NPD September 2016 Sales Results, Results Ranked by Revenue (Hardware Now, Software Later)

iroboto said:
So my question to do you would be, what level of success matters? The public opinion of what success should be? Or what the publisher deems as a success?
Click to expand...
Obviously, the publisher. Their measure is invariably tied to bottom lines and profit margins. It doesn't matter what the public thinks if a game isn't successful by the publisher's metric. No amount of fandom will pay the bills. :nope: Paying the bills is how a team make more games.
 
DSoup said:
Obviously, the publisher. Their measure is invariably tied to bottom lines and profit margins. It doesn't matter what the public thinks if a game isn't successful by the publisher's metric. No amount of fandom will pay the bills. :nope: Paying the bills is how a team make more games.
Click to expand...
In that case I imagine it would ballpark around: (30-40% targeted return)

(Total marketing budget + total development costs) * 1.4 / avg_sales_price = life time units sold.

So yea. 150K units is not likely reaching that goal. And most sales are front loaded. But I guess with it being close to holidays you can expect decent returns all the way to January. But at the moment

150k * 70 only gets you to 10.5 million.

But that's not worldwide sales nor does it include digital (and PC).

It's probably overall pretty healthy. The leaderboard is at 1.2 Million records. Not sure if that includes demo. I don't think it does. The demo doesn't let your participate in many events.
 
Last edited:
iroboto said:
In that case I imagine it would ballpark around: (30-40% targeted return)

(Total marketing budget + total development costs) * 1.4 / avg_sales_price = life time units sold.

So yea. 150K units is not likely reaching that goal. And most sales are front loaded. But I guess with it being close to holidays you can expect decent returns all the way to January. But at the moment

150k * 70 only gets you to 10.5 million.

But that's not worldwide sales nor does it include digital (and PC).

It's probably overall pretty healthy. The leaderboard is at 1.2 Million records. Not sure if that includes demo. I don't think it does. The demo doesn't let your participate in many events.
Click to expand...

We have no ideal of digital sales and how it's weighted. Most devs or at least some break out digital vs packaged goods. What they don't break out is where digital sales are the strongest. Quarterly digital and packaged good sales include new releases as well as back catalog sales.

Commonly pubs use a pricing strategy that favor physical titles in terms of back catalog sales. Price points drops faster and further on the physical side as pubs employ such strategy to keep physical retailers happy. So a digital copy's value is much higher at release when they are priced equally with a physical copy.

So there may be a possibility where DD demand is mostly front loaded and strongest during release but demand for DD falls as physical goods prices are reduced and gobbled up by value buyers.

For EA on the Xbox side with EA Access, they have to contend with gamers buyers buying only new games digitally and using their subs to play back catalog titles. So it's even harder to parse out DD vs physical sales.
 
PS4 Pro already appearing in the 2016-so-far best sellers on amazon.com, with preorders alone.
 
MrFox said:
PS4 Pro already appearing in the 2016-so-far best sellers on amazon.com, with preorders alone.
Click to expand...

Yea I'm reading about large pre-order volumes as well. I am quite interested to see how well this one will do.

I do not expect it to surpass PS4 pre-order sales. But to even get close would be massive.
 
Pro's biggest problem is simple, Scorpio's bigger spec sheet nerfed the hype. There is nothing that can be done about that. Welcome to Xbox One's world the past 3 years...

It should do OK, for a year, well enough, while it's the only game in town, but the hype is very muffled for only one reason...

Well 2 reasons, the other being the whole iterative console process means, it seems like you are just getting slightly different versions of the same games. This could probably be helped VERY soon when we start getting head2head's showing Pro's advantages in software.
 
Or the hype was slightly lessened by the fact that VR just came out. I certainly only got my first mail from Sony on the PS4 Pro a few days after VR day. ;)
 
I think the sales numbers will be very good for the Pro now and even after Scorpio shows up. I am assuming there won't be any major supply issues.
 
