NPD July 2007

[iceberg187]

Is Aug a 5 week month? If so with price drop, I think 360 can hit 235k. Which is GREAT but a lot better than sub 200k.

360 is going to do 300+ in August

They average 42.5 a week. Gamestop said that sales nearly doubled since the cut.

If August is 4 weeks, then that is 75 per. That is a 76% increase
If August is 5 weeks, then that is 60 per. That is a 41% increase

300k should be easy for them

 

[mrcorbo]

Using sales % increase in comparsion from the prior year hides the fact that increasing sells from 130K to 300K isn't the same as increasing from 480K to 700K. Plus the data points used to calculate 135% is inclusive of two price cuts not one.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.

You're absolutely right and this is a classic case of why numbers, when not given the proper context, can be misleading.

 

[borowki]

It's worth noting that July is the month when they started giving out 5 Blu-Ray movies.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I hate to dampen all this MS back patting, but did anyone notice the ratios? The 360 has what a 4x install base, but the NCAA sales ratio was only 2.4x. I guess PS3 owners do buy software.

Tbh its ridiculus to do such comparison as you don't know what games everybody else bought in the same time for each console. Thus you can't really tell if PS3 owners buy much software or not.

PS3 having less games out (aspecially less good games), will inflate sales to userbase ratio for good games compared to X360 sales to userbase ratio.

 

[Rangers]

Is Aug a 5 week month? If so with price drop, I think 360 can hit 235k. Which is GREAT but a lot better than sub 200k.

No. The five week NPD months are the traditional quarters end ones. So March, June, September, December.

And then like once every 7 years or something January also. But that just happened so we dont have to worry about that for a long time.

Personally I'm expecting a good deal more than 235k in August for 360. Lets say sales "only" increased 50% from July. That would put it at 255,000.

I'm expecting between 50 and 100% increase easily. Also I'm expecting even more strength because the Elite is no longer supply constrained for the first NPD month ever.

So I think 300k+ is quite possible.

 

[Teasy]

360 is going to do 300+ in August

They average 42.5 a week. Gamestop said that sales nearly doubled since the cut.

If August is 4 weeks, then that is 75 per. That is a 76% increase
If August is 5 weeks, then that is 60 per. That is a 41% increase

300k should be easy for them

Doesn't work like that, the sales might have doubled when the price cut happened. But that doesn't mean those sales are going to continue to be double for each week.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Doesn't work like that, the sales might have doubled when the price cut happened. But that doesn't mean those sales are going to continue to be double for each week.

True enough but the 360 has more than a price cut going for it in August. I expect Madden and Bioshock to keep sales strong. I personally don't think they will quite get to 300k tho, maybe 275.

 

[Teasy]

Well if thats the case then Wii hasn't really expanded the market at all since the new casual gamers probably don't know of the 2007 release schedule outisde of the fact that 'a new mario is coming'. I cant see these alpha moms buying a wii and saying "yeah theres nothing i want right now but Metroid prime is coming soon and i hear SSBM has solid snake in it"

That logic doesn't really work. Firstly Wii's userbase, like any other, will be made up of many different people with all different tastes. Secondly people don't need to know what games are scheduled to know that the games currently on shleves don't interest them and that future ones might.

Though personally I'm not really bothered how much Wii expands the market.

 

[one]

Tbh its ridiculus to do such comparison as you don't know what games everybody else bought in the same time for each console. Thus you can't really tell if PS3 owners buy much software or not.

PS3 having less games out (aspecially less good games), will inflate sales to userbase ratio for good games compared to X360 sales to userbase ratio.

I don't see how it does relate to the view on the market by the particular publisher of the NCAA game.

 

[mrcorbo]

I don't see how it does relate to the view on the market by the particular publisher of the NCAA game.

It relates, just not in a negative way, but I get what you are saying. Even if lack of competition is why you sold X amount of units on a console it still doesn't change the fact that you sold X amount of units. And obviously the most important number to any publisher is going to be raw units sold. This is why the 360 being the leading performer for this game is significant.

I expect Madden will still sell the most units on PS2, but I'm going to be very curious to see by how much over 360.

 

[TheChefO]

I expect Madden will still sell the most units on PS2, but I'm going to be very curious to see by how much over 360.

Considering the userbase difference and the demographic, it will certainly be an interesting stat to keep an eye on. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see xb360 have more sales than ps2 for madden this year.

This is the first madden on xb360 that was worth purchase IMO (gameplay wise) while on ps2, unless I'm mistaken, it's same ol same ol with a roster update.

