Anyone else notice that the highest-selling full price Wii game for the month (i.e. not a controller with a $10 game) was 3rd party?
Feb NPD! The 2nd best thing to crack.
- Thread starter RobertR1
- Start date
i read last feb was a NPD 5 week month this one was a 4 week one (hmm but it was a leap year this time, but anyways)
if u look it that way, the xbox360 is doing actually quite a bit better than last year
45600 per week 2007
63650 per week 2008 ~40% improvement
it also dispels the myth of availability(well that + me going online + checkint store availability at the time), im guessing MS think the xb360 will outsell the ps3 by april due to the blu-ray effect wearing off (which will happen) + perhaps GTAiv(which im doubtful about)
wii
67,000 per week 2007
108,000 per week 2008 ~60% improvement
ps3
25400 per week 2007
70200 per week 2008 ~180% improvement
That would require the PS3 to be a POS, which it isn't. The fact that it's the complete opposite explodes your "arbitrary metric" (as Stefan so generously labeled it).
zed, even very short term, I'd expect the Blu-ray bump to lessen, not wear off. Unlike the PS2, the PS3 seems to be a quite good BD player, at least in terms of output quality. Then again, I'm only cursorily familiar with the BD market, and I may be underestimating its other HT negatives (remote, no physical display, noise, maybe shape--though slot-loading should offset at least one of those
).What kind of arbitrary metric is that?Seriously, sometimes my mind can only wonder how people come up with their own conclusions.
Just saying its lead should seem to be more if it was really fending it off.
The graph also shows PS3 hitting 10 million 5 months faster then 360.
What kind of arbitrary metric is that?
Beats thinking!
I guess "fending off" to you means "dominating 2 to 1". To me it means "mitigating any gains".
IMO, the fact that the Sony platform has been marginalized spells a huge success for MS and Nintendo - regardless of where their own platforms end up.
That only means a 20% improvement on the 360. That is essentially the Japan sales difference, and nothing else.
Even if that rate is maintained, it won't erase the PS3's deficit in a timely manner.
The graph shows clearly that the PS3 has had minimal overall gains worldwide since Halo 3. To me it shows that Sony hasn't done enough.
TheMightyPuck
Newcomer
I think MS has no incentive to drop the price until they get their manufacturing issues sorted out. They are competing with Sony here not Nintendo (which is to say I don't think a price drop on MS's part is going to do a hell of a lot wrt Nintendo's market share whereas it might eat into Sony's). Right now Sony has a nice sweet spot price point considering their last gen brand dominance and their blu-ray and wireless capability. Sony also made a wise decision to go to a single SKU while MS unwisely went to 3 (IMHO). Still, Sony has not yet delivered on digital distribution like MS. The notion is that they shouldn't have a problem doing so, but why haven't they?
Excuse me? Since when did Sony have only a single SKU?
The 360 is already cheaper in some regions like the UK. That's the arcade though. And here in Canada, I think the Arcade is only $20 more.
Your right. The PS3 hasn't done enough. But at the same time, one would have thought that the 360 would have done enough to widen that gap much further as they had Halo 3, Mass Effect, Bioshock, and better multiplatform sellers from Orange Box to CoD4 in 2007. If I'm Sony, I am satisfied that I am able to wither the storm away.
reminds me, gotta buy a dart board to hone my skills, in sucha board ill be aiming for a triple score 17/19 best chance of a payoff
Beats thinking!
true thats why MS have lost the chance cause its not gonna come again, they are at heart (they do talk about innovation etc but its just talk/marketing) in reality a very conservative comapny. sony whilst being a big company all do gamble, true they fail frequently, but they do take the chance, + often it pays off
Where have you been?
he probably means that they all have the same standard features i.e Blu Ray support and HDD. The main difference is BC compatibility and HDD size.
Which is the same with XB360. The arcade has an HDD size of 0 GB, the premium adds 20 GB, the elite adds 100 GB on top of that and HDMI.
With PS3, the 40GB (ignoring the 20 GB and 60GB models) has no BC and no card slots and less USB ports, and the 80GB has BC and 40GB more etc. So the differences in PS3 are more extreme than in XB360. There's no way PS3 can be one SKU to XB360's 3. PS3 has had 4 SKU's internationally. And that's excluding colour variations in both systems which are all SKU's too, though people don't use the term SKU properly, and instead use it as a shorthand for Functional Hardware Configuration.
