NPD November 2010

[corduroygt]

It seems like Sony has taken notice and Amazon's giving a $75 gift card with a PS3 purchase now, there are also rumors of a $100 Walmart Gift Card later on. Maybe it's a Sony thing, or maybe the retailers have excess stock, I don't know.

 

[TheChefO]

My suggestion is you retract the 'in' descriptor, and say that in your opinion, if Sony and Nintendo can't find some big partners, MS will be the runaway leaders of the console space and the market for a rival will be diminished to the point it'll be very questionable if a competitor should even try to challenge them.

I further qualified what I meant by "in" by stating where I see Nintendo and Sony at 2020. Sony will be financially squeezed, and Nintendo will have no edge in casual gaming and no edge in core gaming and be squeezed further into the "kid" market with an edge in education titles leveraging their iconic franchises.

Both will be out of what we consider to be the "console game".

Unless, they get a partner/buyer with cash.

Extrapolating "MS will force out all rivals by 2020" from one month of Christmas sales of a new toy is a pretty extreme extrapolation IMHO.

The upward trend of xb360 has been since they finally released a machine with proper engineering (360s).

Kinect is just adding fuel to the fire allowing MS to spread into the casual market where Nintendo has filled the void left by ps2.

It isn't quite there yet with a MSRP of $300, but when it dips into the $250 and $200 market, it will rapidly fill that niche as well as catering to the core market. Something I didn't think feasible with one console and (more importantly) one brand.



These are obviously very bold and forward thinking statements, but as you know, that's nothing new for me.

 

[TheChefO]

It seems like Sony has taken notice and Amazon's giving a $75 gift card with a PS3 purchase now, there are also rumors of a $100 Walmart Gift Card later on. Maybe it's a Sony thing, or maybe the retailers have excess stock, I don't know.

Inventory is huge for Sony at Bestbuy's around the bay area. I imagine we will see more deals like this or Sony pulling them back into their warehouses after Xmas to clear retail space.

 

[TheChefO]

I'm not sure where you are coming up with this.

Looking forward, not in the here and now.

In fact, Nintendo will likely have a huge spike when they hit the $99 level for Wii which may in fact be next Christmas. I'm not saying either Sony or Nintendo are in trouble tomorrow, or even really nextgen, but this gen is setting up what will be nextgen, and the gen after that.

Mostly centered on buying patterns up until now, and how the market is reacting to Kinect. Kinect is acting as a further multiplier onto an already successful platform. It literally is as if MS has two platforms now and the sales are following accordingly.


We'll see, but I do have a pretty decent ability to call a market at the early going.


Apple and/or Google would make good partners for Sony/N to help keep competition healthy in the games space.

 

[AzBat]

All this doom-&-gloom talk about any company right now seems rather crazy & premature to me.

Tommy McClain

 

[thatdude90210]

or if Sony can turn Move around with a few choice titles and some decent marketing. Extrapolating "MS will force out all rivals by 2020" from one month of Christmas sales of a new toy is a pretty extreme extrapolation IMHO.

In my opinion, in order for that to happen Move needs to be re-engineered. Nobody wants to wave around a lollypop/lightbulb (or worst). I'm surprised Sony, which is usually image conscious, would let it out of the lab in it's current state. Nintendo made the Wiimote like a remote for a reason. It's accessible, like the remote that we've been accustomed to the last 20 years. Move may work like "Wii HD." It's not going to replace the Wii looking like that.

 

[JB9861]

How was GT5 mismanaged? It has at least as good a marketing campaign as other games this year from what I can tell, at least on the west coast.

In terms of their campaign, I thought the build up to launch and the launch itself was relatively soft on the east cost of the US. Post launch has been better from my perspective with print and TV. However, I thought there'd be a similar cross promotion during launch with Mercedes and PD that Activision and Jeep came up with. I just assumed since PD and Mercedes were doing a lot of things prior to release that would come.

