NPD February 2007

No...this post takes the cake...

 

Well, I don't know what's up then... but on a page like this: http://vgcharts.com/page3.html

One will notice that the hardware totals month over month (at least for PS3) correspond exactly with their NPD announced analogues. Since this is the chart I myself tend to reference, I feel ok about it in terms of number origination.

@Deepak: Yeah but that post was a joke at least. Anyway there are obiously some people being introduced to gamign via PS3 in that sense, but overall I think the primary goal of gamers --> BD films will be the one with the more tangible trending.

 

I'm talking about vgcharts.ORG here...

 

FWIW I can post LTD numbers for the Wii and PS3 through Jan.

Code:

Resistance: Fall of Man             |   430,385 
Madden NFL 07                       |   259,238 
Call of Duty 3                      |   160,744 
Need For Speed: Carbon              |   145,129 
Fight Night Round 3                 |   120,530 
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance           |   117,634 
NBA 07                              |    94,426 
Tony Hawk's Project 8               |    86,695 
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07             |    84,321 
NBA 2K7                             |    82,928 
Ridge Racer 7                       |    73,681 
Full Auto 2: Battlelines            |    55,072 
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of  WWII  |    54,698 
Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom        |    54,293 
Genji 2: Days of the Blade          |    42,901 
NHL 2K7                             |    33,690 
Sonic The Hedgehog                  |    20,921 
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire       |    19,560 
NBA Live 07                         |       130 
                                    | 
PS3 Total                           | 1,936,976 
                                    | 
Average                             |   101,946 
Median                              |    82,928

Code:

Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess     1,119,925 
Rayman Raving Rabbids                     265,549 
Red Steel                                 260,439 
Madden NFL 07                             234,796 
Super Monkey Ball : Banana Blitz          209,975 
Warioware: Smooth Moves                   201,249 
Call of Duty 3                            191,576 
Marvel : Ultimate Alliance                174,597 
Excite Truck                              161,185 
Trauma Center : Second Opinion            139,296 
Dragonball Z : Budokai Tenkaichi 2        103,854 
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam                  100,025 
Need for Speed : Carbon                    97,092 
Elebits                                    87,034 
Rampage : Total Destruction                71,175 
GT Pro Series                              54,290 
Spongebob : Creature from the              48,883 
Rapala Trophies : Pro Tournament Fishing   48,815 
Super Swing Golf                           48,243 
Cars                                       47,863 
Monster 4x4 : World Circuit                47,213 
Metal Slug Anthology                       46,620 
Avatar : The Last Airbender                45,035 
Happy Feet                                 39,876 
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell : Double        33,652 
Far Cry : Vengeance                        23,394 
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy       14,202 
World Series of Poker: Tournament of Ch    12,173 
Open Season                                12,151 
Ice Age 2 : The Meltdown                   11,454 
Barnyard                                    8,907 
Disney's Chicken Little : Ace in Action     7,477 
Ant Bully                                   3,839 

I can post LTD numbers through Feb in the next few days.

How??

Numbers from Jan NPD thread at GAF:
Playstation 2 299k, 37.4mm
Xbox --, 14.5mm
Gamecube 34k, 11.7mm
Xbox 360 294k, 4.8mm
Playstation 3 244k, 937k
Wii 436k, 1.5mm
GBA 179k, 35.3mm
Nintendo DS 239k, 9.4mm
PSP 211k, 6.9mm

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=143434

Add 335k for Feb and you come at 1.85m LTD through Feb. Same goes for other numbers.

 

NBA Live 07 sold 130 copies? Sure it did...

Those numbers smell like they are just an additive culmination of the monthly or weekly sales charts found on the internet. The problem with doing that is that the errors start to magnify.

 

I pointed out 'how' in #323.

@Laa-Yosh: .org, .com... how are we supposed to know who's refering to what? For my part - I'm on the .com site when I'm talking about VG. I can see where the confusion over all of this is stemming from though, with two disparate sites sharing the same name in play.

 

My point for bringing up 360 in the same 4 month timeframe that the PS3 is in now is to show that 360 still made an impressive showing in the top 25. 4 months after launch, 360 had 6 games in top 25. 4 months after launch, PS3 has one game in top 30. That was what I was trying to get across.

 

That's an interesting point, which goes back to attach rate. The 360's attach rate was large out of the gates and has only gotten better.

I'm honestly less concerned about attach rates for the PS3, since Sony has shown that it can turn a profit even on a system with low attach rates, such as the PSP. But I think the Wii will need a healthy attach rate to maintain it's momentum, else we could see it's sales plateau too early...

 

Well the PSP never had a price cut and they have not lost money on the hardware in along time. If that is the model with the PS3 they are in big big trouble. Sony will have to sell the PS3 for a loss IMO for a while. By the time they can get costs under 600 dollars the machine will cost 500. I think they are looking at losses for the next year on the hardware unless they choose not to lower the price which would kill them this fall. A 199 core/299 360 premium with halo3 would blow sony out of the water at 499/599 in NA.

Why would the Wii need larger than usual attach rate to make money? You think the Wii actually costs more than 250 dollars to produce? You don't think they are making money hand over fist on accesories like extra controllers/numbchucks? Also with lower development costs nintendo will make more per game compared to ms/sony on first party titles. The only negative I can see for the wii is lazy crappy efforts by 3rd parties like we saw on the DS at first.

 

NBA Live 07 never came out on the PS3 yet for some reason it was reported as having 130 sales in one of the monthly totals. Don't know how that happened or why then never corrected it.

