NPD Nov. You know you want it!

[fireshot]

Uncharted looks great, fun demo, lots of marketing.... bomb. As you said just perceptions and opinion. Reality is the decider.

ND bald space marine quip did not turn out quite as well...

I think the only disappointing thing about Nov NPD is how Sony mega 1st party games are still not cuting it, otherwise things went as expected. Do you think Sony will regret the decision to spend the money on first party developers than to tie up "exclusives" third party games?

 

[quest55720]

Nope, not ignoring, just not relevant to this particular aspect of the discussion or what it is that I was looking to analyze.

I was looking at the success of multiplatform games across both consoles, taking the user base into consideration.

There's no question that the 360 sells more software than the PS3, that's easily determined by the attach rate, so there's little use in looking into that.

The purpose of this was to see if Developers have a reason to continue to produce multiplatform games for the PS3, and it appears that they do.

Clearly, the software attach rate itself demonstrates that exclusive titles need to be subsidized by Sony in order for them to recover the revenue lost by not going multiplatform.

You are only looking at half of the major 3rd party games around this time period. You are leaving out GH3 and RB which did not nearly do as well on the PS3.

I disagree. I think this month was actually a success for Sony. If you start with the premise that they will never catch up to MS's NA sales and only need to maintain a viable presence in the market, they've shown they can do that. Despite having a console that is insanely expensive without any clear benefit. If they can maintain a presence in the market, they can provide first party games that will attract a certain percentage of buyers as well as providing Blu-Ray. And let's face it, the entire reason the PS3 is overly expensive, launched late, and behind the 360 is because Sony is pushing an optical format and MS isn't.

I don't care how you spin it Sony went gang busters and did worse than the 360 last year. The PS3 is charting near gamecube levels now. December is going to be even worse since the price drop/new model will wear off and this NPD included a week post black friday sales. I would guess the PS3 only doing around 600-700k sales in december.

Why? You've already demonstrated that the PS3 can't possibly overtake the 360, and they have still managed to build this insurmountable lead with what I consider to be an overly aggressive price point.

It is not about just beating sony it is about builing a big enough user base were you can sit back and collect the money like sony did with the ps1/ps2. MS needs to do something to jump start hardware sales. For system with such a great library hardware sales are low. This is the 3rd x-mass of the 360 and it is still lagging behind. MS needs to get the user base big enough were they can finally profit.

 

[AlphaWolf]

ND bald space marine quip did not turn out quite as well...

I think the only disappointing thing about Nov NPD is how Sony mega 1st party games are still not cuting it, otherwise things went as expected. Do you think Sony will regret the decision to spend the money on first party developers than to tie up "exclusives" third party games?

I don't think there is any doubt there's some guys over at Sony HQ looking at their studios and wondering where they went wrong.

When we saw lair and it was a bit of buggy mess you can say, ok they screwed up and released a bad game, but Heavenly Sword was a nice looking title reviewed well (not great perhaps but well), but didn't really do much at retail. R&C, great reviews, nothing for sales and the pattern just continues with Uncharted.

There's obviously more to selling games than having them look nice and review well, and Sony needs to figure out what it is fast, because right now, exclusives are killing them.

 

[fireshot]

Sony should start by requiring all first party games to have a strong online component. Frankly i am surprised at this day and age, so many of their PS3 games do not have it. Their is no excuse that PS3 did not come with a network adaptor built in.

 

[Skrying]

Sony should start by requiring all first party games to have a strong online component. Frankly i am surprised at this day and age, so many of their PS3 games do not have it. Their is no excuse that PS3 did not come with a network adaptor built in.

All models do have a Ethernet port and a number have wireless built in.

 

[Nesh]

I don't care how you spin it Sony went gang busters and did worse than the 360 last year. The PS3 is charting near gamecube levels now. December is going to be even worse since the price drop/new model will wear off and this NPD included a week post black friday sales. I would guess the PS3 only doing around 600-700k sales in december.

Why is december going to be worse? Its the holiday season. Most likely it will sell more even if the price drop wears off. (which is still questionable)

 

[Rangers]

I did some figuring and (NPD wise) 360 is now tracking 17.6% above original Xbox sales life to date to this point. So Acert is going to be able to use that old "360 only selling 10% better than Xbox" for only so much longer

And if you take out the first two months of each's sales, whereupon Xbox established an 800k lead due to 360 being supply constrained, since then it's 37% more for 360.