In addition, due to all the demonstrations at trade shows, I assumed there would be a more prominent focus on 3D support in their campaign.

 

[makattack]

I'm looking forward to the time when all consoles are obsolete. To the time where consoles are embedded in all AV consumer electronics: TV's, TiVo's, BDR/DVD players, and even Browsers (phone, computer, et al)

I'm looking forward to a point where game media is served like Netflix/OnLive.

I won't consider that time here until all the "major" titles are available in such a format: the Halos, WoW, CoD, et al.

 

[Teasy]

His point is that Kinect is already enough of a step up over Wii-mote.

A next gen XBox wouldn't be competing with Wii, it would be competing with everything that came before it, including XBox 360 with Kinect. If MS were going to 'do a Wii' they'd need to bring something significantly new to the table to make it sell well, even without Sony as competition.

I also find this talk of competitors dwindling to be extremely odd, some of it utterly ludicrous (Leapfrog ).

 

[TheChefO]

If MS were going to 'do a Wii' they'd need to bring something significantly new to the table to make it sell well, even without Sony as competition.

I strongly disagree. Without competent competition, what choice would a consumer have? The new games that the consumer wants would only be available on that platform. As long as the price isn't outrageous, the consumer will follow.

I also find this talk of competitors dwindling to be extremely odd, some of it utterly ludicrous (Leapfrog ).

I know you find it a huge stretch, but Nintendo is already half way there in their heritage. Though many gamers have grown up with Nintendo, they never grew up with the gamer. The core licenses are still targeted at kids (or the kids at heart).

This demographic limits the price, and the price limits the tech.

Barring another revolution in innovative human-computer interaction, I don't see them replicating the success of Wii with Wii2. Especially with much better alternatives in Move and Kinect.

So as a consumer, it might make sense to still have a Wii for the kids if the price is right, but beyond a certain point, the usability of platfrorms such as Move and Kinect become overwhelming. Add to that, kids these days are much more demanding of their entertainment devices with many of them pinning for an iPad, iPhone, or PC.

Nintendo needs an edge to stay relevant as time will eventually push price advantage to nil as competing systems become cheaper.

The education segment is a way to leverage their current demographic and keep the brand relevant by offering more than a simple games machine for kids.

 

[Teasy]

I strongly disagree. Without competent competition, what choice would a consumer have? The new games that the consumer wants would only be available on that platform. As long as the price isn't outrageous, the consumer will follow.

IF there was truley no competition at all they could get away with it at first. But after a while gamers would get bored and the console market would dwindle. Plus where their is weakness shown their will always be companies ready to enter the market.

Do you rate your creative abilities so highly that you believe Nintendo are finished just because you can't imagine what they have planned next? You also seem to be forgetting the most important thing here and that's the games themselves, which on their own have been enough to carry Nintendo along in profitability even in periods when their console hasn't fared well.

Nintendo have managed to make massive profits in the last couple of decades first against Sony and Sega and now against Sony and MS. But that's all over because MS have finally brought out Kinect years after Nintendo started the motion control craze?

We've had discussions about I-things before and I still just don't agree with you. These things are pointless as real games machines and they simply won't replace the real thing. If gaming on these devices worked to any real degree Nintendo would have been in trouble a long time ago considering how many are out there, but they aren't, we're still talking about the future, why? IF Apple ever decided to enter the handheld gaming market with a real dedicated gaming device then we can talk about a threat to Nintendo and Sony.

 

[TheChefO]

Do you rate your creative abilities so highly that you believe Nintendo are finished just because you can't imagine what they have planned next? You also seem to be forgetting the most important thing here and that's the games themselves, which on their own have been enough to carry Nintendo along in profitability even in periods when their console hasn't fared well.

Nintendo have managed to make massive profits in the last couple of decades first against Sony and Sega and now against Sony and MS. But that's all over because MS have finally brought out Kinect years after Nintendo started the motion control craze?

