NPD February 2011

AlphaWolf

Specious Misanthrope
Legend
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops -- 360, PS3, WII, NDS, PC Activision Blizzard
2. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds -- 360, PS3 Capcom 790.2K
3. Just Dance 2 -- WII -- 3 -- Ubisoft 554K
4. NBA 2K11 -- 360, PS3, PSP, WII, PS2, PC Take 2 Interactive
5. Dead Space 2 -- 360, PS3, PC Electronic Arts
6. Zumba Fitness: Join the Party -- WII, 360, PS3 Majesco
7. Bulletstorm -- 360, PS3, PC Electronic Arts 285.6K
8. Killzone 3 -- PS3 Sony 279.9K
9. Michael Jackson The Experience -- WII, DS, PSP Ubisoft
10.Mario Sports Mix -- WII Nintendo

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/10/february-npd-total-sales-up-new-games-come-out-swinging/

Xbox 360 535k
Wii 454k
PS3 403k
 
535K? Holy shmuckers, that's a lot of consoles for a usually dreary month.

Interesting that there is no crowing of "#1 again" that I usually see.
The Redmond company released the figure in advance of this afternoon’s monthly report from the NPD Group market research, saying that its growth of 27 percent outpaced both the Nintendo Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3.
(What I read into to this is that 27% is the highest year over year growth of the three)
Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii also saw sales grow during the month, NPD said.
That's an awfully wishy washy manipulation of statistics, but it does give us some idea.
397900 < wii sales < 505333
360100 < PS3 sales < 457327
 
Seems like the week 1 sales for KZ3 may not have been very good, depending on how many sales the other titles made. Bulletstorm in the same boat.
 
Seems like the week 1 sales for KZ3 may not have been very good, depending on how many sales the other titles made. Bulletstorm in the same boat.

reading the forum comments here it would seem that bulletstorm overperformed and kz3 under.
 
454k Wii, 554k Just Dance 2 have also been revealed.

With sales like these, and I believe PS3 over 360k if NPD meant that it is up YoY, why would any of the big 3 really be thinking about new hardware anytime soon?

I guess there is the matter of Wii's paltry Japan sales, it should do less than 50-60k this month in Japan. Just really shows again how small Japan is becoming.

Personally I think both Bulletstorm and KZ3 did somewhat poorly, moreso KZ3. We knew that was coming though, as it's UK first week sales were known to be significantly down from kz2.

For such a high budget game, not surprising it's probably going to be on semi-permanent hiatus now (Guerrilla is working on a new ip).

I guess continuing to "win" ala Charlie Sheen are Black Ops, NBA 2k, and Dead Space 2 and MvC3 this month. NBA2k came out back in October??

Also, PC Black Ops and NBA 2k sell worse than every other version including DS. Yikes. I guess there's the digital downloads excuse...

Evilore just dropped this bomb

Marvel vs Capcom 3 -- 790.2K
Bulletstorm -- 285.6K
Killzone 3 -- 279.9K

Wow, pretty bad for both Bulletstorm and KZ3 imo.

Kz2 did ~600k it's first two months IIRC, and only had about 3 days in it's first NPD also IIRC, meaning it was split 300k over each month.

So at the least KZ3 sold less in 6 days than Kz2 in 3, and since hardcore sales are so frontloaded, possibly much worse.

I suppose Bulletstorm might eventually be able to climb over 1 million worldwide, which I guess might be ok, by my expectations pretty poor though.

MvC3 really much more caught the public's imagination this month. I'm not too surprised, it seemed to be the chatter amongst the dudebros on youtube. I dont even remember the last one but I guess many did fondly.

Still think BLOPS is eventually going to hit 30m shipped WW... This means it's probably somewhere around another ~1m this month. 13.7m USA LTD I think. Probably another 8+m in Europe then, with a large degree of possible error either way in that EU guess, plus some more in the rest of the world (hell should be well over 1m in Canada alone based on typical ~10% USA:Canada ratio). Then figure that shipped numbers are usually a hefty surplus over sold through...

KZ3 might have done somewhat relatively strongly in EU (though down from KZ2 as well almost certainly). Could be looking at 600k+ WW sales then through Feb, a million soon I suppose. I would still call that disappointing given the hype.
 
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kz2 was 323k in 3days
and yes black ops is 13.7million LTD

Ahh GAF is spinning about the KZ3 hardware bundles though, saying it could have meant KZ3>KZ2 anyway, if you included the copies bundled with hardware

Pretty dicey if you ask me, since it's not like Sony gained any money from those pack in copies.

But then you get into all kinds of grey areas, it may have boosted hardware sales over what they would have otherwise been. There may have been buyers who would have bought the standalone game, who substituted the hardware bundle.

