I don't know anything about the particular agreement between Media Molecule and Sony, but in general, developers care about sold, not shipped - each quarter the publisher pays royalties based on what's shipped last quarter, minus what's returned from retail the quarter before that.
NPD October 2008
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I don't know anything about the particular agreement between Media Molecule and Sony, but in general, developers care about sold, not shipped - each quarter the publisher pays royalties based on what's shipped last quarter, minus what's returned from retail the quarter before that.
You are overlooking one very important thing in your analysis. The PS3 is not currently at a mainstream price point neither was the 360 at the time Viva Pinata launched. Microsoft knew that at the time. You can go back and read the inteview with Peter Moore in Edge Spring 2006. He knew that Viva Pinata was to early but they needed to start building that kind of library so it was established when they started to go after the main stream market. The same goes for Sony and the PS3. They are partly relying on the PS2s library but they need to have some incetive to move the currrent PS2 users to the PS3. LBP, EyePet among others will serve that function when the PS3 hits mainstream price.
Just compare what titles MS bundled with the console for this holiday and last holiday. They are clearly aiming for different market segements.
Note: With this I am not saying that Viva Pinata and LBP are comparable titles in terms of quality, appeal, etc, I am just discussing one specific reason why they haven´t shown to be blockbuster titles at launch, there are obviously many different reasons, like marketing, reviews, marketing, and marketing.
The user created content of LBP will probably help make it a long lasting title though, internet connections are pretty mainstream among households in developed countries as far as I am concerned.
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What can I say?
Microsoft has stated repeatedly that third parties are a priority on their platform. It definately shows with results like these! Also Sony will have to improve their 1st party performance because at present Microsoft is doing more with less.
Source article is Arstechnica
Well, it's not like it won't sell well. It's just a question of whether it's going to be the smash hit for Sony that the gaming press seemed to think it would be.
I thought this was an interesting point that Ars made, but it's a shame they didn't expand upon it. Sales on 360 will naturally be higher due to the install base, but I wondered how the attach rates looked? To take Madden as an example, those figures fall against an August install base of 5.2m PS3s and 10.8m 360s.
So I made a table
Code:
Numbers are percentage share, NPD figures, 360 first
[B]Title[/B] [B]Month[/B] [B]Install Base[/B] [B]Sales[/B]
Burnout Paradise Jan 73-27 63-37
Devil May Cry 4 Feb 72-28 56-44
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Mar 71-29 83-17
Army Of Two Mar 71-29 73-27
Grand Theft Auto 4 Apr 70-30 65-35
NCAA Football 09 Jul 68-32 62-38
Soul Calibur IV Jul 68-32 58-42
Madden NFL 09 Aug 67-33 61-39
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Sep 67-33 65-35I assume that because of what Nintendo did, by creating a need where there was none before. I don't think LBP was aimed at the same demographic as Wii * games, since Nintendo uses a scattergun approach, but I think they had the opportunity to get to the 18-35 female gamer. This demographic grew up with videogames so the mechanics wouldn't be quite so alien, and it's a non-condescending game. Not saying it'd be a natural fit, but I think that with proper marketing analysis and effort Sony could have made it seem like a fit.
Yeah, that matches what I expected. It's sorta silly to expect the PS3 to do dramatically better proportionally: there's little reason to think that it will.
Less of a selection overall, less of a "bargain" back-catalog of franchise games pouching sales from new releases, and a somewhat less diverse userbase on the PS3? That's a possible 3-in-1 reason.
You mean there are reasons for it to do worse? Sure, I guess.
I think he means with less games to choose from and a smaller market for used games, the sales of those big titles should be huge because they have little competition. I'm not sure that logic really works.
Attach rates also aren't very useful for anything. Developers don't care about attach rates. They only care about total number of sales.
I think MS's attempt with Pinata was an attempt to broaden the 360's appeal to a broader markets but it wasn't a very hard push on MS's part. Its not like MS's poured a lot of resources into the development of the games. Furthermore, MS found a way to market Pinata and add another revenue stream in the process as Pinata was turned into a kid's show.
Which came first the chicken or the egg? For the PS1 and PS2 the chicken (the audience) came first attracted by those consoles' popularity which allowed the eggs (casual based games) to prosper. This generation Sony put out the egg first as there really no indicators that the chickens will show up this time without enticement.