We've had discussions about I-things before and I still just don't agree with you. These things are pointless as real games machines and they simply won't replace the real thing. If gaming on these devices worked to any real degree Nintendo would have been in trouble a long time ago considering how many their are out there, but they aren't, we're still talking about the future, why? If Sony had a games machine out their with as many users as people who own I-things Nintendo would be in trouble right now not in the future. As it is we have god knows how many tens of millions of I-things out their, all with far better graphical capabilities then DS and yet DS is a monster in sales and profit, why? IF Apple ever decided to enter the handheld gaming market with a real dedicated gaming device then we can talk about a threat to Nintendo and Sony.

I know you find it hard to believe that Nintendo would ever be in trouble financially as they have done rather well for themselves over the past 15 years even in the face of stiff competition.

Fact is though, the market never stays the same.

The market moves and evolves. Much of it this gen is by Nintendo's own innovation. I'm not lost in the irony of that. But this is nothing new for Nintendo. They were the first with a solid d-pad, the first with shoulder buttons, the first with a standard analog controller. They have constantly been looking to have a more instinctive and natural computer interface. But I'm afraid we are at the endgame in interface tech with Kinect. They may find a way to replicate the interface without violating patents or may even license the tech, but it still does not present the radical leap that Wii offered. Without it, they compete on tech.

But fact is the end game for interface tech is here with Kinect. It simply needs support and improvement which all signs point to happening under MS.

I know your feelings on it, and you know mine.

I still haven't heard a compelling reason for success in Wii2.

Granted, Nintendo is a very innovative company. And if MS simply copied their tech (ahem) I'd agree that there is room for innovation. However, with Kinect (and related patents) I don't see Nintendo having a revolution in interface technology.

I could be wrong here, but I don't see where or how.

Can you think of some potential new interface that Nintendo may be possibly working on to change the game yet again?

 

[Teasy]

Well first of all I think you're focusing so much on hardware you've forgotten about the games themselves. Nintendo have never needed to be the best technologically or in interface to beat or at least co-exist profitably with their rivals. Even with GC, a console that didn't really differentiate itself from PS2 and XBox in any significant way in hardware or interface, they were still profitable because of their games.

Secondly while I think camera based control will be the future of motion based gaming over the next couple of generations (not forever, far from it) it certainly doesn't have to be the be all and end all of gaming hardware advancement. After all the interface is only one part of the gaming experience. The software is another, and then there's the way you actually see the game itself.

I still haven't heard a compelling argument for why Nintendo, or Sony for that matter, will suddenly fail. The lack of knowledge about what they'll offer going forward isn't a viable argument for their demise IMO. I could understand scepticism, but not this strong belief (almost certainty) you seem to have that they'll fail.

 

[Toaddio]

But fact is the end game for interface tech is here with Kinect.

This is about as far from a "fact" as possible. Just as a mouse isn't the end of interface design for computers, a camera isn't either. They're both specialized and perform certain tasks well, as does a keyboard.

 

[TheChefO]

I still haven't heard a compelling argument for why Nintendo, or Sony for that matter, will suddenly fail. The lack of knowledge about what they'll offer going forward isn't a viable argument for their demise. Its a reason to be sceptical at best IMO.

Your essentially saying that if Nintendo could find success with gc, that they can compete with wii2.

Let's take a look at where the market was at the time:

-MS was a new comer to the market, nobody knew how committed they were and what the software library would look like.
-Sony had a year head start and pulled in major support from most everyone in the industry.
-Sega had just been stripped of their hardware going forward and relegated to a software only company.

Nintendo priced their machine at a discount ($200) in comparison to Sony and MS ($300) which made up for most of their lack of expected games library by weak 3rd party support.

3rd party support continued to dwindle as the years went on and the gen was shaped by ps2 domination.

Nintendo was smart about the design of gc though which enabled profit even with a discounted price to their competition and roughly equal graphics to the competition. Basically forming a Nintendo box to play nintendo games on.