Also, ps2 gamers for the most part aren't buying new games anymore.

We'll see, but my money's on xb360 edging out ps2 for the upset in madden sales this year. :smile:

 

[Rangers]

Considering the userbase difference and the demographic, it will certainly be an interesting stat to keep an eye on. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see xb360 have more sales than ps2 for madden this year.

This is the first madden on xb360 that was worth purchase IMO (gameplay wise) while on ps2, unless I'm mistaken, it's same ol same ol with a roster update.

Also, ps2 gamers for the most part aren't buying new games anymore.

We'll see, but my money's on xb360 edging out ps2 for the upset in madden sales this year. :smile:

That's pretty likely. The highly regard (wink) vgchartz has 360 Madden over 800k and PS2 Madden 500 some k IIRC. And moreover NCAA footballl on 360 outsold PS2 NCAA significantly in july and that's according to NPD, so it stands to reason Madden will follow the trend.

 

[AntShaw]

It's worth noting that July is the month when they started giving out 5 Blu-Ray movies.

I am still convinced this has NO impact on anything. With the list of movies they are giving away, who really cares? It has no impact on sales!

 

[mrcorbo]

That's pretty likely. The highly regard (wink) vgchartz has 360 Madden over 800k and PS2 Madden 500 some k IIRC. And moreover NCAA footballl on 360 outsold PS2 NCAA significantly in july and that's according to NPD, so it stands to reason Madden will follow the trend.

My thinking is this:

Look at the PS2 sales of the 2007 editions of Madden and NCAA Football in July/Aug 2006. They were 1M and 490K, respectively. That means that at least 510K people bought Madden who didn't buy NCAA (how much larger the actual number was depends on how many people bought NCAA and not Madden). The 360 numbers were 575K and 330K respectively. This PS2 sales numbers were 43% higher than the NCAA numbers last year and yet PS2 Madden sales were still 73% higher. The percentage of Madden-only buyers on the PS2 was also higher with a 104% sales difference while on the 360 this was only 74% (again this number is off by the number of NCAA-only buyers, but I don't expect this number to be too significant).

To make a long story short (too late, I know). PS2 owners were much more likely to skip NCAA last year and buy Madden only than 360 owners and this trend is likely to only have gotten more pronounced as more of the non-casuals are moved to buy next gen systems. This means that NCAA sales will become less and less of an accurate indicator of Madden sales on the PS2 platform. This is also going to happen eventually to the 360 as it attracts more mainstream gamers.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 360 version of Madden 08 did outsell the PS2 version, but I don't think the NCAA sales numbers make this a sure thing. IMO it's merely possible.

 

[Acert93]

The Xbox 360 version will be hard pressed to overtake the PS2 version. In 2006, Madden NFL 2007 sold 2.8M on the PS2 and 1.1M on the Xbox 360 during the 2006 calendar year. Madden sold, in December alone, 737M copies on the PS2 and 1.9M on all platforms combined. Looking at August sales of Madden 2007, the PS2 version had 1M sales and Madden 575K.

PS2 Madden
Aug: 1M
CY: 2006: 2.8M
180% Additional Post Release (Aug) 2006 Sales

360 Madden
Aug: 575K
CY: 1.1M
91% Additional Post Release (Aug) 2006 Sales

So what I am seeing is that while the 360 saw initially very strong sales at the Madden release, the PS2's larger consumer base continued buying Madden well into the holiday season at a quicker pace than 360 owners.

Now lets turn to NCAA numbers. We known in July 2007 that NCAA Football 08 sold 236K on the PS2 and 397K on the Xbox 360. In July of 2006, NCAA Football 07 had sold 490K units on the PS2 and 330K units on the Xbox 360. NCAA Football 07 sold 1M copies on the PS2 in CY 2006, which means the PS2 version had a post-release (July) sales increase of about 104%. So while it saw strong post-release sales, it wasn't quite as strong as Madden. Unfortunately, I don't have final figures for Xbox 360 sales of NCAA Football 07 and extrapolations are all really shaky. What we can assume, fairly safely, is that NCAA on the 360 had a post-release sales in CY 2006 less than 100% additional sales.

Looking at the numbers for NCAA Football 07/08 I see a couple things.

1. Xbox 360 release sales of NCAA Football 08 are up only 67K units compared with '07 release numbers (330K versus 397K in July of respective years).

2. The Xbox 360 version has jumped to 80% of the release sales of NCAA Football 07 on the PS2 in July 2006 (397K for 360 in July 2007; 490K for PS2 in July 2006).