It will be evident that Sony doesn't understand the market if it is shown that LBP is only part of the strategy to attract causal gamers to the PS3 or if LBP is the strategy to attract that crowd. If Sony's intention is to attract casual gamers its going to have to do a couple of things. Drastically reduce the price of the PS3 and a plethora of titles to attract casual gamers to the PS3 not just one really good game.
I think maybe LBP is a little over reaching it looks like a casual game based on superficial appearances but who'sechanism are really attractive to the hardcore crowd. I think LBP creates some level of confusing in the market as it rather hard to effectively market such a game to both crowds at the same time.
Me neither...
But I wasn't thinking about used sales per se, rather it's a diluted version of the Wii sales discussion we had a couple of pages back. The logic would be that while the 360 might sell as many games per console per unit of time as the PS3, these sales are spread over a wider selection of titles (bigger back catalog, more diverse user base), whereas the more homogeneous PS3 kin flock to the high profile multiplatform titles in comparatively larger numbers.In other words: Draw similar sized sets of games from the shelves of 360 and PS3 owners, and you'll find that correlation within each strata are higher for the PS3 samples than the 360 ones. And in other other words: PS3 owners tend to own the same games more so than 360 owners.
Just a hypothesis. Not an argument for its factuality.
I thought this was an interesting point that Ars made, but it's a shame they didn't expand upon it. Sales on 360 will naturally be higher due to the install base, but I wondered how the attach rates looked? To take Madden as an example, those figures fall against an August install base of 5.2m PS3s and 10.8m 360s.
So I made a table
Code:Numbers are percentage share, NPD figures, 360 first [B]Title[/B] [B]Month[/B] [B]Install Base[/B] [B]Sales[/B] Burnout Paradise Jan 73-27 63-37 Devil May Cry 4 Feb 72-28 56-44 Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Mar 71-29 83-17 Army Of Two Mar 71-29 73-27 Grand Theft Auto 4 Apr 70-30 65-35 NCAA Football 09 Jul 68-32 62-38 Soul Calibur IV Jul 68-32 58-42 Madden NFL 09 Aug 67-33 61-39 Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Sep 67-33 65-35
You ve got a pretty good table there. Much more informative than the absolute numbers people tend to compare. Tells a clearer story about the sales of each. And probably a different story as well.
But after MS bragging about attach rates for two plus years in PR statements, they no longer matter. The goal post are always moving to the detriment of Sony, now it's how many games you make in the top ten
DuckThor Evil
Legend
But after MS bragging about attach rates for two plus years in PR statements, they no longer matter. The goal post are always moving to the detriment of Sony, now it's how many games you make in the top ten
Well the publishers care about total unit sales and no amount of MS PR speak will change that, so I don't quite understand what your problem is, and X360 has better attach rate aswell... PS3 can beat the user base difference with many titles, but on overall it still moves less software per unit and that's what matters along with the total numbers.
About goal posts moving. PS3 was supposed to overtake X360 long time ago, but the goal post has been moved so many times since then, that my calculator has run out of memory.
thatdude90210
Regular
Here's an interesting article from gamasutra that looks at total software sale, not just top ten. The Wii has overtaken the 360 in total software sales, from 10 million behind in 2007 to 8 million ahead in 2008.
Guitar Hero III vs GHWT first week sales looks interesting also. Too expensive, or over saturation of music games?
Guitar Hero III vs GHWT first week sales looks interesting also. Too expensive, or over saturation of music games?
It matters to them how much they can sell on the PS3. The table catisfit posted shows that the interest the PS3 userbase has for third party games is very similar to that of the 360's. Therefore it gives reason to support the console.
For example check the DMC4 percentages. Userbase was 72 to 28. Yet the sales ratio was 56 to 44. Obviously if they followed the MS's PR statements, and fanboyish talk that give the impression that software dont sell on the PS3 because it is used primary as a Blu Ray player they would have taken a significant opportunity cost by not supporting it.
Things might have been even more interesting if we could observe worldwide percentages too.
Most attach ratios are based on NPD results, which account for the US market and the place where the 360 is most popular. Developer decisions do not depend only on one market. If they observe that the interest is generally significant worldwide, they will release it for every market. There are many potential sales they cant simply ignore.
Nesh , I don't think DMC4 is a good example to use. On the ps3 it already had a sizable fan following , it was a new franchise on the 360. I will say this though , if I'm trying to make money I don't care how well something will sell comapred to install base , I care about how much it will sell period . Do you really think that with the xbox and ps2 a dev would care if he was selling to 1% of the ps2 user base or 10% of the xbox 360. No matter how you slice it the ps2 was the gravey train
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