All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2023 Edition]

[chris1515]

And now for something complete different...

Why is PS5 doing so much worse than PS4 in Europe? Unlike PS4, the US is now the largest territory for sales of PlayStation. You have to go all the way back to the original Playstation 1 in order see NA with more PlayStation sales than Europe.

In the US, PS5 is now ahead of the PS4 by approx. +1.26 million units sold. PS5 at ~16.1 million units vs PS4 at ~14.8 million units.

PS5 vs PS4 Sales Comparison in the US - October 2023

The VGChartz sales comparison series of articles are updated monthly and each one focuses on a different sales [...]

www.vgchartz.com

In the EU, PS5 is now way behind the PS4 by approx. -4.6 million units sold. PS5 at ~14.5 million units vs PS4 at ~19.0 million units.

PS5 vs PS4 Sales Comparison in Europe - October 2023

The VGChartz sales comparison series of articles are updated monthly and each one focuses on a different sales [...]

www.vgchartz.com

I wonder if the war in Ukraine is affecting this as I know food prices (at least grain) were up across Europe due to the war. So perhaps people aren't confident enough to spend money on a console?

Related to the previous conversation here, I wonder if this is also contributing to Xbox Series sales taking a nose dive across Europe. Basically, in Europe, if you are struggling to afford a console are you more likely to not buy an Xbox or more likely to not buy a PlayStation? Sure, the XBS-S is a great value and likely why it sells way more as a percentage of Xbox sales in Europe than it does in NA, but it still has far fewer compelling exclusives in a sales territory that has always leaned towards the PlayStation brand.

Interestingly the PS4/XBO generation ended at a little over 3:1 (3.1:1) in favor of PS4 in Europe while PS5/XBS generation the ratio is currently a little over 2:1 (2.1:1) in favor of PS5 in Europe. So XBS has actually greatly decreased the sales gap between PlayStation and Xbox. However, this was likely due to the supply shortages of PS5 and I would expect the gap to grow larger by the end of the generation.

Regards,
SB

PS5 was behind of PS4 because of supply shortage. Sony decided to give the stock to USA because Xbox is a threat there.

End of march 2024, if they reach the target 64.9 million PS5 and on the road to 3 to 1 against Xbox Series worldwide. Much Less than 3 to 1 in US and UK but much more than 3 to 1 in Europe or Asia. And they will have more PS5 than PS4 in every market.

For November they are happy in France, UK, Spain, Portugal they released the PS5 Slim 1 week before because they sold all discounted PS5 Fat before friday last week. Black friday the PS5 was 549 euros again.

Sony kept a big inventory of consoles for end of year(13 millions...) and it is added to the console they will ship this quarter. Sony was more aggressive this Black friday with the PS5 at 429 euros. It was supposed to be available until cyber Monday but wednesday or thursday last week depending of the country the discounted consoles were sold out.

 

[iroboto]

But in 2023 they had Spider-man 2! That's largely enough for a good majority of players.

MS starting putting GOTY in candidates? how is that likely considering the companies they currently own? When looking at Bethesda you see the quality of their games has being declining steadily. They need to make some big changes, like changing the director of their big games as it isn't working anymore. But unfortunately both their 2 big upcoming games are being directed by the same person.

Haha I know. But still the idea is they had very few releases in 2023.
I agree, there’s a lot that needs to happen to see Xbox games move towards GOTY candidates. It should eventually happen I think, statistically with the number of games and funding it should be just a matter of time.

 

[iroboto]

People when they buy a new console don't think about 2023 title but all the title since 2020. Demon Soul's Remake, Returnal, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, FF16, Spiderman 2, Kena and for people stopping to play on PS4, Spiderman Miles Morales, God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West continue to exist.

It’s true. But if you have 3 years of little to no releases like Xbox did, people start looking at other things to do.