This with a average model at $349 versus $199.

Another scary fact for PS3 is that in the first year with no competition, 360 sold 2.9 million units.

In the 13 months since PS3 has been released, 360 has outsold it by 2.5 million units (5 million>2.5 million). In other words, 360 has increased it's install base edge almost as fast in the 13 months since PS3 was released, as when 360 had no competition at all (this also ought to give you a good idea how much 360's sales have increased in the past year).

 

[RobertR1]

It's a good question - did the 360 have more million sellers in its first year than the PS3? The answer is yes. Finding accurate worldwide sales is hard, so I have graphed U.S. sales from vgchartz over the first year of each console's life.

These are the first 5 most likely million sellers on PS3, and the 12 first million sellers on 360 that performed equal or better in the same timeframe. Some slow-burning games that eventually sold a million on 360 are omitted.

Note they didn't all reach 1 million in U.S. and these are U.S. figures shown, but the graph still speaks to the relative health of the two consoles' software sales. I think the graph speaks for itself.

No way Madden 08 hits 1mil anytime soon for the PS3. It's appeal is only in the NA market for obvious reasons and it's quite a ways off 1mil.

The Motorstorm spike is due to being packaged in. (similar to Marvel:UA and Forza 2 doing amazing numbers by being packaged in along with the Wii game)

Resistance is the only proper 1 million seller of the bunch.

CoD4 and AC *should* hit 1 million at some point. CoD4 hitting it earlier than AC. Next month should give us a better view on how close these games are to selling 1mil on the PS3.

BTW, in just a little over 2 years, the 360 will have had some really high sell through with Halo3 at over 5million, Gears at 4million, Oblivion at 2million, CoD4 at 2million and any others I might be forgetting!

 

[quest55720]

Why is december going to be worse? Its the holiday season. Most likely it will sell more even if the price drop wears off. (which is still questionable)

Worse as compared to the 360 last year. The 360 did 1.1 million last december. The PS3 fell 50k short of last years 360s november total. I think this month they will fall several hundred thousand short of what the 360 did last year. It is not all rosie on the 360 side. I am not sure MS beats last years december by much if at all. This year the november npd was a little inflated by the extra week of post black friday sales. Usually you get 2x november to december growth. This year for the 360 taking away a week that is in november I would day they do 1.6x novermber. Sony I think the price cut accounted for 1/3 to 1/2 of the november sales. With that and a week of huge sales on the novermber npd I would say 1.3 x november for sony.

 

[Rangers]

In the end there are few surprises here, we knew 360 would outsell ps3 this holiday, we figured the Wii would outsell 360, so all it as expected.

360 numbers are a little dissapointing, I thought they had the potential to pull off 1million this month, but I think the large PS3 pricedrop took some wind out of their sales, with that taken into consideration, 780k is quite good IMO.

Sony is 'ok'. They are in the position to get 1.5 million for the two holiday months combined, and I really think that is as good as they could've hoped.

Although they continue to fall behind MS, I think they are keeping themselves close, and given some aggressive pricing this spring, could find themselves turning things around, though that's definately a very slim chance.

I'm really curious about how the Arcade pack fared, and how much of a factor it was in boosting the 360's sales. I have a hunch it may be a very significant reason they were able to move nearly 800k units in the face of a PS3 pricedrop, and massive Wii availability.

RE arcade, MS said this:

Greenberg also said that the newly-introduced entry-level Xbox 360 Arcade package ($280) is performing considerably better than expected.

“We heard from one of our top retailers that the launch of Arcade was the biggest Xbox 360 sales week since Christmas of last year. It’s performed above what we’ve expected and is a bigger percentage of the mix than what we thought it would be"

However I'm a bit skeptical, I was in Wal Mart the other day and the only two 360 SKU's on the shelf was Arcade and Halo 3. That seems to be anecdotally the trend, that those are the black sheep.

