NPD October 2019 Results

[Silent_Buddha]

The all sales thread just made me notice that NPD for Oct. was never posted. So here it is late.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/14/...of-duty-and-outer-worlds-deliver-solid-month/

Top 20 best-selling games of October in the U.S.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
2. The Outer Worlds
3. Luigi’s Mansion 3*
4. Madden NFL 20
5. NBA 2K20
6. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
7. WWE 2K20
8. FIFA 20
9. Borderlands 3
10. Ring Fit Adventure
11. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening*
12. Mario Kart 8*
13. Minecraft#
14. Grand Theft Auto V
15. Mortal Kombat 11
16. Overwatch
17. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
18. Code Vein
19. Red Dead Redemption II
20. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*

Great performance from The Outer Worlds. This does not include Game Pass as NPD doesn't track Game Pass subscriptions.

With only about 2 weeks worth of sales, COD: MW 2019 vaulted to the best selling game of 2019. COD remains a juggernaut, especially when it comes to a remake of one of the most beloved entries in the series.

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare debuts as the best-selling game of October 2019, and is now the best-selling game of 2019 year to date,” said Piscatella. “This is the 12th consecutive year a Call of Duty game has ranked as the best-selling game of its release month. Call of Duty remains the best-selling video game franchise in U.S. tracked history by dollar sales.”

That is a remarkable run. And that includes some COD games that were considered relative failures in the series like COD: Ghosts.

Despite software dollar sales (revenue rather than units sold) being down 37% compared to last year, this in the 3rd highest Oct. total in NPD history behind only 2018 and 2008.

Hardware is down a relatively massive 41% (dollar sales), ouch. Even the NSW can't salvage that number. I hate the dollar sales metric. Unit sales would be more informative, IMO.

For YTD 2019, dollar sales of software is down 7%. It would be much worse if the NSW weren't on the market as it's the only platform that has seen software sales growth this year.

“Year-to-date dollar sales of tracked video game software are down 7 percent, to $4.5 billion,” said Piscatella. “Gains in sales of Nintendo Switch software sales have been offset by declines across all other platforms.”

The 10 best-selling games of 2019 so far

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
• NBA 2K20
• Madden NFL 20
• Borderlands 3
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Kingdom Hearts III
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Anthem
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
• Grand Theft Auto V

The 10 best-selling games of the last 12 months

• Red Dead Redemption II
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
• Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
• NBA 2K20
• Madden NFL 20
• Borderlands 3
• Mortal Kombat 11
• NBA 2K19
• Battlefield V

With only roughly 2 weeks of sales, COD: MW also almost took the rolling 12 month crown.

Nov. will be interesting to see, if I remember to look it up when it's released.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm pleased for Obsidian and Microsoft that The Outer Worlds has sold so well. It demonstrates that you don't need massive teams delivering bombastic technical showpieces to sell - just a genuinely good game. I'll be playing it over Christmas now they've patched out the few niggles that made me hesitate.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm pleased for Obsidian and Microsoft that The Outer Worlds has sold so well. It demonstrates that you don't need massive teams delivering bombastic technical showpieces to sell - just a genuinely good game. I'll be playing it over Christmas now they've patched out the few niggles that made me hesitate.

Yeah, I initially thought that maybe this was just due to Oct. possibly being an abnormally slow month. But then I saw the blurb about this being 3rd best Oct. in NPD tracking history.

I'm really happy for them. Hopefully this is even more incentive for MS to remain hands off with Obsidian.

I'd love to see what Obsidian could do with even a low AAA budget and the freedom to make any kind of RPG they wanted. DSO and DSO2 are absolutely incredible in their own right, but that was with a AA budget at best. Both of those relied on Crowd funding.

Regards,
SB

 

[AlphaWolf]

I was wondering how much game pass accounts for the drop in games sales volumes. Has MS released any numbers on game pass?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I was wondering how much game pass accounts for the drop in games sales volumes. Has MS released any numbers on game pass?

Considering that the drop is for both PS4 and XBO, I'm not sure how much of an effect Game Pass actually has. If anything, going by anecdotal evidence in streaming communities, Game Pass is bringing in a lot of people who would previously not consider anything on a MS platform. IE - while some of them are people would have bought the game in the pass, many of them are people that had never purchased a title on a MS platform. And another significant chunk are people that never would have bought X game, but subbed to Gamepass for 1-5 USD just because it was so cheap.

I think a bigger question is how many people that try Game Pass at 1 USD either retain their subscription or subscribe again shortly after dropping their subscription?

Granted, that isn't sales related, but I think people that in the past bought a lot of games likely continue to buy a lot of games. The like to control their library and not be restricted in whether they'll still be able to play a game they like if they were to stop subscribing. IE - if Madden or COD were on Gamepass, I think you'd still see the vast majority of long time COD and Madden fans continue to buy the game. OTOH, you'd likely see a lot of part time Madden/COD players or even people who never played those before picking up a subscription to try them out.

It's definitely an interesting question. Microsoft has the metrics, which they obviously won't release. And if we go purely by what they say (always take with a grain of salt), Game Pass brings in far more players to a game than the game loses in sales (at least what MS expects the hit to sales would be). Granted, this is a bit one sided as it's usually in reference to how they expect their 1st party titles to sell when available on Game Pass. In such a case, it's always been that the games have sold beyond Microsoft's predictions.

There's been no comments about this from 3rd party developers on the platform (there's been a few 3rd party day and date Game Pass releases), so it's still a mystery. So either, 3rd parties are happy with how little sales drop or they are happy with how much revenue their game generates for them on Game Pass (the assumption being that the revenue generated is greater than the revenue in sales they think they might have lost).

3rd parties could also be contractually obligated to not divulge any details, but if things weren't good for the in terms of revenue generation versus sales revenue lost, I'm sure you'd have seen some unhappy comments (about just generally being on Game Pass even if they couldn't go into details) from at least a few devs by now.

Regards,
SB