Is KZ3 just the default PS3 everywhere in USA now? Or is it like a special edition?

Did they have it in Europe? (edit well I checked amazon UK, doesnt seem to exist there)

Depending on these questions though, I'm sure KZ3 can be spun into a huge seller over Kz2 in no time flat :LOL:
 
Did they have it in Europe?

Not one available in the UK.

Wasn't there a KZ2 bundle? Kinda makes the argument moot imo.

killzone_2_ps3_bundle.jpg
 
Black Ops "best selling game in Us history"

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/115/1154965p1.html
Below is the latest, best-selling list of video games in the U.S. to date as provided by NPD:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops
2. Wii Play W/ Remote
3. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
4. Guitar Hero III Legends Of Rock
5. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
6. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
7. Mario Kart w/ Wheel
8. New Super Mario Bros
9. Wii Fit
10. Call Of Duty: World At War

Note: NPD has only begun tracking video games sales since the late 90s. NPD does not track digital game sales.
 
My thoughts:

Was it a 5 week month? Hardware sales seem to be significant across the board. Obviously great news for MS, but also good that all consoles were up on 2010.

Just Dance 2 still pulling in great numbers and it seems that Ubisoft have finally discovered a genre where a 3rd party can do as well as (and occasionally even better than) Nintendo on the Wii.

Number 5 for Dead Space 2 is pleasing, especially considering it's the 2nd month of release and up against some big hitters in the hardcore genre. I'm personally not a huge fan of the game and have kinda got bored with it (not touched it in over a week) but I think I'm in the minority. Indeed, I didn't really enjoy DS1 all that much, but bought it twice (PC and then 360) because even though it's not exactly my kind of game, it's still the kind of game that I believe should be supported.

I feel that the Bulletstorm numbers will be disappointing for Epic and EA. It was only #2 in the UK (Killzone 3 was #1) on release week with just over 50K sales, but only dropped down to #4 in week 2, so maybe it will also do ok in next months NPD. But it's clear that it's not going to be another Gears for Epic.

Killzone 3 numbers are surprising, and not in a good way. Not only is the franchise one of the biggest in the Sony stable, but it's also the first full retail FPS with integrated Move controls. With Sony boasting of shipping over a million move controllers within the first month of release in the US, there should easily be 2.5-3 times that number by now (over 4 months, including the holiday period)) and Move-specific titles haven't really charted that well. The argument has been that the hardcore have been buying Move precisely for hardcore FPS titles with great integrated Move controls... exactly the boxes that Killzone 3 ticks.

It does seem awfully strange to see the top ranked Nintendo title sitting at #10.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of Zumba. My assumption is 90% Wii with the rest split between the 360 and PS3.
 
Holy cow on X360 February numbers with no major X360 launch.

Surprised that Marvel vs. Capcom sold better on X360, I was expecting the exact opposite like SF4.

And holy cow on COD:BO. There's a chance it could have moved another million copies just in the US in Feb? Good job Treyarch! :)

And really surprised at KZ3 sales. I was thinking it would do between 400-500k to at least do better than KZ2. Maybe we'll see a better March for it than KZ2.

I wonder if Just Dance 2 on the Wii managed to take the top single SKU spot? I can't imagine COD:BO could have done over 554k on X360 although I suppose it's possible.

Bulletstorm looks decent when you look at it's combined numbers, but not so much if you consider it's highly unlikely that it did 200k on any single platform.

Regards,
SB
 
and yes black ops is 13.7million LTD

That really makes me sad and a bit angry seeing those numbers. Every year the "same" game climbs higher and higher. And at the same time you have other good shooters like KZ3 and Bulletstorm which end up selling 1/20th(!) of that. The (US) market is really fucked up.
 
Bulletstorm looks decent when you look at it's combined numbers, but not so much if you consider it's highly unlikely that it did 200k on any single platform.

In the UK first week it did 51K, with only 8K being on the PS3. So what's that, about 15%? If that's mirrored in the US charts (and it may well be given that Killzone 3 was released on the same day as Bulletstorm in both territories) then that puts 360 figures at somewhere around the 240K range.

Of course, that's an awful lot of supposition on my part to get to that 240K ;)
 
Holy cow on X360 February numbers with no major X360 launch.

Regards,
SB

Wii phenoms often took a few weeks to catch on before they ignited, maybe the same is true for Kinect with the wider American audience given the similarities between the Wii audience and the hypothetical picture we're developing of the Kinect audience? There just seems to be something about how the word of mouth web spreads the word which has core gamers all lining up on day one but these people take months to finally all trickle through to actually buying the device or device + console.
 
Amazing 360 numbers. Microsoft's turn around from the Xbox to Xbox 360 is very impressive. They're now making a ton of money and clearly having huge numbers.
 
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