The problem with Arcade/Core sku is, the Premium is always just a little bit more $, for a lot greater value. For example I generally wouldn't advise a friend to buy Arcade, when for just $70 more dollars they get crucial things like component cables and a HDD. Even if they dont intend to go online or are extremely casual, it's still a much more future proof deal. Not too mention right now you get two full games with the premium, versus five small ones on the Arcade.

I purchased the core at launch, granted I had no choice as it was the only thing in stock. It cost me big time later, as I ended up having to buy a $40 memory card at the time (now rendered fairly useless since I later upgraded to the HDD), the $100 20GB HDD, and $40 VGA cable to play in hi-def. Premium would have saved me $80 minimum (and I believe it also comes with a headset as a nice bonus, I still have my old Xbox one but it's black) and heck, it even came with a media remote back then. Oh and I forgot the whole wireless versus wired controller deal, I ended up buying a second controller anyway, but now I have 1 wired/1 wireless.

As long as MS sets up the value proposition this way, Premium will garner the lions share of sales, just as they want it. In fact, it seems consumers tend to default to the most expensive sku. Elite would possibly be the top sku I think, except retailers have found it very supply limited this Christmas.

 

[Rangers]

a more acurate respresentation will be their nov numbers which are
vgchartz estimates
wii 1157k
xb360 881k
ps3 488k

you know, after adding Canada numbers (59k 360 51k PS3 82k Wii) and Vgchartz extra 10%, these numbers are really close on all fronts.

Lets see if they keep it up.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The only time we saw Killzone 2 was once in 2005 and once this summer. Since then it dissappeared. Sony hypes it to be something big, but it doesnt do it systematically.

How can Sony be hyping this game to be something big when it's only shown it twice? Seems to me, like the original Killzone, its everyone else doing the hyping. Have Sony themselves (not Guerilla) even mentioned the game without it just being graphical showcasing? Perhaps the problem here is Sony aren't doing much hyping at all? They're not stomping around telling us how such-and-such a game is a life changing, world's greatest ever entertainment experience. They're just sticking to ordinary adverts and that's it.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

About Crysis sales in the world - I believe that only box sales, not digital

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=30972

Germany:

1 Crysis (PC)
2 Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
3 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC)
4 Assassin's Creed (PS3)
5 Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)
6 Crysis Collector's Edition (PC)
7 High School Musical: Sing it (PS2)
8 WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2008 (PS2)
9 Unreal Tournament 3 (PC)
10 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3)

But the Germany market only is 1 /4 of the US Market

I would think that the German videogame market is less than 1/4 of the US market, I don't know about PC. Do you have any numbers on how many units those top ten titles sold?

 

[Galduta]

I would think that the German videogame market is less than 1/4 of the US market, I don't know about PC. Do you have any numbers on how many units those top ten titles sold?

Not I do not have more information. Maybe is the 1/5 , I believe that is about 1500 millons per year - only software -. But the the numbers of sales of PC or the evolution of the digital distribution in USA are not topics of this thread, though is the only site in Beyond where the people speaks about this

 

[Cheezdoodles]

This is starting to go off topic.
As for the driving, the GT series are supposed to be "the real driving simulator". The cars behave as in real life. That's why it has that gameplay, much different from Burnout for instance, or any other racing game.

In case you didn't know, GT is far from the most "real driving simulator" out there, nor is it the only one.

 

[iceberg187]

How can Sony be hyping this game to be something big when it's only shown it twice? Seems to me, like the original Killzone, its everyone else doing the hyping. Have Sony themselves (not Guerilla) even mentioned the game without it just being graphical showcasing? Perhaps the problem here is Sony aren't doing much hyping at all? They're not stomping around telling us how such-and-such a game is a life changing, world's greatest ever entertainment experience. They're just sticking to ordinary adverts and that's it.

Threespeech had something a day or so ago talking about Killzone 2, GTA4, and Little Big Planet not hitting until September of next year

 

[Vic]

First, this is strictly an NA discussion as per the thread title. I recognize theres other facets to the larger picture and while they are relevant, arent necessary to discuss NA and NPD. I understand your point, but its just too broad for us to debate in this thread.