 

No, I'm thinking purely from a longevity standpoint. The Wii is clever, but it isn't next gen, and clever will only take it so far, in my opinion. Nintendo will need more than just 1st party support (though we seem to say this every generation with Nintendo) to help the Wii sustain strong sales will into year 5 and 6.

 

I haven't been in the market for a television for a while, but I hear that Bravias are all the rage. I also note that they are considerably more costly than other tvs at their size. Sony views itself as a premium brand, they will treat the PS3 as such.

 

That's a huge mistake. 3do and NeoGeo viewed themselves the same way. Thats a great strategy if you're product doesn't require selling lots of units to make the companies that support it money.The rolls royce business model just doesn't work in this industry.

 

They could totally pull that off if the thing did all it was touted to do.

As of now: a) the media functions are there, but underdeveloped and not too usefu.l b) We haven't seen any games that show any significant leap over the competition. c) with a shady browser and seemingly disjointed online store, the web support is functional and not much more.

If you simply look at it, it is obviously a pretty upscale peice of kit. It looks expensive. The problem is that it doesn't act expensive.

It is a premium machine waiting to happen. Weather or not that strategy can work is hardly worth discussing when they have yet to pull together any functionality taht's worth paying extra for.

Of course, there's the Blu Ray playback. I've been more and more suprised at how many PS3's are being sold as BD players. It really makes the whole thing alot more complicated.

@Pozer:

The 3DO and Neo-Geo never really delivered. Also, both were alternative business models. The PS3 is not delivering, and that's why it's not selling. Only four months in though....

 

Here's a few simple questions.

Why doesn't Sony just drop the damn price on the PS3? Who cares if they'll end up losing more money. Will dropping the price cost the entire company to go bankrupt or what? It's obviously that looking at Feburary NPD numbers tells me that Sony maybe on it's way to Doom. When you have the media slamming Sony, it affects the consumers buy interest. They are going to look at the news, listen to it and not buy a PS3. By the time any few good stuffs are happening they'll run into Halo 3 and it's back to the drawing boards. Sony desperately needs a price drop and they need it NOW!

Btw, didn't Sony said they wanted the PS3 to have a ten year life cycle? So will aggressive price drops in the early years affect their long term goal? Cause in ten years I believe it's more than enough time for you to recover that lost and eventually start profiting.

 

A price cut this early may be looked upon as a weakness by consumers.
A price cut this early means bigger loss for Sony.
A price cut this early means going into a price war they cannot win with Microsoft.

Shareholders invest in companies to earn money, management's job, is to earn money for the shareholders, not loosing money.

Sony isnt exactly in the best financial state, a PS3 flopping may result in a Sony bankruptcy, (if the PS2 stops selling aswell)

MArked decides the lifecycle of the console, not Sony or any other manufacturer, ideally you want as long life time as possible with any product.

You still need to pay for the losses right now.

Top managements job is to keep shareholders happy, shareholders are kept happy with high dividends and high stock value. Taking big losses for X amount of time, is not going to make shareholders happy. However, one could argue with Moligniani-Miller Proposition #1 that since Value of a firm is largely based on expectations, Sony loosing money right now, isn't going to hurt shareholders if people believe its going to make money in the future.

Then again, not many investors predict cash flows that are going this far in the future..

 

Well, I'm still not convinced that Sony is freaking out or anything. The slow sales are almost certainly on the low side of what they expected, but given the cost v benefit of the machine, I think there's a good possibillity that they saw this coming.

Your question still stands unanswered, but I think Sony probably has the answer. They could take the hit and drop the price, but they aren't doing it. They probably have good reasons and no inclination to share them.

 

Why?

Because they do not have to.
You forget that Sony Group is a large company. It is better suited to look at the company as a whole, and I hope the CEO is doing as such. There are multiple fronts to fight for the next-generation of products and consumer electronics. Each of these need to drive growth and revenue for the company.

Reducing the price now will not increase revenue because there are not enough killer apps to justify a larger base of consumers buying the product.

They also have to not marginalize their sales and the PS3 as a legitimate Blu-Ray player. They want to win the war in the next-gen format which will also bring in a lot of money for Sony.

The PS3 is a big part of the company but it shouldn't be the main focus, the whole group needs to grow and while the PS3 sales may be lacking the other groups need to keep the company going, until late 2007, 2008 when the software (games and services) that the PS3 needs is available.

The PS3 may be selling less than Wii and other consoles but the revenue is close to the same, not to mention the PS2 sales. A good company should not be based one product, especially Sony.

The poor sales though is an issue for the individual unit and the only thing that they need right now are killer apps and keep reducing the cost of producing the PS3s.

Speng,

 

Not being funny, but what does revenue have to do with anything in this situation? For a console thats selling at a loss revenues mean zero. All that matters is install base so that those losses are are recouped through software licensing. Revenues being the same on a high priced console thats making a loss has a net result of lower install base, hence lower license fees.

 

Yes I have been wondering the same thing, for some reason it seems to be some sort of "buzzword" among forum posters nowadays when the sales numbers are presented, makes little to no sense to me.

Other thing that rises my eyebrow is the fact everybody seems to be absolutely sure that Sony is making big loss with PS3, besides that somewhat flawed Isuppli estimation what proof do we have that Sony is making loss on PS3 at 599$ especially since after launch PS3 is now or very soon having 65nm Cell, no EE, Blu-ray manufacturing problems sorted out and most likely some smaller reductions too.