3. The PS2 version of NCAA saw a sales drop from 490K units at release to 236K from 2006 to 2007. That is a whopping 50% reduction in PS2 sales for the franchise.

4. Assuming the PS2 version sees similar post-release sales trends that were shown in 2006 (104% additional CY2006 sales after release), the best the PS2 NCAA Football 08 version can be looking at for the year in total sales is about 480K units -- less than they shipped in July alone in 2006, and half of their total shipment in CY2006.

The slowing sales on the PS2 aren't surprising as it has been a trend in NA and hardware sales are slowly (very slowly) slowing down.

If Madden follows a similar path, we could see:

1. Xbox 360 sales slightly up. NCAA saw a 20% increase; applied to Madden that would result in about 700K release sales.

2. That is significantly less than the 1M units the PS2 shipped at release in 2006.

3. Following Madden's post release sales on the 360 in CY2006 (91%), total sales could be in the ball park of 1.3M units on the 360.

4. Even at 1.3M units, that is far shy of the 2.8M units the PS3 shipped in CY2006.

5. PS2 Madden figures dropping from 1M release sales to 500K. That would be less than the 360's projected total.

6. Total CY2007 sales for Madden NFL 2008, if they follow the 180% post release sales trend, would be about 1.4M units -- which is slightly more than my projected Xbox 360 sales.

So I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the following.

1. NPD August 2007 figures show Madden on the 360 outselling the PS2 version; roughly 700K units to 500K units.

2. CY sales for Madden to be very close on both platforms, with a slight edge to the larger PS2 install base.

Those would be my conservative predictions.

There are five wild cards I see:

1. Console sales. The 360 user base is growing with active consumers looking for a next gen experience; the PS2 userbase is winding down and migrating to new consoles. The fall release schedule may accellerate this.

2. The 360 version of Madden is a lot better than previous 360 versions and better than the PS2 version. This cannot be understated. For serious ballers, we may finally see them jumping ship to next gen consoles.

3. Microsoft has hyped Madden for a year now (MS, you owe me for pointing this all out in Spring 2006). It is part of their big 3 (opps... big 2 now!) marketing in North America. The 360 version of Madden got serious airtime at E3 and has been a staple of MS marketing.

4. Madden on the 360 will be contending with a number of big sellers, including the critically acclaimed Bioshock.

5. The 360 had its meager price cut (which according to accounts bolstered sales) right before Madden was released. New buyers are always looking for new software.

So expect some unpredictability.

I expect Madden August 2007 NPD figures to show the 360 version to outsell the PS2 version. For CY totals I expect it to be close, but with the next gen swing I think the 360 version may actually best the PS2 version.

The real loser in all of this, though, is EA. They will be seeing a modest bump in 360 sales, but a huge slash in PS2 sales and sluggish PS3 sales.

 

[22psi]

...

Have you gotten a next gen console yet? Jump in!

 

[Acert93]

Have you gotten a next gen console yet? Jump in!

Nope. They cost money you know! EDIT: We have a lot going on here at the Luna home, including saving for another little one You know there was a reason I went into a space warp for months I need to put a "PayPal: Donate for my NG fund" in my sig Until then you guys get stuck with my spam. Deal?

 

[mrcorbo]

The real loser in all of this, though, is EA. They will be seeing a modest bump in 360 sales, but a huge slash in PS2 sales and sluggish PS3 sales.

I was (mostly) with you until here. No way total Madden sales across all SKUs go down. Madden fans will be buying it on something. I also (as I argued above) don't think you can directly apply NCAA sales trends to Madden sales trends. Madden is much more of a mainstream game then NCAA is.

Your other arguments as to why Madden will sell most on 360 are compelling, though.

If it does happen it would seem to me to show that the HD consoles are starting to attract more mainstream gamers (even if it is just the top strata) and that is a good thing.

 

[jb]

Until then you guys get stuck with my spam. Deal?

If you promise to stop posting so much after you get a next gen console, I'd chip in some cash for one hehe

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

The number of people complaining about this year's Madden is rather astounding. When I ask them what version they have, they respond PS2.

The next question is, haven't you paid attention to the ads? Why do you think that 360 logo is there?

Bottom line, Madden Nation is just this year realizing that they can no longer experience their game on their current console. The question is whether that moves them to upgrade this year, or if it just resolves them to purchase a new console before the next version of Madden comes out.

They might feel too put off by this year's "trash" to pay EA twice as well as eat the cost of upgrading.

But from what I've been reading, PS2 users in particular (which are the majority of Maddenites) are just realizing now with this release of Madden that they need a new console.