I left MGS and KZ out on purpose because i dont see those games as the established differentiators that GT5 and FF are. MGS may very well end up multiplatform and many have argued about its current mainstream appeal. Killzone is essentially a new IP, with no notable heritage to draw on so it will have to stand on its own against similarly unproven IPs on 360.

I could be swayed on including MGS4 but KZ2 is a definite no-no at this point. We pretty much know that KZ is going to be a Q4 2008 release, we (purposefully) havent seen hide nor hair of what MS has planned for 2008 in months so we're left to compare KZ to imaginary games. For example, right now, i could surmise KZ2 vs Gears of War 2 for holiday 2008. From a pure franchise standpoint, Gears has a tremendous advantage.

KZ2 only has mindshare among the hardcore now because of the E3 controversies and because Sony is TELLING us its big. But in reality we dont ahve anything else on 360 to compare it to for November 2008. Similar to when we first saw the ratchet screens, we hadnt considered at the time that Asassins creed would be so impressive. (insert other games here but hopefully my point is at least clear, if not compelling)

So, my point was, that of the 'just wait until X happens' I think the truth is Sony is down to their last 2 cards. After those, it will take something new to turn the tide.

Sony is at a point now where they need more than a sales bump, they need to reverse a trend.

Even though we've had porting issues this yeara, Im hearing a lot of 'i bought the 360 version because all my friends are on 360 and its easier to play on XBL' or 'i bought the 360 version becuase of the achievements'. This momentum is precisely why MS launched first and it will be difficult to overcome it for consumers that take such things into consideration.

Another big milestone on the horizon is MS cashing on the the core SKU strategy. The core SKU was never really viable early in the lifecycle but if they have to, MS will call their mark on this strategy and have a 360 arcade next year with no games for 199. Sony is still at 399 and theyve had to stretch to get there. How low could they possibly go next year? 299?

Sounds like wild speculation to me. Seeing as how much everyone knows how much the US likes shooters, Sony will be gagging to get it out. Also, Resistance 2 will be knocking on the door in Q4, and that is established.

 

[Rangers]

Well so far, with my newfound respect for Vgchartz accuracy last month, I checked out the first week of December they have up.

The have Wii at 239 k, 360 at 256k, and PS3 at 160k.

I can only assume Wii must be experiencing supply shortages of course.

Since Dec is a 5 week NPD, if those sales are extrapolated X5 gives:

360=1.28 m
PS3=800k
Wii=1.2 m

 

[Rangers]

For anyone that cares, brief NPD explanation

This was interesting to a NPD junkie like myself. An interview with a suit at MS who deals with NPD on a daily basis.

Among things I learned-NPD is pretty much never wrong by any appreciable margin, as tracked against MS internal figures. As such MS never calls NPD to correct their figures if there is a discrepancy or anything like that, because such discrepancies are tiny if they exist and usually corrected in following months. NPD sales figures are thus pretty much known as simply the truth.

-MS knowns how much their first party games sell, but they dont know how much third party games sell. That is one reason they use NPD to get that info. To get a picture of overall game sales on the platform.

-An example he gave of how retailers use the data, if a chain sees that game X sold 30% of the total at their chain, but game Y only 10%, they can then try to figure out why that is and how they can improve it.

-NPD tracks all kinds of things, including clothing, not just video games.

-Retailers get NPD data free, in exchange for providing data as well. People like MS have to pay.

-NPD uses a consumer panel of 20,000-30,000 Wal Mart consumers, which they track on everything they buy at Wal Mart from socks to video games. They then use that data to construct a hypothetical Wal Mart store sales, and from that the whole chain (at least roughly as I understood it). This I think addresses a lot of peoples concern that NPD doesn't cover Wal Mart. I had no idea they went to such lengths.

This info tells me NPD is a lot more accurate than even I would expect.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The only time we saw Killzone 2 was once in 2005 and once this summer. Since then it dissappeared. Sony hypes it to be something big, but it doesnt do it systematically.

How can Sony be hyping this game to be something big when it's only shown it twice?

Threespeech had something a day or so ago talking about Killzone 2...not hitting until September of next year

So one line in a 'blogsite' marketing website counts as hyping these days? Man, has Hype been devalued!

I think forum goers use the term 'hype' as readily and appropriately as developers use bloom