 

[wco81]

It's almost certainly due to the relative difference in inflation, which across Europe is generally much higher than it was pre-lockdown. Whilst consoles and gaming has always been popular in Europe, when you have a make a choice, plenty of people would rather buy season ticket to watch actual football than buy a console to play FIFA.

Plus for the first two years PS5 was supply-constrained and then after pandemic, supply increased but there are some economic doldrums at the moment.

 

[arandomguy]

In totally agree with that but I think there are some major assumptions here about Xbox’s ability to operate outside of the Americas. Johnnys words here to do touch on the situation, though market research alone is not enough. At the end of the day profitability matters, and we have little to no insight into what that is.

Maybe it's just me but aside from Apple it does seem that American tech/appliances/and similar consumer goods all seem to suffer from weaker brand perception outside of America as long as there is a major viable Western European/East Asian competitor. So I'm not sure if this is a specific Microsoft/Xbox problem.

Even in America there seems to be some divide in terms of just how "American made" is actually perceived relative to the European/East Asian (well Japanese/SK mainly) depending on the region/demographic.

 

[iroboto]

Maybe it's just me but aside from Apple it does seem that American tech/appliances/and similar consumer goods all seem to suffer from weaker brand perception outside of America as long as there is a major viable Western European/East Asian competitor. So I'm not sure if this is a specific Microsoft/Xbox problem.

Even in America there seems to be some divide in terms of just how "American made" is actually perceived relative to the European/East Asian (well Japanese/SK mainly) depending on the region/demographic.

Yea I noticed that as well. Apple is the exception.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It’s true. But if you have 3 years of little to no releases like Xbox did, people start looking at other things to do.

I believe that this is the perception, but there's no actual lack of great releases on Xbox this generation.

 

[BitByte]

I believe that this is the perception, but there's no actual lack of great releases on Xbox this generation.

Let’s agree to disagree. There have been only 2 great releases on Xbox this gen. hifi rush, a game that was supposed to be third party and flight simulator 2020. Starfield was bad and it’s reflected in the steam ratings. Halo had a horrible campaign and the multiplayer got stale fast due to a lack of content. Although that seems to be picking up a bit. Psychonauts 2 was multi platform and could be played on the ps4/ps5. Forza Horizon 5 was stale and boring. As someone who played Horizon 3 & 4, the formula has not really evolved and is tired. Forza Motorsport is a complete mess with the worst offline carpg system eever in the history of Forza. It’s actually even worse than the horrid gt7 menu book.

Finally, Xbox has no exclusives so there’s no reason to get one. Just get a pc/steam deck and another console and you’re set.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

"Great" is subjective. If people want 'great' as a measure across generations and platforms, they need to pick a metric, such as Metacritic scores or percentage console-base sold to (unit sales are more typical but that obviously scales by userbase potential).

 

[see colon]

Let’s agree to disagree. There have been only 2 great releases on Xbox this gen. hifi rush, a game that was supposed to be third party and flight simulator 2020. Starfield was bad and it’s reflected in the steam ratings. Halo had a horrible campaign and the multiplayer got stale fast due to a lack of content. Although that seems to be picking up a bit. Psychonauts 2 was multi platform and could be played on the ps4/ps5. Forza Horizon 5 was stale and boring. As someone who played Horizon 3 & 4, the formula has not really evolved and is tired. Forza Motorsport is a complete mess with the worst offline carpg system eever in the history of Forza. It’s actually even worse than the horrid gt7 menu book.

This is a hot take for sure. In Fora Horizon's case, it won IGN's Game of the Year in 2021 and IIRC was tied for the most awards won at The Game Awards. 2021 was a bang up year for Microsoft, in fact. Metacritic ranked them as the best publisher that year and their average review score wasn't even the best of the year, it was the best individual year average by a publisher ever ranked by Metacritic.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Yeah. Xbox has great games this generation. 2021 was a very good year, 2022 was bad, but 2023 is shaping up well. The other thing I like is that MS will shore up their weaknesses on GP.