With PS3, the 40GB (ignoring the 20 GB and 60GB models) has no BC and no card slots and less USB ports, and the 80GB has BC and 40GB more etc. So the differences in PS3 are more extreme than in XB360. There's no way PS3 can be one SKU to XB360's 3. PS3 has had 4 SKU's internationally. And that's excluding colour variations in both systems which are all SKU's too, though people don't use the term SKU properly, and instead use it as a shorthand for Functional Hardware Configuration.
This is the problem with weekend posting... uhm, yeah, I am late to the party and I am not sure I want to touch this one with a 12 foot pole.
I am honestly surprised people are surprised by the data (but I think "surprise" on these forums should be crafted with a nuance of, "strategic debate deposit"). On the PS3 front Sony is riding a positive wave from the end of 2007 with their price drop into "reasonable price territory" (as MS has shown there is a market at $399), finally some unique software that is a showcase for the platform, and most importantly the failure of HD DVD. The PS3 is an excellent BDR and is relatively affordable for such. Software continues to be a mixed bag; some titles are doing poorly (due to smaller install base) but some titles, namely those with a history on the PlayStation and well known to PlayStation consumers, are doing well. All around this is excellent news for Sony. The PS3 has been a failure of epic proportions when compared to where they where (PS, PS2) and where they are. Yet they have gone through horrible birthing pains (spinning off fabs, cutting out BC, huge hardware losses, AAA funded titles absolutely bombing, network issues, HD media war, etc) and are coming out the other end alive and competitive. The PS3 in many ways is echoing the PSP which, at one point, looked in really bad shape but has rebounded to capture a respectible marketshare. Of course that is the "pretty" part. The ugly part is Sony got waxed in the holiday season (both head-to-head and also comparing Sony 2007 to the competitions 2006) and 10's of thousands of units now don't do much to compensate for the 100's of thousands in differential sales (not to mention head start sales) that have occured over the last 6 months.
So for MS... lets get some perspective here. Sales are up over early 2007, which is an important point. The PS3 increasing sales over the 360 is more to do with positive PS3 sales growth from a number of factors and not as much the 360 declining. BUT, important but, the PS3 is following a more traditional market curve where next gen sales start off slowly and increase in years 3-4, begin to level in 5 and then decline as new platforms are released. The Xbox platform continues to show "slow and steady" market growth. My general position has been that the 360 (a) had a better beginning to life than the Xbox and (b) faced an easier market situation and, in that light, I think magnifies the many miscalculations on MS's behalf. I believe a lot of this was a realization that they were not going to be the absolute market leader after a number of early mistakes so persueing the, "Market leader, reap huge windfall" paradigm formerly mastered by Nintendo and Sony they have had to take the more sheepish route of carving out a profitable niche where they minimize hardware losses and by maximizing the high-software-adoption consumers they captured early and have fostered. MS is facing the music for a number of mistakes in the first 24 months which has placed them in a "unique" position of holding to a high platform cost well into the platforms life. One could look at it as: the $1.15B MS had to pay for hardware failures was at the expense of hardware price reduction--and the double edged sword is MS also lost out on the benefits the software sales from such.
MS is saturating the potential consumer market at their price points but I don't think they have felt confident about dropping the price in hopes of recapturing losses through software--which is a viable market strategy and shouldn't be dumbed down with "MS is in it to make money, not win the market" because the two typically go hand-in-hand--for the very reason that they are concerned consumers at $199 (for example) may not adopt enough software to compensate for the losses. They already spent that money, with no reward, on the RRoD, and have seen ugly delays in fabrication cost reductions. So while you woudl expect 360 sales to be increasing at this point in its life the pricing issue continues to loom over the platform. They cannot afford to cut the price without cutting cost first... but they also cannot afford not to cut the price. When MS decided that FY profits for 2007 and 2008 were the prime focus the white flag went up; instead of an aggressive market approach capture hardware losses through software sales the RRoD, fab issues, software delays, and the Wii resulted in plan 2: increase marketshare, make some money to justify our existance to shareholders, and focus the next move.
Sony's and MS's tales are quite interesting: Sony couldn't afford not to drop the price in 2007, and MS couldn't afford to drop the price in 2006 or by any respectible amount in 2007. Obviously MS will slash prices in the US at some point as their costs fall, but it is interesting to see how their respective goals and market conditions have generated quite different methods and how the results compare and constrast.
