NPD September 2007

[DeadlyNinja]

Weapon of awesomeness?

Weapon of awesomeness not dramatic enough, huh?

What in the world does Halo 3/360 have to do with Wii? For Halo 3 to effect Wii sales, these systems would need to compete on the same plane of existence... and at the moment, they don't.

People have this weird green paper thing in their wallet, and both the Wii and 360 are fighting over it. I believe this "paper" does not last forever, and must choose between one or the other.

 

[RobertR1]

http://www.thesimexchange.com/blogpost.php?post_id=430&r=5330

Madden NFL 08 (PS3) 61,800
Lair (PS3) 57,800

 

[bkilian]

Last 4 weeks 400k, 4 weeks before - 300k, for X360.
And THIS is "amazingly well"?

Ahh, the wonders of rounding. With your overzealous rounding, you get a 33% week over week increase, which is nothing to spit at, but is apparently not good enough, since you seem to think it's underperforming. If, however, we don't round to a single significant digit, and remain at 3, it's 422 to 276, or a 53% improvement. Is that more in line with what you were expecting?

 

[dlm]

People have this weird green paper thing in their wallet, and both the Wii and 360 are fighting over it. I believe this "paper" does not last forever, and must choose between one or the other.

His point is still valid.

That only holds if the same person would have bought a Wii if they hadn't bought a 360, or vice versa.

If you're talking about a class of consumer buying the Wii who wouldn't have bought a 360 regardless as the major class who buys the console, then an increase in 360 sales is immaterial.

These numbers are some of the best evidence we have that this may actually be the case.

 

[psorcerer]

Ahh, the wonders of rounding. With your overzealous rounding, you get a 33% week over week increase, which is nothing to spit at, but is apparently not good enough, since you seem to think it's underperforming. If, however, we don't round to a single significant digit, and remain at 3, it's 422 to 276, or a 53% improvement. Is that more in line with what you were expecting?

Err...and what makes you think that the distribution is uniform?
And I was expecting exactly that: slight improvement, because everybody who plays Halo already bought their X360.

 

[Rangers]

HW Sales
PlayStation 2 215K
PlayStation 3 119.4K
PlayStation Portable 284.5K
Xbox 360 527.8K
Wii 501K
Nintendo DS 495.8K
Game Boy Advance 75K

SW Sales
360 HALO 3* MICROSOFT (CORP) 1 3.3 million
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE NINTENDO OF AMERICA 2 282K
NDS LEGEND OF ZELDA: PHANTOM HOURGLASS NINTENDO OF AMERICA 3 224K
PS2 MADDEN NFL 08 ELECTRONIC ARTS 4 205K
360 SKATE ELECTRONIC ARTS 5 175K
360 MADDEN NFL 08 ELECTRONIC ARTS 6 173K
WII METROID PRIME 3: CORRUPTION NINTENDO OF AMERICA 7 167K
360 BIOSHOCK TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE (CORP) 8 150K
NDS BRAIN AGE 2: MORE TRAINING IN MINUTES A NINTENDO OF AMERICA 9 141K
PS3 HEAVENLY SWORD SONY (CORP) 10 139K

My thoughts:

Gangbuster month for 360, although I had already assumed one, as all the clues were there.

PS3 sales were even more disappointing than normal..being a 5 week month I had expected ~150k.

Wii, DS, PSP, the usual solid.

The software sales outside Halo 3 seem fairly low.

PS2 Madden went ahead of 360 Madden..a little better legs this month.

I think what's interesting about these 360 numbers is that the average selling price on the machine must still be near $400. Considering, especially in September when Core was all but phased out and "Arcade" not released yet (actually, still not released), sales are almost exclusively $450 Elite+$350 Premium.

One just wonder how much better 360 could be doing if they had not A) Botched the whole multi-sku thing imo and B) RROD costs hadn't likely eaten up much of their planned price cut.

Imagine in a parallel, one-sku non-RROD universe, a 299 at the most 360, let alone 249 or lower. This has been MS's missed opportunity imo. People have come to accept these high prices so much, we forget just how high they are historically. Xbox was down to 199 just months after it launched.

MS however, seems more than content to ride out the paradigm that they have the software to stimulate the demand necessary to keep hardware prices high, despite the marginal sales they are losing.

I'll be interested in MS quarterly report quite a bit. They must be quite profitable in gaming this quarter, I would hope.

And oh, I forgot to mention the best thing about the NPD's is they will give us at least a brief respite from the "MS is leaving the business" chatter lately

 

[AlphaWolf]

Err...and what makes you think that the distribution is uniform?
And I was expecting exactly that: slight improvement, because everybody who plays Halo already bought their X360.

52.7% is slight? What would have been a big improvement? Keeping in mind that halo3 went on sale sept 25th.

 

[Geo]

Holiday numbers should be very, very interesting. I think if anyone had suggested on these forums at the introduction of XB360 that nearly a year after introduction of PS3 that XB360 would be outselling PS3 in the US in monthly sales at 4-1, there would have been a deafening chorus to delete such "trash talk" as blatant trolling.

 

[psorcerer]

52.7% is slight? What would have been a big improvement? Keeping in mind that halo3 went on sale sept 25th.

Err...and what makes you think that the distribution is uniform?

----

 

[dlm]

----

Care to maybe elaborate on this?

What significance, towards your own point, does the distribution, uniform or not, have?

 

[psorcerer]

Care to maybe elaborate on this?

What significance, towards your own point, does the distribution, uniform or not, have?

When you divide aggregate monthly units by weeks you assume uniform "by week" distribution, which is not the case of course.