This gen, wii was pulling in cautious support at launch which gathered steam as uncertainty in ps3 sales continued. However, sales did not follow for 3rd party devs. Now with competition coming in the form of Move and Kinect on machines that have shown sales of 3rd party software to be healthy, I expect 3rd party support to follow Sony and MS until sales show their hand.


What's different going forward is games development costs are going up. Games hardware costs are going up. This while the market for Nintendo software is limited.

It really boils down to how much support there is for a strictly Nintendo box.

Strip away the sales of Wii fit, and other motion games which no longer have an advantage nextgen.

How many will buy the wii2 on the strength of Nintendo software alone while there are other (better) motion alternatives on the shelf?

I say that market is shrinking.

Casuals
Nintendo has done a remarkable job in marketing Wii to the casual crowd. They have filled the void that the casual gamer was looking for in affordable gaming that also offered something new, and expanded into soccer moms and everyone in between. However, I don't see any loyalty from these consumers. A better product can easily pull them.

Hardcore
That market was in Nintendo's pocket back when they were the only game in town with nes. Shrunk a bit with Snes. And even further with n64. Further still with GC. And now completely lost with Wii.

Nintendo Fans
Been there since the beginning, but shrinking IMO due to age demographics (gamers getting older and outgrowing Nintendo offerings).


Granted, Nintendo is great with the kids, but the age of buying a Nintendo to have a "family console" is coming to a close with Kinect and Move offerings. So how much will it take to supplant the kid demographic with offerings by Sony and MS? Sony was already doing a great job of this with ps2. Software and hardware sales support this. Granted, GC was not a money loss for Nintendo in this competitive environment, but the market moves on.

Games get more expensive to make, systems get more expensive to make, and consumers expect more.

Nintendo is left holding the bag of hardcore N fans which may surprise me and be enough to keep them profitable next gen with Wii2. But how much longer will these fans be able to keep them afloat?

By 2020, they will be either moving on to greener pastures (younger kids & education), or teaming with someone to keep them competitive.

 

[Sonic]

Nintendo will be ok. They are in a good position where they can invest heavily into their next machine, design it to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers, and still continue to dominate, but only now attracting more developers as their hardware is more powerful blah blah blah.

To look at recent buying patters is one thing, but one also needs to look at buying patters for each generation since the original NES. If the market tells us one thing, that is that anything can happen and consumers will pick one system and stick with it, and then developers flock to that system and it's a domino effect. SEGA went head to head for a while with the Genesis, saw profit in Japan with the Saturn that failed miserably in the US, then launched Dreamcast only to pull out a short time later. Sony dominated with the Playstation 1 and 2, the 3rd one is dead last in the US and hasn't been able to gain any serious momentum. The Xbox 1 entered MS in the market, they gained a decent foothold, then capitalized by releasing the 360 and here we are today. The only company that's been at it longer and successful is Nintendo. That company is self sustainable, it's true.

This generation isn't over and shit might just be picking up steam with this recent holiday season, we still need to see the magical $199 pricetag, and then 149 and finally 99. We shall see.

Kinect is great and all, but give it at least a year to see how sales do after the initial holiday launch rush. The data will be more telling then. It will be interesting to see how Kinect games do compared to regular 360 games as a percentage of units sold.

One thing is for sure, Sony needs to get their shit together and come up with a unified interface for their machine, that's get annoying quickly. They messed up big time with Gran Turismo 5. I get the whole thing about making the game perfect, but at least maybe they could have released GT5 with the Prologue engine with a shit ton of cars, courses, what not and then have GT6 later on in the cycle of PS3's life. The game would have been really good to have earlier in the PS3's life. We had to wait 4 years for that, kinda sucks.

 

[TheChefO]

This is about as far from a "fact" as possible. Just as a mouse isn't the end of interface design for computers, a camera isn't either. They're both specialized and perform certain tasks well, as does a keyboard.

Ok, Kinect-type interface.