The good news for MS is have been competitive during the holiday period with Nintendo for hardware units and both throttled Sony; and more importantly for MS they have had historic software sales that is a nice consolation prize. Yes, Halo 3 would have sold better if they had 25M units installed at its release but they were able to turn a quarterly profit 2 quarters in a row with industry leading software sales on the 'few' units they have moved. They are making the best of a bad situation (one they caused themselves). Looking forward they have the same questions as Sony: can we continue to drive and improve monthly sales? And what software do we have to push these units?
Software, at this point, is going to be the mitigating factor in whether Sony or MS continues to lead month-by-month. Putting aside some hardware shortages by MS (I couldn't find any 360's locally for a number of weeks until recently, it was even easier to get a Wii as a couple friends at work did) it appears MS and Sony are pretty close right now in month sales and are at similar market prices right now. Sony has the advantage of a number of big PS-related titles coming and should continue to benefit from the market penetration of Blu-ray. MS probably has a price drop coming in 2008. As I mentioned in December, these months are slow (and sways are easily impacted by news like a platform failure or a big title) and with the looming recession things could get tighter. These are the months, however, to capture sales that you wouldn't otherwise be able to recoup through fall price drops. A price drop in March with a couple big titles could boost the slow month sales in addition to the strong holiday sales (hence why spring price drops are so popular historically).
I don't expect Sony to do a price drop this spring, but MS... they did one in Europe (far, far overdue) but seem to be happy with the NA market momentum. My guess is if GTAIV sells well on the 360 and hardware picks up they may just wait it out a couple more months and aim for a summer price drop. From MS's perspective you can see it like this: We are already $50 cheaper ($120 looking at the Arcade) than Sony's cheapest model so the price conscious shopper who needs GTAIV as cheap as possible will get the 360 version. Why cut our prices more, and lose more money (or make less money) when GTAIV is guaranteed to generate HW sales? Why not wait until AFTER GTAIV is released, 30-90 days pass, and drop the price then and get an ADDITIONAL hardware (and software) sales bump?
If this happens, especially if Sony is able to continue capturing increased sales growth while MS continues the "slow and steady" growth, it will be yet another sign that MS is happy with their US marketshare and is more content focusing on capturing early dollars now than market share and potential platform life dollars through maximizing their marketshare. I think this has been their strategy since 2006 when a number of things went south. I would be surprised, pleasantly so but surprised none the less, if MS dropped their 360 prices before GTAIV shipped in NA. The price move in Europe was more of a response to their market position there and the need to make the 360 platform the most appealing one for the cost conscious consumer looking for the cheapest way to get GTAIV.
There are other factors others have covered with some good points. I got a good laugh out of the myopic view of the first couple pages where past sales of platforms in Jan/Feb 2007 were ignored, the holiday just 3 months ago was forgotten, and the recent issues in hardware availability and the HD DVD demise were all filtered out and these numbers somehow presented some marvelous revelation.
Oh, and the Wii pwns all. So after our long relationship spanning the NES-GCN, I dumped her and now she has come back better than ever. See what happens when you dump your ol' baggage I have coworkers who have never played videogames who bought Wiis to play with their kids, extended family, and friends. They get together on the weekends to play it. They even consider it exercize and rave how it gets their kids butts off the couch and they now encourage them to play the Wii instead of their PS2s. And they love the fact they can play with their kids and all laugh at eachother. The Wii isn't a console, it is a family entertainment center. Every couple generations a device captures the imagination of users and defies market sense because it is bigger than the previous market perception. Besides a couple notable consoles that crossed these lines by bringing arcade quality games to the home, or movies, etc you have devices like iPods, smartphones, and the like. The Wii is one of these transcendant monsters which defies the typical boundaries and expectations of its core market and appeals to new and old consumers in new ways. Which begs the question:
Is Nintendo ever going to resolve their production issues? The console "race" wouldn't even be one if it weren't for their production issues. Although the "word of mouth" factor and Ninny's masterful use of the shortages to generate positive buzz and continued demand is a sight to behold.
Next interesting sales month: GTAIV month. That will give us an interesting picture, especially of (a) where GTA fans ended up (b) the importance of the cheaper SKUs and (c) what value consumers see in the DLC.
