All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2022 Edition]

[Rangers]

Yeah, the SSD's sure can (and do) help out, but they are painfully slow compared to GDDR6, latency and other factors aside. The PC does with 16GB for just the VRAM, along with just as fast if not faster nvme drives, besides main ram.

Most "high end" Nvidia cards in circulation actually have only 6, 8 or 10GB RAM. And cost up to $2,000 (3070Ti/3070/3080, almost everything that's been sold beneath that). Looking at the steam charts most popular GPU's 16GB VRAM is not really a thing. (the top ten in order are GTX 1060, GTX 1650, GTX 2060, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1050, GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 3060, 1660 Super, 1070, 3060 Laptop). Actually the most popular card with more than 10GB ram would be the 1080 TI way down the list from 2 gens ago with 11GB. 3080 Ti is the highest current gen GPU>8GB, is below that in about 30th. The 3060 is 12GB I believe. 16 GB=LOL, maybe like .5 or 1% share out of my butt. Since it's basically gonna be 3090 or higher end AMD cards (both having very little share, I dont see any 16GB AMD card in the top 50 or so). Also, to this day are we sure RT isn't a scam? Theres just nothing using it to good effect (people point to Metro Exodus, that's 1 example in years, if it's even something that couldnt be done otherwise). New DF video about getting crysis to run on steamdeck, first thing is turn off RT, hammers performance and (basically) doesnt do anything. Seems like the story of RT's life doesnt it?

Ok to talk about sales stuff, MS sales look good but really inflation probably means the revenue is nigh flat. Core gaming is a decently big market but it's just not a growth market.

Google 23% increase in revenue (26% CC)
A lot of us heard about netflix recently super bad news, stock crashing blah blah.
How did their recent quarter revenue do, must be terrible right?
Yes it only increased 10%

You're cherry picking for one. Also NFLX isnt about revenue but profitability.

 

[zed]

Today the worlds biggest company (also one of the big 5 IT companies along with MS,google,facebook,amazon though is amazon really IT?) released there latest quarter results, of course they were record breaking and amazing blah blah, anyways I saw the image with the article, It just shows the steady upward climb of apple (all the major IT companies mirror this somewhat)
It shows succinctly that record breaking in this or that aint really anything out of the ordinary its just whats expected, i.e. its not noteworthy or newsworthy.
What actually is newsworthy is if the Revenue actually went down Y/Y now THAT is worth reporting on, as its a rare event
FWIW It may come a shock to some but Apple is the worlds 3rd biggest game company, Tencent the biggest.

EDIT:OT I see apples revenue was up 9%,which actually is on the lower side. Normally you see revenue up 15-25% for these IT companies, but it got me thinking whenever I worked most/all my pay increases were about 3 or 4% (*) I never saw a 20% increase of pay The only time that happened was when I got a new job.
Ppl wonder about the growing wealth gap, well this is a real life indication

(*)And this is usually each 2nd or 3rd year, not every year. My GF (accountant) hasnt had a pay increase in 8 years

 

[PSman1700]

Most "high end" Nvidia cards in circulation actually have only 6, 8 or 10GB RAM. And cost up to $2,000 (3070Ti/3070/3080, almost everything that's been sold beneath that). Looking at the steam charts most popular GPU's 16GB VRAM is not really a thing. (the top ten in order are GTX 1060, GTX 1650, GTX 2060, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1050, GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 3060, 1660 Super, 1070, 3060 Laptop). Actually the most popular card with more than 10GB ram would be the 1080 TI way down the list from 2 gens ago with 11GB. 3080 Ti is the highest current gen GPU>8GB, is below that in about 30th. The 3060 is 12GB I believe. 16 GB=LOL, maybe like .5 or 1% share out of my butt. Since it's basically gonna be 3090 or higher end AMD cards (both having very little share, I dont see any 16GB AMD card in the top 50 or so). Also, to this day are we sure RT isn't a scam? Theres just nothing using it to good effect (people point to Metro Exodus, that's 1 example in years, if it's even something that couldnt be done otherwise). New DF video about getting crysis to run on steamdeck, first thing is turn off RT, hammers performance and (basically) doesnt do anything. Seems like the story of RT's life doesnt it?