 

[psorcerer]

Err...and what makes you think that the distribution is uniform?
And I was expecting exactly that: slight improvement, because everybody who plays Halo already bought their X360.

I would almost guarantee you will be proven wrong come the holiday months, but we'll see.

Sorry to say, but you will not be able to prove me wrong from public sources, because you can not assume holiday hardware sales spikes are because of Halo.

 

[dlm]

When you divide aggregate monthly units by weeks you assume uniform "by week" distribution, which is not the case of course.

Sure. But if your argument is that the bump was not significant, an uneven distribution of the sales spike only hurts it.

Let's say that the first 2 weeks of Sept were flat from August and the rest of the increase was distributed over the next 3 weeks... that factors at about an 88% increase on the period effected by the bump. That's certainly significant.

 

[dlm]

Sorry to say, but you will not be able to prove me wrong from public sources, because you can not assume holiday hardware sales spikes are because of Halo.

It's equally impossible for you to prove that they *aren't*. Obviously the spike during the holidays will be because it's the holidays. However, there are likely to be reasons behind that spike. For example, it's quite possible that people who would not have otherwise purchased a 360 during that time period will do so to buy Halo.

Even then, software sales of Halo 3 aren't much proof because it's impossible to prove causation. Thus discussion of what drove what during the holiday season is utterly pointless, and immaterial to the discussion at hand in the first place.

As for THIS month, however... At this point, you have yet to provide any evidence that the spike in 360 sales this month is NOT because of Halo. Do you have a reason for the large spike in 360 sales if Halo was not it?

 

[psorcerer]

Sure. But if your argument is that the bump was not significant, an uneven distribution of the sales spike only hurts it.

Let's say that the first 2 weeks of Sept were flat from August and the rest of the increase was distributed over the next 3 weeks... that factors at about an 88% increase on the period effected by the bump. That's certainly significant.

You can not say that, because you don't have the "per week" numbers (Japanese public charts are so much better).

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Titles like madden/mp3 still do not appeal to them.

Actually, I have some facts that kind of contradicts that.

First of all, let us tackle Metroid. Despite the myth, Super Metroid actually sold much better in Japan (almost twice the amount) compared to NA. Now wait a minute, MP3 after just 2 months have almost caught up to Super Metroid's sales on the SNES (I believe MP3 is at about 385K, while SM was at 460K for NA). By the time SM came out, the SNES's installed base is MUCH larger than that of the Wii today. Does that mean the SNES was a system for casuals -- people who don't play much video games? This is despite the fact that there is virtually no hype or advertising for MP3 at all compared to MP1. The original MP1 on GC sold much better of course, but it had a huge amount of hype, and no competition. How can you not love the live action Metroid Prime 1 commercial on TV and in theaters? You know what, I'd wager MP3 will easily outsell SM within a few months. Hype is very important, and MP3 didn't have the hype and had stiff competition. Look at Red Steel. It's not the greatest game out there, but it had tons of hype. The game sold very well.

Now Madden... How should I put this... I would cut off my dick before I buy a Madden game. I would have to cut off my dick twice to buy the Wii version. Madden Wii is a joke. The game sucked and received the worst score of them all. People don't buy shitty games. They also don't buy shitty 1 year old PS2 ports with tacked on Wiimote functions. I think a lot of Wii owners are starving for something half way decent from 3rd parties. Resident Evil 4 suffers from some of the things mentioned above, but it wasn't a shitty game. It was still a damn good game, and it sold above Capcom's own projections.

I think there will always be some overlooked excellent games on any system (Okami, anyone?), but until we see some real effort coming, I don't think they'll sell. Some luck and advertising might help too (again, Okami). Some of the upcoming Wii 3rd party games are showing some promise. The Wii's barely 1 year old right now. Also, I think people have heard this enough, but look at the DS. The DS was the system the pioneered the "casual gaming" boom, and yet we see plenty of traditional games reaching over 1 million in sales.

 

[dlm]

You can not say that, because you don't have the "per week" numbers (Japanese public charts are so much better).

It doesn't matter. Whether you average it or not, the increase is greater than 50% week over week on average. No matter how you slice it, this is a significant increase in sales of the console during the period that Halo shipped. Given no other significant factors, there is no other reasonable conclusion than that 360 sales this month were driven by Halo 3.

 

[RobertR1]

Looking at PS3 software numbers it'd seem that a large percentage of the owner aren't the vocal fanboys on the net but the hardcore gamers who need to have it all. Once in this position they pick and choose which games to buy between the consoles given their limited time to play. This is where the 360 library, Live, have friends with 360's, give the 360 a large advantage and in turn hurt the PS3 software sales. Couple that with the PS3 sub par ports, mixed ratings and you get a perfect storm on low sales.

The 360 faces the same situation to a much worse degree in Japan.

 

[PARANOiA]

Is this the first month any home system has outsold the Wii?

 

[psorcerer]

It's equally impossible for you to prove that they *aren't*. Obviously the spike during the holidays will be because it's the holidays. However, there are likely to be reasons behind that spike. For example, it's quite possible that people who would not have otherwise purchased a 360 during that time period will do so to buy Halo.

You will be able to see it in charts.
But not in public ones.
What can you do in public charts is just try to estimate it by using: Halo sales, hardware sales, attach ratio, other games sales.

As for THIS month, however... At this point, you have yet to provide any evidence that the spike in 360 sales this month is NOT because of Halo. Do you have a reason for the large spike in 360 sales if Halo was not it?

No doubt that Halo caused higher hardware sales, but considering 3.3mln of Halo 3 units sold, the "spike" in sales is just tiny.