I am honestly surprised people are surprised by the data (but I think "surprise" on these forums should be crafted with a nuance of, "strategic debate deposit"). On the PS3 front Sony is riding a positive wave from the end of 2007 with their price drop into "reasonable price territory" (as MS has shown there is a market at $399), finally some unique software that is a showcase for the platform, and most importantly the failure of HD DVD. The PS3 is an excellent BDR and is relatively affordable for such. Software continues to be a mixed bag; some titles are doing poorly (due to smaller install base) but some titles, namely those with a history on the PlayStation and well known to PlayStation consumers, are doing well. All around this is excellent news for Sony. The PS3 has been a failure of epic proportions when compared to where they where (PS, PS2) and where they are. Yet they have gone through horrible birthing pains (spinning off fabs, cutting out BC, huge hardware losses, AAA funded titles absolutely bombing, network issues, HD media war, etc) and are coming out the other end alive and competitive. The PS3 in many ways is echoing the PSP which, at one point, looked in really bad shape but has rebounded to capture a respectible marketshare. Of course that is the "pretty" part. The ugly part is Sony got waxed in the holiday season (both head-to-head and also comparing Sony 2007 to the competitions 2006) and 10's of thousands of units now don't do much to compensate for the 100's of thousands in differential sales (not to mention head start sales) that have occured over the last 6 months.
So for MS... lets get some perspective here. Sales are up over early 2007, which is an important point. The PS3 increasing sales over the 360 is more to do with positive PS3 sales growth from a number of factors and not as much the 360 declining. BUT, important but, the PS3 is following a more traditional market curve where next gen sales start off slowly and increase in years 3-4, begin to level in 5 and then decline as new platforms are released. The Xbox platform continues to show "slow and steady" market growth. My general position has been that the 360 (a) had a better beginning to life than the Xbox and (b) faced an easier market situation and, in that light, I think magnifies the many miscalculations on MS's behalf. I believe a lot of this was a realization that they were not going to be the absolute market leader after a number of early mistakes so persueing the, "Market leader, reap huge windfall" paradigm formerly mastered by Nintendo and Sony they have had to take the more sheepish route of carving out a profitable niche where they minimize hardware losses and by maximizing the high-software-adoption consumers they captured early and have fostered. MS is facing the music for a number of mistakes in the first 24 months which has placed them in a "unique" position of holding to a high platform cost well into the platforms life. One could look at it as: the $1.15B MS had to pay for hardware failures was at the expense of hardware price reduction--and the double edged sword is MS also lost out on the benefits the software sales from such.
MS is saturating the potential consumer market at their price points but I don't think they have felt confident about dropping the price in hopes of recapturing losses through software--which is a viable market strategy and shouldn't be dumbed down with "MS is in it to make money, not win the market" because the two typically go hand-in-hand--for the very reason that they are concerned consumers at $199 (for example) may not adopt enough software to compensate for the losses. They already spent that money, with no reward, on the RRoD, and have seen ugly delays in fabrication cost reductions. So while you woudl expect 360 sales to be increasing at this point in its life the pricing issue continues to loom over the platform. They cannot afford to cut the price without cutting cost first... but they also cannot afford not to cut the price. When MS decided that FY profits for 2007 and 2008 were the prime focus the white flag went up; instead of an aggressive market approach capture hardware losses through software sales the RRoD, fab issues, software delays, and the Wii resulted in plan 2: increase marketshare, make some money to justify our existance to shareholders, and focus the next move.
Sony's and MS's tales are quite interesting: Sony couldn't afford not to drop the price in 2007, and MS couldn't afford to drop the price in 2006 or by any respectible amount in 2007. Obviously MS will slash prices in the US at some point as their costs fall, but it is interesting to see how their respective goals and market conditions have generated quite different methods and how the results compare and constrast.
The good news for MS is have been competitive during the holiday period with Nintendo for hardware units and both throttled Sony; and more importantly for MS they have had historic software sales that is a nice consolation prize. Yes, Halo 3 would have sold better if they had 25M units installed at its release but they were able to turn a quarterly profit 2 quarters in a row with industry leading software sales on the 'few' units they have moved. They are making the best of a bad situation (one they caused themselves). Looking forward they have the same questions as Sony: can we continue to drive and improve monthly sales? And what software do we have to push these units?
Software, at this point, is going to be the mitigating factor in whether Sony or MS continues to lead month-by-month. Putting aside some hardware shortages by MS (I couldn't find any 360's locally for a number of weeks until recently, it was even easier to get a Wii as a couple friends at work did) it appears MS and Sony are pretty close right now in month sales and are at similar market prices right now. Sony has the advantage of a number of big PS-related titles coming and should continue to benefit from the market penetration of Blu-ray. MS probably has a price drop coming in 2008. As I mentioned in December, these months are slow (and sways are easily impacted by news like a platform failure or a big title) and with the looming recession things could get tighter. These are the months, however, to capture sales that you wouldn't otherwise be able to recoup through fall price drops. A price drop in March with a couple big titles could boost the slow month sales in addition to the strong holiday sales (hence why spring price drops are so popular historically).
