TV shows enough to justify it, for example. And there are just people who do not believe in subscription services.

Ah, but PC gamers. Well, Game Pass on PC only entered BETA with a pretty limited lineup in June 2019. It wasn't until sometime in 2020 that I would Game Pass PC started to feel robust enough in terms of release quantity and cadence that I could universally recommend it to people.

So, basically PC which was needed to expand membership beyond lets say 20-25 million has only been around for about 2 years in BETA form and about 1 year in "will recommend to almost anyone" form.

It's gaining rapid momentum, however. It's almost impossible now to watch a Twitch gaming stream and not see the streamer mentioning the service and often effusively praising it. And the interesting thing is that when a Streamer mentions a new game and how it looks good and will cost X amount, if it's available on Game Pass and they don't mention it, their viewers will often flood chat that they should mention that it's on Game Pass.

The other factor is that while almost everyone consumes media in the form of TV shows or Movies, not everyone plays games. And not everyone plays games on a platform that has Game Pass. Just that alone means it'll never have the number of subscribers that Netflix has.

And just because Netflix has competition does that mean people are choosing to not sub to Netflix if they are subbed to a competitor? Almost all of the people I know who are subbed to Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, etc. are also subbed to Netflix. The reverse isn't necessarily true, however. But it's not uncommon to see people subbed to multiple subscription services for movies and TV shows.

Basically, competition for streaming Movies and TV shows doesn't really impact subscriptions for most subscription services. This is especially true if you consider that many subscribers are ones who are cutting the cord WRT to Cable TV where they were likely spending 100+ USD a month. So even subscribed to multiple streaming services, they'll be spending less than what they were spending on Cable TV.

So for NA (I have no idea what Cable TV is like in most other countries), the pool of people that were spending 100+ USD a month on Cable TV is likely far larger than the pool of people spending 100+ USD a month on games. :p

So, yeah there's various factors for why Game Pass has "only" ~50 million subscribers. :)

Regards,
SB
 
NBC tried to get Youtube TV to buy Peacock subscriptions for all Youtube TV subscribers in recent negotiations.

Google is threatening to drop all NBC channels from YouTube TV and cut the price by $10 a month.

Yes, I'm a YouTubeTV consumer, so I've been seeing what the Peacock app provides. Nothing improved since they launched it. SHOCKER! It takes soooooo loooooong to start up. I checked out a series or two and was done with it way back when. Most of their exclusives are just rebundled BBC or Sky material. It hasn't improved since then and does not offer local NBC channel streaming. Their NBC app does but requires authentication with your TV Provider. The NBC app does a few things better than Peacock does. It's rather sad the state their great new thing is still in.

So when NBCU doesn't come to terms with Google by midnight today, I'll be missing the local NBC channel. I'll be trying out other providers to see which is the least evil of the alternatives. I can mostly make do without the other NBCU channels, as they don't have any RegionalSportsNetwork for Ohio its mainly just the USA Network channel.

LoCast was killed entirely.

I wish Hulu UI didn't suck so much and it didn't cost another $10 to get usable DVR to RWD/FFWD during live tv or recordings.

Might end up back with DirectTv Stream, despite costing more, it could be shared between two houses. They don't have any trials, but have a 14 day refund period.
 
The thing that boggles me about people's resistance to Gamepass are the people that simply will never get it because they think it somehow means you can't also buy things you like. I totally understand the want people have for physical media. I have that too. But just because a game is on Gamepass doesn't mean you can't buy it. In fact, it's a great way to demo some games, and if you find one you like, you can pick up a physical copy without blind buying the thing. I used to subscribe to Gametap back in the day. Had I never done that, I probably would have never played The Witcher. Therefore I would not now own a physical copy of it one PC. There are plenty of other examples like that. Total Overdose was another game I discovered on Gametap. Great stuff.

Anyway, I don't know many people without a music subscription of some sort. But I also know plenty of them have large physical collections of music as well. I don't know why people have this disconnect for games. You can have the convenient subscription service and still pick up the titles you want forever. They don't devalue each other.
 
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