NPD December 2015 Sales Results

[function]

Nick Baker framed it as a choice, clock bump or two more CU's. Surely enforced by shortsighted bean counters. They should have done both, or even failing that at least just the CU's IMO.

Doing both would probably have blown their power budget, and they were looking into doing this far too late to do a major redesign of cooling and power supply on the board. We don't even know if enabling the two additional CUs would have required a clock drop in order to meet power and yield targets.

ROPs are the area where XBone is most behind PS4, and according to the Last Light dev these do make a difference, and the clock bump at least improved this (along with BW, triangle setup, tessellation, compute). And additional CUs with no additional memory bandwidth to feed them or write their output to a buffer would have offered diminishing returns

I'm inclined to believe the hardware guys when they say that the upclock was the best option under the circumstances.

 

[Rangers]

ESA says NPD provides a misleading picture of the industry by not tracking digital.

http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2016/0...leading-2015-video-game-sales-numbers/187600/

Yesterday was “NPD Day” meaning that we saw a myriad of video game sales information come to light from 2015. Things seemed quite accurate, with Call of Duty topping the list for the seventh year running and Nintendo not making the list at all (sorry, Nintendo), but ESA (The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the U.S. video game industry), took exception to the way the numbers were reported. While they agree that the data is correct, they claim it does not include significant, growing portions of the industry.

ESA issued the following statement:

“Scores of millions of consumers purchase innovative content in myriad ways, including subscription services, digital downloads, and via their mobile devices. Gone are the days when the industry’s growth and strength could be determined by retailers simply reporting packaged good sales. Unfortunately, NPD’s revenue data yesterday continued to reinforce that traditional model at the expense of new areas where the industry is growing. Consumers, the creators and innovators of our industry, and the investment community deserve better. ESA will do its part by encouraging and motivating NPD to release the total consumer spend for 2015 that includes all aspects of this diverse industry.”

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It's not misleading when it's clear it's the figures only include physical sales and the other caveats (no bundles, certain retail outlets) are also clear. Misleading implies NPD are claiming otherwise but it's never pretended to be a complete picture.

 

[zed]

Scores of millions of consumers purchase innovative content in myriad ways, including subscription services, digital downloads, and via their mobile devices

I have no doubt 20s of millions of consumers did, but ESA heres a pro tip, consoles != mobile devices. I tend to think the console ratio of digital vs physical = what EA / activision / ubisoft etc report on their finances, ~20%

 

[ZhugeEX]

Gamestop said during a presentation last week that the average PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console title has a digital penetration of around 15%-20% of total sales.

They said that some games can be as low as 5% but others can be as high as 40%.

 

[Arwin]

Yes, I also do think it is a very skewed perspective. Of course there is PC which is close to becoming 100% digital soon, but on consoles the differences are huge too, and more and more content is digital only, DLC typically is until perhaps a goty edition is released, but also lots of full games these days.

 

[ZhugeEX]

In the US the console and portable software market totals $7.7 billion in total.

$2.5 billion of this is attributed to sales of Full Game Downloads & DLC.
The remaining $5.2 billion is attributed to sales of Packaged Software at retail.

So yes, for console and portable game sales it is retail that still holds the majority. That being said, the digital number is growing every day but I doubt it'll pass 50% share any time soon.

 

[bunge]

In the US the console and portable software market totals $7.7 billion in total.

$2.5 billion of this is attributed to sales of Full Game Downloads & DLC.
The remaining $5.2 billion is attributed to sales of Packaged Software at retail.

So yes, for console and portable game sales it is retail that still holds the majority. That being said, the digital number is growing every day but I doubt it'll pass 50% share any time soon.

Does this include phone game sales? I would assume not, but would rather be sure.

 

[ZhugeEX]

Does this include phone game sales? I would assume not, but would rather be sure.

Nope, hence why I said console and portable market.

It also doesn't include sales of used or rented software.

 

[DieH@rd]

I would like to know much of those $2.5B are actual game sales.

 

[Globalisateur]

In the US the console and portable software market totals $7.7 billion in total.

$2.5 billion of this is attributed to sales of Full Game Downloads & DLC.
The remaining $5.2 billion is attributed to sales of Packaged Software at retail.

So yes, for console and portable game sales it is retail that still holds the majority. That being said, the digital number is growing every day but I doubt it'll pass 50% share any time soon.

Finally a global digital / retail ratio! That makes digital on average ~32% of total sales.