Most console gamers are not on PS5's either, no, 80% or so are on 2013 PS4 hardware. Those have 8GB of ram total, something like 3.5gb available to VRAM at best. Still, that 8 or 10GB is probably a match or/if not more than what most ps5 games are going to use for vram.
No idea where the 2000 dollar for a 3070/3080 come from though, thats not what the MSRP is at for those. If we talk supply shortage and all, yeah, thats for the PS5 too, they cost upwards of 1200 dollars, with units on marketplaces going for up to 1800USD. If you can get one.
So, that top order of GPUs (1060/1070 and up) is still going to be a higher baseline than the consoles are, which most are still on last generation hardware, and that for a good while to come.
To the contrary of steam charts (not that reliable), Digital Foundry shared an article where the statistics where abit different, there were more RTX2060S and better in circulation than there were next generation consoles sold combined. Their conclusion was that there were atleast as many powerfull/capable gpus as the consoles out there as a baseline, and better. its not the PS2 days anymore.

3090/Ti and 6900XT are highest end. So now AMD gpus are to be discarded? And again, you wont need 16GB VRAM to match or beat the consoles at vram capacity, they do not have 16gb available, its closer to 10 actually. Lower for console baseline (XSS). Also, PC's have more then just dedicated vram, theres main memory too, which is still faster than the consoles backup (SSD).
Say 10, 12 or 16GB + 16 or 32GB ddr5 ram and nvme storage.

Ray Tracing a scam? So, Sony has scammed everyone? Their console has ray tracing functionality on the GPU (RDNA1.5), there is some hardware and design choices involved there, added to the cost of the console, which one pay for. I understand the seeing the results there, but thats due to the 10tf gpu, AMD's 6800 and up are not that bad at it.

Steamdeck is equipped with AMD hardware, is a handheld device sipping watts and in the raw power range of last generation machines.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Today the worlds biggest company (also one of the big 5 IT companies along with MS,google,facebook,amazon though is amazon really IT?) released there latest quarter results, of course they were record breaking and amazing blah blah, anyways I saw the image with the article, It just shows the steady upward climb of apple (all the major IT companies mirror this somewhat)

AWS accounts for over 60% of Amazon's operating profit. Yes they are an IT company.

 

[eastmen]

Interesting, I wonder if the XBS-X sold out in Japan leading to more people getting the XBS-S? The previous week had the XBS-X sell 3,027 units while the XBS-S sold 2,715 units.

Also, I'd kind of forgotten that Famitsu only reports physical game sales. That's due to the fact that they get their sale numbers (final number is an estimate) from certain retailers around the country.

Something else interesting WRT the Japanese market. The PS4 version of games generally sell MUCH better than the PS5 version of games. So, I'd expect most Japanese publishers and developers to continue to have PS4 versions of their games whenever possible until that changes.

Regards,
SB

I spent almost a year in Japan when I was younger and have a bunch of friends there. A lot are buying the series S because of the size. That combined with xcloud for gaming on their phones is a major push for a lot of them. The other odd thing coming from them is the amount of them who are using it for emulation as well as game pass/xcloud

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I spent almost a year in Japan when I was younger and have a bunch of friends there. A lot are buying the series S because of the size.

Didn't Famitsu recently report that since launch the Xbox Series (S and X) had sold circa 140k units? That doesn't sound a lot. That's around 1,900 consoles a week.

 

[SmooTh]

Series S - 88,678
Series X - 95,856

 

[zed]

Didn't Famitsu recently report that since launch the Xbox Series (S and X) had sold circa 140k units? That doesn't sound a lot. That's around 1,900 consoles a week.

Compared to what the previous console was doing the xbox one, which often was in the double digits weekly, its a major improvement.
In fact I think some weeks the Series is outselling the PS5 in Japan!
OK the PS5 like elsewhere is supply constrained, but MS must be very happy with how the Series is performing in Japan.

 

[PSman1700]

https://www.eurogamer.net/global-ch...Pyw1e2Dlev7bOXg_XjSXUZ8xPVJxzPg-k8iHdv4o99TL4

Seems chip shortage will continue for a good while to come. For those who have a ps5 already are in luck.

 

[PSman1700]

https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-miss...ZnNMcqN7ydzqkIL3CsIePYPTGTe9wWFMIkTEDv_5t00mw

Sony misses PS5 sales target, as stock struggles continue but forecasts better year ahead.

 

[iroboto]

https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-miss...ZnNMcqN7ydzqkIL3CsIePYPTGTe9wWFMIkTEDv_5t00mw

Sony misses PS5 sales target, as stock struggles continue but forecasts better year ahead.

Sony saw a slight decrease in PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers, versus its total 12 months ago (47.4 million users in March 2022, down from 47.6 million in March 2021).

PlayStation's monthly active users were also down slightly - 106 million users, compared to 109 million users last year.
***
I think the only thing that stood out to me, is that both PS Plus and MAUS are down from last year despite having demand outstrip supply.

it’s not something I would hand wave away at just being a covid thing. If people are canceling subs and not playing at least once per month, despite selling all you can, means you’re losing slightly more players than you are gaining.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Sit’s not something I would hand wave away at just being a covid thing. If people are canceling subs and not playing at least once per month, despite selling all you can, means you’re losing slightly more players than you are gaining.