I don't expect Sony to do a price drop this spring, but MS... they did one in Europe (far, far overdue) but seem to be happy with the NA market momentum. My guess is if GTAIV sells well on the 360 and hardware picks up they may just wait it out a couple more months and aim for a summer price drop. From MS's perspective you can see it like this: We are already $50 cheaper ($120 looking at the Arcade) than Sony's cheapest model so the price conscious shopper who needs GTAIV as cheap as possible will get the 360 version. Why cut our prices more, and lose more money (or make less money) when GTAIV is guaranteed to generate HW sales? Why not wait until AFTER GTAIV is released, 30-90 days pass, and drop the price then and get an ADDITIONAL hardware (and software) sales bump?
If this happens, especially if Sony is able to continue capturing increased sales growth while MS continues the "slow and steady" growth, it will be yet another sign that MS is happy with their US marketshare and is more content focusing on capturing early dollars now than market share and potential platform life dollars through maximizing their marketshare. I think this has been their strategy since 2006 when a number of things went south. I would be surprised, pleasantly so but surprised none the less, if MS dropped their 360 prices before GTAIV shipped in NA. The price move in Europe was more of a response to their market position there and the need to make the 360 platform the most appealing one for the cost conscious consumer looking for the cheapest way to get GTAIV.
There are other factors others have covered with some good points. I got a good laugh out of the myopic view of the first couple pages where past sales of platforms in Jan/Feb 2007 were ignored, the holiday just 3 months ago was forgotten, and the recent issues in hardware availability and the HD DVD demise were all filtered out and these numbers somehow presented some marvelous revelation.
Oh, and the Wii pwns all. So after our long relationship spanning the NES-GCN, I dumped her and now she has come back better than ever. See what happens when you dump your ol' baggage
I have coworkers who have never played videogames who bought Wiis to play with their kids, extended family, and friends. They get together on the weekends to play it. They even consider it exercize and rave how it gets their kids butts off the couch and they now encourage them to play the Wii instead of their PS2s. And they love the fact they can play with their kids and all laugh at eachother. The Wii isn't a console, it is a family entertainment center. Every couple generations a device captures the imagination of users and defies market sense because it is bigger than the previous market perception. Besides a couple notable consoles that crossed these lines by bringing arcade quality games to the home, or movies, etc you have devices like iPods, smartphones, and the like. The Wii is one of these transcendant monsters which defies the typical boundaries and expectations of its core market and appeals to new and old consumers in new ways. Which begs the question:Is Nintendo ever going to resolve their production issues? The console "race" wouldn't even be one if it weren't for their production issues. Although the "word of mouth" factor and Ninny's masterful use of the shortages to generate positive buzz and continued demand is a sight to behold.
Next interesting sales month: GTAIV month. That will give us an interesting picture, especially of (a) where GTA fans ended up (b) the importance of the cheaper SKUs and (c) what value consumers see in the DLC.
Josh, a Nintendo spokesperson said two months ago that they didn't intend to change their production capacities until the end of the current fiscal year (i.e. end of this month). At that point they would reevaluate their current output.
To be honest, I don't expect them to increase capacities, their sales in Japan are stagnant (albeit on a high level). Their sales in Europe might have slowed down, though there're no real solid numbers on that front. The only territory where they seem to be really supply limited is the US. So they might just redistribute their shipments instead of building more units which could end up increasing their storage costs if sales slowed down.
Reggie Fila-Aime said in a recent GT interview that they're producing 1.8 million a month, more than any console in history (or similar hyperbole). US is selling 500k a month. Japan is selling ~250k a month. That means the EU is accounting for 1.1 million Wii's a month sales? I don't think so. So I don't know what the real issue here is. Things ain't adding up from what I can see. I don't think Wii can be being held back by production though. I think current sales are current demand levelled out to what the market wants at the moment without any extraneous forces in operation. Same with PS3. XB360 is in theory selling under demand due to limited availability.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Indeed seems very high, but in theory it should be possible given that there live over twice as much people in Europe (and thats without counting other PAL countries) than in the US. Though not all of those might be able to afford one with the poor(er) balkan countries and such. Though the US has a high poverty ratio compared to Europe too so it might equal out more or less. It should be possible I suppose. All I know that you still cant get a wii in Holland without ordering one.
That'd be the first time ever in the history of consoles that the EU has twice as many of a system than the US. Generally hardware sales about parity with NA, give or take a few percent.