For instance, they knew 2022 was rough so they put A Plague Tale 2, a bunch of Persona games and GTA V and RDR2 on GP that year.

They've also funded some great games. The Medium is a better game than any Silent Hill game (yep! I said it!). The Ascent was solid as well.

Not to mention how awesome Sea of Thieves live service is or how they're improving Halo Infinite, engendering a resurgence in that game.

With 40 studios putting games on GP, I'm not worried about Xbox at all. Go Phil!

 

[QPlayer]

Hohohohooo!

The XBSX is $350 at Walmart and Amazon starting today!

 

[RobertR1]

Hohohohooo!

The XBSX is $350 at Walmart and Amazon starting today!

That's a great deal. Lets see if they do anything similar in the EU to stimulate demand.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The XBS-X was also on sale at 349.99 USD on Amazon for Cyber Monday and quickly sold out. Amazon still hasn't replenished stock on it so it's only available from 3rd party sellers in the US at the moment.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Starfield has reached 12 million players since launch - KitGuru

Starfield has had an interesting trajectory. Following an extensive and lengthy marketing strategy,

www.kitguru.net

Back in September, Bethesda revealed that Starfield had seen more than 10 million players flock to the new sci-fi RPG in the month following its release on the 1st of September – at the time becoming the studio’s biggest launch ever. Since then however, it seems as though momentum has slowed down significantly.
...
Spencer continued, “In fact, Starfield has now had over 12 million players since the launch of Starfield and it still sits in our top 10 most played games from our studios, so thank you everybody for all the support on Starfield and making it a tremendous hit.”

While 12 million players is certainly nothing to sniff at, it is interesting to see just how quickly the game seems to have dropped off player-wise. Being an Xbox Game Pass title, Starfield will undoubtedly continue to see new players flock to the title on a daily basis, but it is curious nonetheless to see just how quickly its growth seems to have slowed down since the game’s launch month.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Not that curious. It's a single player game without much new content. In other news, I've heard there's not that many people playing Dragon Quest XI anymore either. Lol.

 

[see colon]

Not that curious. It's a single player game without much new content. In other news, I've heard there's not that many people playing Dragon Quest XI anymore either. Lol.

It isn't just that. There have been several high profile releases and a major US holiday since Starfield released. And I bet we'll see a big jump in Starfield's numbers when people start activating all of those Xboxs people will get for Christmas. Then the numbers will drop again, and we can get all of these panic articles about Starfield dying again in March.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Only MS gets bad press for having 12 million players of Starfield, 10 million Forza Horizon 5 players and 20 million Sea of Thieves players.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Only MS gets bad press for having 12 million players of Starfield, 10 million Forza Horizon 5 players and 20 million Sea of Thieves players.

Yes, but that's kind of their own doing. By giving these away for 'free' on GP, player counts aren't so meaningful as you've no idea whether people are playing the game and loving it or just had a look and thought it was no good and moved on. Contrast that with Halo 3 getting 14 million sales, say, and that's 14 million people wanting to play the game and paying for it versus 14 million just having a look and then going off to play something else.

MS is always going to have trouble generating positive PR over player counts for day one GP releases. With 25+ million subscribers, I'd expect many millions of plays for every big ticket game that releases on there. Like Netflix's most popular videos still getting millions of views even when the movies suck (looking at you Uncharted!) because 'it costs nothing more to watch so why not'. They need a different metric showing people are playing their games and sticking with them rather than bouncing off from a first try.

Edit: For notable GaaS titles like BRs, it's ongoing player counts that show the health of the game. Steam charts show us when a game is waxing and waning in popularity.

 

[see colon]

The craziest thing about Fallout 76 to me isn't it's player numbers on Steam, it's the fact that it still doesn't have crossplay. If any game needed it, this would be it. Also, I would understand if the Playstation version didn't have crossplay. Sony charges money for that. But the Windows Store version plays with Xbox players, but the Steam version doesn't. Any game like this, reliant on player counts to remain enjoyable, should include crossplay.