A small degree may be covid, it's cheaper to get subs for longer periods and last year was still pretty locked-down for most people. You may be more committed for a subscription over the summer if you expect other forms of entertainment to continue to be limited.

But I think a greater part of it may be it feels more difficult to find cheap subscription options for PS+. For many years, every February I've been able to find PS+ subscriptions on a discount. I started looking back in early January and couldn't find anything, so in late February I renewed PS+ at full price, for the first time ever. I have yet to pay full price for GamePass ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit: a quick google and the CFO was asked about this. The TL;DR version is was 2020 Q1 was pre-covid lockdown and had lower numbers. 2021 Q1 was covid-peak lockdown numbers, and 2022 Q1 has reverted to the what has traditionally been a quiet quarter. This suggests that there are a small number (circa .05%) PS+ who subscribe monthly/quarterly. I just to do this back in PS3 days.

 

[eastmen]

I don't think sony has an issue unless they have trouble making ps5's still. If they can't meet demand more and more will start looking else where. I think Sony is now down almost 5 million units from their estimates

 

[Silent_Buddha]

A small degree may be covid, it's cheaper to get subs for longer periods and last year was still pretty locked-down for most people. You may be more committed for a subscription over the summer if you expect other forms of entertainment to continue to be limited.

But I think a greater part of it may be it feels more difficult to find cheap subscription options for PS+. For many years, every February I've been able to find PS+ subscriptions on a discount. I started looking back in early January and couldn't find anything, so in late February I renewed PS+ at full price, for the first time ever. I have yet to pay full price for GamePass ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit: a quick google and the CFO was asked about this. The TL;DR version is was 2020 Q1 was pre-covid lockdown and had lower numbers. 2021 Q1 was covid-peak lockdown numbers, and 2022 Q1 has reverted to the what has traditionally been a quiet quarter. This suggests that there are a small number (circa .05%) PS+ who subscribe monthly/quarterly. I just to do this back in PS3 days.

I'd agree that covid is screwing with numbers for a few companies (Netflix being another one, for example), but there's something else to potentially keep an eye on going forward.

That would be the potential impact of people that only buy a console for exclusives and nothing else. If there's an increase in that demographic, then hardware sales could increase significantly while active users and PS+ decrease. That would be the case if say PC gamers were buying a PS5 purely to play exclusives on it and nothing else. In that case, why subscribe to PS+? Also, they would only be active while playing an exclusive and not at any other time.

I mention that because I know a few people who bought a PS5 for exclusives and nothing else. And it was either their first PlayStation they've owned or they haven't owned a PlayStation console since the PS1 and PS2. A few of them initially bought a PS+ subscription with their PS5, but have since cancelled since they found they weren't playing anything except PlayStation exclusives on the console.

Regards,
SB

 

[PSman1700]

That would be the potential impact of people that only buy a console for exclusives and nothing else. If there's an increase in that demographic, then hardware sales could increase significantly while active users and PS+ decrease.

That would probably not be a good thing for Sony if more and more users start getting these PS's just for the exclusives on the system. There aren't many exclusives and they usually aren't online either (no subscribtion needed). That and there are less exclusives for each generation, and the fact that they start coming to pc aswell.

 

[Rangers]

Today the worlds biggest company (also one of the big 5 IT companies along with MS,google,facebook,amazon though is amazon really IT?) released there latest quarter results, of course they were record breaking and amazing blah blah, anyways I saw the image with the article, It just shows the steady upward climb of apple (all the major IT companies mirror this somewhat)
It shows succinctly that record breaking in this or that aint really anything out of the ordinary its just whats expected, i.e. its not noteworthy or newsworthy.
What actually is newsworthy is if the Revenue actually went down Y/Y now THAT is worth reporting on, as its a rare event
FWIW It may come a shock to some but Apple is the worlds 3rd biggest game company, Tencent the biggest.

EDIT:OT I see apples revenue was up 9%,which actually is on the lower side. Normally you see revenue up 15-25% for these IT companies, but it got me thinking whenever I worked most/all my pay increases were about 3 or 4% (*) I never saw a 20% increase of pay The only time that happened was when I got a new job.
Ppl wonder about the growing wealth gap, well this is a real life indication

(*)And this is usually each 2nd or 3rd year, not every year. My GF (accountant) hasnt had a pay increase in 8 years

I always like pointing out on favor of my power agenda that by and large Apple is a HARDWARE company, not the politically correct software., And that if there's one thing that differentiates them, it's arguably power. Their chips are amazing. Every single Apple device you buy is hugely overpowered compared to almost anything on the android side. The discrepancy gets really embarrassing at the low to mid range. The $329 iPad runs circles around any $300 Android tablet in chipset power (which are frankly embarrassing) , and the same for iPhone SE compared to any android in that price range. I dont know about Apple Tv or something, but there hasnt been a single iPad or iPhone model ever sold that wasn't excellent in terms of soc grunt for the time.