I think from now on we could use 30% instead of 20% when we hypothesize digital numbers from retail, what do you think? Did I miss something about those numbers?

 

[ZhugeEX]

Finally a global digital / retail ratio! That makes digital on average ~32% of total sales.

I think from now on we could use 30% instead of 20% when we hypothesize digital numbers from retail, what do you think? Did I miss something about those numbers?

Just keep in mind this is revenue share, not unit share.

Also the digital number includes DLC in the total.

A better number to go in is the Gamestop numbers I posted earlier in the thread.

 

[Globalisateur]

Just keep in mind this is revenue share, not unit share.

Also the digital number includes DLC in the total.

A better number to go in is the Gamestop numbers I posted earlier in the thread.

Revenue data is even better than unit share IMO. Because of heavy price cuts retail sales are not always telling the true story.

Well I sorta thought about DLC, that's why I removed 2.4% . Do we have DLC ratio data?

 

[DieH@rd]

Finally a global digital / retail ratio! That makes digital on average ~32% of total sales.

No. For all we know Rockstar could have alone earned $1B from GTA Online microtransactions.

 

[ZhugeEX]

Revenue data is even better than unit share IMO. Because of heavy price cuts retail sales are not always telling the true story.

Well I sorta thought about DLC, that's why I removed 2.4% . Do we have DLC ratio data?

Unfortunately not.

The NPD group will release a report in February with a full break down.... but we'll never get access to it lol.

 

[Shortbread]

No. For all we know Rockstar could have alone earned $1B from GTA Online microtransactions.

Them shark card dollars... SMDH

 

[liolio]

The thing is I see some incredibly key hardware decisions that could have gone either way that shape the generation every time. And it's fascinating to me.

With 360, it was the decision to go to 512MB (supposedly prompted by Epic) that imo basically ensured that console to succeed.

But this gen, Sony turned the tables with their late decision to go to 8GB being the defining decision of the generation IMO. They would have still had a stronger GPU, but IMO it's easier to consider a 1.2 TF GPU (in this alternate world, I suspect MS wouldn't have felt pressured to bump it's clocks a little, so 1.2 instead of 1.3)+8GB RAM against a 1.8TF GPU and 4GB RAM a hardware wash imo. Although you can get into interesting discussions there too, perhaps a effectively 3.5GB PS4 would have had games essentially unaffected vs a effectively 5GB XBO by the RAM as devs targeted lower common denominator, while still have a stronger GPU and a lower BOM. But at any rate with 8GB PS4 doesn't have to worry about that hypothetical it has the best of both worlds.

However IMO there's one key decision MS completely blew IMO that I wonder how much could have helped them, and I feel like it may have been huge. The decision, admitted by themselves in the architects interview with DF (and I was also getting PM tips about this on this board before then), to not enable the two redundant CU's on the GPU. That would have taken them to 896 SP's, 1.4TF, 1.5 had they also clock bumped, and IMO again made it much more of a hardware wash situation. It probably would have cost a relative pittance vs benefit as well, especially over time as yields improved. The key IMO (where the rubber hits the road for the general non techie public) was how much it would have helped MS hit 1080Parity on multiplats, and we dont know how much they are shader bottlenecked vs other things, but overall it couldn't have hurt and I suspect it would have helped a great deal, especially over time, especially knowing devs preference to put out similar versions.

But MS blew that decision.

there are critical différence than FLOPS throughput, like the numa vs uma memory architecture and twice the number of ROPs.

 

[zed]

No. For all we know Rockstar could have alone earned $1B from GTA Online microtransactions.

yes I see the smiley.
We can see that hasnt happened, as total from the last 3 years 2013,14,15 together digital (whole game, microtransactions, streaming etc) together for all games is about $1 billion (this is rockstar and take two combined)

 

[ZhugeEX]

yes I see the smiley.
We can see that hasnt happened, as total from the last 3 years 2013,14,15 together digital (whole game, microtransactions, streaming etc) together for all games is about $1 billion (this is rockstar and take two combined)

Where are you getting $1 billion from?

The total generated from GTA products that Take Two recognise amounts to $2.3 billion since the launch of GTA 5.

https://zhugeex.com/2016/01/sales-o...have-generated-2-3-billion-since-gta5-launch/

 

[zed]

Where are you getting $1 billion from?

from take 2/rockstars financial statements

the $2.3B is GTAV alone, ie its digital & non digital.
The $1 billion is only digital over the last 3 years but all games combined (not just GTAV)