NPD January 2010
- Thread starter Rangers
- Start date
Because they are building on top of Nintendo's marketing dollars and momentum ?
It's just a question in my mind (I was thinking out loud). I don't quite understand people adding up PS3 and 360 user base to 'fight' Wii numbers. Besides the overlap between PS3 and 360 owners, I don't think it works that way. But hey, if it makes people happy, please ignore me.
[size=-2]My meeting is done ! Going to game now...[/size]
It's just a question in my mind (I was thinking out loud). I don't quite understand people adding up PS3 and 360 user base to 'fight' Wii numbers. Besides the overlap between PS3 and 360 owners, I don't think it works that way. But hey, if it makes people happy, please ignore me.
[size=-2]My meeting is done ! Going to game now...[/size]
Well, I responded because I think the graph is painting a skewed picture (it is PR of course) as to what 3rd party revenue means, particularly because of multiplatform.. that is, they made X amount of money on a single Wii title, versus what they made on two other platforms that have a shared cost. We have no idea from this graph.
Gift cards most likely. Also, Amazon & GameStop still had some $50 & $25 gift card sales for Arcade & Elite SKUs. Clearing out inventory for 250gb SKUs most likely.
Tommy McClain
It's only a small sample, but I knew of several who jumped on some sale Amazon had post December...
It's one of the few games out there with split-screen co-op. Devs this generation have been pissing all over people that happen to have real-life friends (notable exception: Bungie).
360 is also having shortages. Its been reported that ms is working through inventory to release new bundles and a price droped arcade unit
It doesn't paint a skewed picture about revenue, because it doesn't even try to measure revenue. It's counting sales, which gives you an idea about customer activity. It's overall consistent with Nintendo's philosophy, too. Whenever Nintendo talks about numbers, it's always about customers, not dollars. E.g., they talk about how many people connect online with Wii, how many people own a DS, how many people play Wii every week, etc.
Here, they're pointing out that yes, Nintendo customers do buy 3rd party games. I suspect that due to the diversity of the Wii's customer base, you're going to find a rather wide variety of games selling modestly, since NPD numbers basically tell us that there are no 3rd party blockbusters.
It takes about sales when excluding the best selling video game of the year on any system.
You did see the part at the top where it says excluding MW 2 sales right.
Not only does the chart tell us the Wii title movement is more spread out (due to the lack of presence in NPD charting top-20 on a regular basis) it also tells us the money is a lot thinner. The Wii has the most titles (over 700) and lower sale price for title. I wonder what sort of impact that has on publishers.
It doesn't make it any easier. It's hard to differentiate amongst the glut of titles, competing for retail shelf space is a challenge, margins are squeezed, and Nintendo still takes their cut. On top of all of this, discounting by retailers makes it even tougher. This is why some publishers have started to cut back their investment in Wii titles.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I'd say that the exclusion actually skews the numbers. Notice how much closer the 360 and PS3 columns are to the Wii column in the October-December timeframe compared to just December only. Modern Warfare 2 was released in November, so including the one month that didn't see any cencoring done (October) is enough to significantly close the gab in the columns, even when the columns still includes two months of censored data.
The graph assumes that people wouldn't buy anything to replace their MW 2 purchase, that's clearly not true. It would be interesting to see a graph that only shows October(No censoring, no MW 2), it should heavily favour the HD twins compared to these graphs. I'm not saying that looking at those graphs, that the Wii is not a viable platform for third party publisher, and it's evident that the huge install base helps here. Lower budget games seem to work well with the wii and the platform itself lowers the costs, but at the same time we must acknowledge the fact that very clear majority of major third party games with big budgets are released to the HD consoles and that there is a reason for it.
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NathansFortune
Regular
500k WW LTD.
~150k by NPD plus 50k untracked, 250k in PAL (GfK count by the week, so the number should include second week sales as well) and 30-40k in Asia.
500k would be a great figure for this game, given how hard it is compared to the standard fare shooter like MW2. It really takes away any sense of how awesome you are at shooters quite quickly if (like me) you played MW2 beforehand.
NathansFortune
Regular
Hmm, that's hardly a fair comparison. Excluding the biggest third party game of all. It's like asking Nintendo to compare first party games with Sony but exclude any Mario games. It would be kind of silly as Mario makes up a large bulk of their selling just like MW2 made up a bug bulk of PS3/360 third party games.
I think what MW2 points out is that it is possible for a third party to create a multi-million seller on PS3/360 just as it is possible for Nintendo to do it on the Wii.
Of course for every MW2, there will be a Haze, or Dark Void, but on the Wii core third party games haven't exactly done huge numbers, ~25k for NMH2 isn't ideal...
Dr Evil's remark is mostly true, but we have to remember that Nintendo is excluding their own, much more dominant titles from the comparison. Just as we assume that people who didn't buy MW2 in December would buy something else, you should assume that people who didn't buy Wii Fit, NSMB:Wii, Mario Kart etc. would have bought something else as well.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
But the graph is only about 3rd party software. Since the beginning of time, no-one has ever denied or questioned Nintendo's ability to sell first party software.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Late to the party here... Everything is about as expected.
ME2 is the top selling non-Wii game, despite that I think it's a horrible sequel, but meh...
Top 10 is showing the usual trend. 5 Wii titles, 4 X360 titles, and 1 PS3 title.
Wii hardware sales continues its trend of converging with the HD consoles with a large YoY drop. BTW - before people start claiming doom and gloom, that is NOT what I'm saying. It's just more evidence that Wii is moving out of the fantastic fad category and converging down to normal/average console hardware sales. As I've said before it'll continue to outdo (by a large margin) all other consoles during the holiday period, while moving closer and closer to selling similar numbers as the other two consoles for the rest of the year.
Supply constraints restricting both X360 and PS3 hardware sales? Possibly but doubt it's a significant factor. We're seeing pretty normal January numbers.
Feb. should be similar, except I'm not sure if there's anything big coming for either console in Feb. PS3 had KZ2 last year. And SF IV for both consoles. Not sure if AvP will have a large impact on PS3/X360. Same for Heavy Rain (don't see it as a system seller). So Feb. could go either way.
Mar. is when I'm expecting a large boost for both consoles. BF:BC2, FFXIII, GoW 3 (PS3)... PS3 "should" perform better than X360, but it's surprised me in the past when I thought it should do better, so...
Regards,
SB