A 3d camera that can track your whole body in 3d without having to wear anything along with mics to hear your voice.

Resolution will improve along with response time and frame rate, but the tech interface is at the end game. It's done.

Unless you want to argue that people will be happy to have some diode interface directly with their brain. Would offer a superior interface, but not willing to bet that people will go for it.

 

[Toaddio]

Resolution will improve along with response time and frame rate, but the tech interface is at the end game. It's done.

This is silly. Video phones are the "end game" of phone technology but they still haven't caught on because they're only useful in highly specialized cases.

 

[TheChefO]

This is silly. Video phones are the "end game" of phone technology but they still haven't caught on because they're only useful in highly specialized cases.

Seriously?

OK, add wide angle lenses to the list of improvements to incorporate the tech in more homes.

The interface tech in general is done. Improvements will obviously be made, but the idea is the same.

Unless you're holding back on us for something better you think can supplant such tech?

 

[patsu]

ms will need something next gen. So if they are forced to they will adopt it this gen.

I personaly would love to see them go with someonthing better than Blu-ray but unless flash drops alot before the next gen , I don't see it happening.

16 gig custom sd cards with good sustained writes could be very good coupled with a large 3.5inch 1TB to 2TB drive , would allow them to come in smaller than a system with an optical drive. But flash would have to drop alot unless they go with 8 gig cards to start with

They won't support Blu-ray because it would give $$$ to Sony. They will think of something else. ^_^

It doesn't matter. Look at it this way. Its alot easier to sell halo 4 to a kinect owner than it is to sell it to a wii or playstation owner.

Much better senario than the way it is now for moving to core games

By your logic, Wii gamers would have bought a lot of core games, but they did not.
The casual gamers also have other gaming platforms (Cellphones and iPads).

MS will have more general audience to sell to. But from the game developers' perspective, if they can sell a motion game to Wii, PS3 and 360, they are likely to do it.

Wasn't sony down 20% YOY for Nov , i wouldn't say its growing. Who knows what will happen in Dec . If sony stays under 1m units and both nintendo and ms go into the multi million unit territory its very bad news for sony. MS has been leading the market in the states the last few months and has been leading sony for the majority of this year. If kinect is just starting to take off then sony is in big trouble

They went up from 2008 to 2009, and then down in 2010. MS indeed led Sony after Slim has been released, but Sony continues to grow nonetheless. It's the rate of growth that has slowed.

Software sales proportion has also increased for some titles.

I don't think its that easy. Moving targets for these companys is like turning the titanic , it takes alot of time and money to do so. The games coming out in 2011 and 2012 have been in development since at least 2009. they can't just suddenly say lets go target the casuals full force. They wont have enough software of any quality ready in time .

Certainly, but they have to start somewhere. Sony already have some casual titles to boot. As long as they made up their mind, they will move. If they don't feel the need to, they will take their own sweet time to explore and maximize profit, which is what's happening now (with Qore, Playstation Plus, Playstation Reward, and who knows what next ^_^)

What options ? Looking at the USA they are down in a holiday month YOY , the 360 has greatly outsold the ps3 this year and may make the gap even larger with dec. The wii is still selling better than it.

...

Yes sony has moved 4.1m move units into retail , but they have done it with almost twice the time MS has had and if december follows nov's lead MS might just blow past them in terms of kinects sold vs move units sold .

As long as Sony doesn't actively manage their marketshare, their monthly sales will go up and down. At the moment, they will always look at profit. As such, their other options will include GoogleTV, Blu-ray, and cell phones for low hanging fruits. In comparison, MS's entertainment division focused on Xbox and neglected say... the mobile phone business.

For Move, Sony under-sold the concept, and under-shipped it. For the investment they throw in, it should be good returns for them. From a profit perspective, they may be happy with it in the mean time. Personally, I think they were misled/misguided by focusing only on precision. As Anton put it, the developers have not fully tapped on Move's precision tracking yet. We'll have to see what other interesting games they can throw out next year.