EDIT:OT I see apples revenue was up 9%,which actually is on the lower side. Normally you see revenue up 15-25% for these IT companies, but it got me thinking whenever I worked most/all my pay increases were about 3 or 4% (*) I never saw a 20% increase of pay The only time that happened was when I got a new job.
Ppl wonder about the growing wealth gap, well this is a real life indication

(*)And this is usually each 2nd or 3rd year, not every year. My GF (accountant) hasnt had a pay increase in 8 years

The revenue increases being the norm for these companies has to be viewed through the lens of inflation and normally isn't. Inflation was nominally 8.5% in the USD and everyone I watch claims the real figure is much higher, 10-15% (the govt is supposed to "cook the books" to always make inflation look lower since it benefits those in power).

Now we're totally OT but that's why you need to be in stocks and/or real estate. Those are the two and only two things that return 10% a years and match or exceed inflation, and escape the wage treadmill.

 

[eastmen]

I always like pointing out on favor of my power agenda that by and large Apple is a HARDWARE company, not the politically correct software., And that if there's one thing that differentiates them, it's arguably power. Their chips are amazing. Every single Apple device you buy is hugely overpowered compared to almost anything on the android side. The discrepancy gets really embarrassing at the low to mid range. The $329 iPad runs circles around any $300 Android tablet in chipset power (which are frankly embarrassing) , and the same for iPhone SE compared to any android in that price range. I dont know about Apple Tv or something, but there hasnt been a single iPad or iPhone model ever sold that wasn't excellent in terms of soc grunt for the time.



The revenue increases being the norm for these companies has to be viewed through the lens of inflation and normally isn't. Inflation was nominally 8.5% in the USD and everyone I watch claims the real figure is much higher, 10-15% (the govt is supposed to "cook the books" to always make inflation look lower since it benefits those in power).

Now we're totally OT but that's why you need to be in stocks and/or real estate. Those are the two and only two things that return 10% a years and match or exceed inflation, and escape the wage treadmill.

Apple has buying power. Is anyone else actually shipping socs on TSMCs 5nm process yet aside from them and it's been what a year and a half almost two since it released? Of course they will have a power advantage there.

 

[BRiT]

NPD 2022 Q1 results @ https://www.npd.com/news/press-rele...eo-game-products-decreased-8-to-13-9-billion/

According to the Q1 2022 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.* report from The NPD Group, overall total consumer spending on video gaming in the U.S. totaled $13.9 billion in the first quarter (Q1) of 2022 (January – March), a decline of 8% when compared to Q1 2021.

Losses were seen across console and portable content, PC, cloud and non-console VR content, mobile content, hardware, and accessories. Mobile contributed most to the decline. Data from Sensor Tower shows U.S. consumer spending in mobile games during the first quarter fell 10% from Q1 2021.

...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

According to the Q1 2022 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.* report from The NPD Group, overall total consumer spending on video gaming in the U.S. totaled $13.9 billion in the first quarter (Q1) of 2022 (January – March), a decline of 8% when compared to Q1 2021.

This is a useful reminder that relying on two data points is not just unhelpful, but potentially misleading. If one of the datapoints is skewed for any reason, a false conclusion would seem likely.

 

[Rangers]

Apple has buying power. Is anyone else actually shipping socs on TSMCs 5nm process yet aside from them and it's been what a year and a half almost two since it released? Of course they will have a power advantage there.

They ALWAYS do. Node doesn't matter.

3090/Ti and 6900XT are highest end. So now AMD gpus are to be discarded? And again, you wont need 16GB VRAM

Well according to steam survey AMD GPU's barely exist, and the top ones are the IGP and like the 580 with miniscule share. Think about the everyman here. Top AMD GPU's: IGP (I assume thats what "AMD Radeon graphics" means) 1.34%, AMD RX 570 1.19%, AMD Radeon Vega 8 1.08% AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT .72%, AMD Radeon Vega 3 graphics (I dont even know what this is) .48%, AMD Radeon RX 550 .46%. Add all these up and it's 5.3% LOL. And every other AMD will be under .46% share so diminishing returns kicking in. As a AMD fanboy it's pretty disheartening.