But no data points suggest that PS4 Pro will perform better in sales than any of the existing consoles to date.
These consoles are actually now a very good exercise in microeconomics, at least from an observation point.
XBO, PS4, and 4Pro are all substitute goods, or rather a bundle of goods, and this becomes an exercise in price and demand, as well as consumer preference. We should all be rubbing our hands together to see the outcome of November.

Just a quick copy and paste from Wikipedia:
Assumptions about Consumer Preference Theory
The consumer has ranked all available alternative combinations of commodities in terms of the satisfaction they provide them.
Assume there are two consumption bundles A and B each containing 2 commodities X and Y. A consumer can unambiguously determine that one and only one of the following is the case.
  • A is preferred to B
  • B is preferred to A
  • A is indifferent to B

Preferences exhibit strong monotonicity:
if A has more of both X and Y than B, then A is preferred to B
This assumption is commonly called the "more is better" assumption.
An alternative version of this assumption requires that if A and B have the same quantity of one good, but A has more of the other, then A is preferred to B.

Indifference curves exhibit diminishing marginal rates of substitution
The marginal rate of substitution tells how much 'y' a person is willing to sacrifice to get one more unit of 'x'.

Another name for this assumption is the substitution assumption. It is the most critical assumption of consumer theory: Consumers are willing to give up or trade-off some of one good too get more of another. The fundamental assertion is that there is a maximum amount that "a consumer will give up, of one commodity, to get one unit of another good, in that amount which will leave the consumer indifferent between the new and old situations. The negative slope of the indifference curves represents the willingness of the consumer to make a trade off.
Click to expand...

Using the above, A, B and C, would be the consoles (bundles of commodities), with a specific price point to encapsulate their commodities.
X, Y and Z, are commodities (features of the consoles) in which for our needs
A) MP game library
B) Exclusive library
C) Game Performance
D) Other features on the console, ie. Controller, UHD Player, Online Services, OS, built in PSU, quietness, reliability, look of the console, etc

In the past, for the last 3 years, PS4 has been preferred good over XBO at most price points in general.
Yet we are seeing somewhat of a reverse role happening in the last 3 months here, as even as Sony attempted to clear old stock for PS4 slim, it was unable to outsell XBO S. And PS4 to PS4 S is not very different at all. (Quieter, draws less power, slightly smaller)
And the price point is the same.

If XBO S continues to win October, Sony may have accidentally positioned the XBO in ways they did not expect, or rather their market data was wrong about graphical power being the ultimate driver for purchasing behaviour.

I recognize that November is a critical month in which the expectations are for 4Pro to sell the most.
But data points suggest caution in preferring this perspective.
a) 4Pro will not generate more pre-order sales than PS4 will, for the reasons indicated above (and it's not coming off a 8 year wait), and the price point, and it is a marginal incremental improvement over the existing base PS4 - only providing higher fidelity graphics, pre-order period is less, etc.
b) Both XBO and PS4 sold 1 million in pre order sales
c) Both XBO and PS4 have sold in the 1 million mark for Black Friday sales
d) There are few methods to reduce the price of 4Pro during black friday sales in 2016, most of which we expect will not be significant.

So you can see the bind Sony is in if XBO S wins October.
  • Winning October (4 months in a row) Sales would indicate that XBO S is now the preferred good over PS4. Majority of consumers have finally identified value in the XBO.
  • You can't discount 4Pro because it's launching in the month of November and because it's supposed to be the premium model.
  • 4Pro is the superior good over PS4. As in, Price sensitivity is the only reason you would ever buy a PS4 over 4Pro. It contains the same commodities as PS4 does as well as better features.
  • XBO S can lower its price/bundle to achieve a lofty amount of sales
  • It is expected for MS and Sony to discount their base units for BF, in which I would anticipate XBO to sell more than PS4 unless Sony is able to cut a price point lower than MS
  • MS has a large bank and can afford to discount as much as possible to gain user base, in threat of a new competitor (4Pro)
Anyway, these are my observations. Not saying they will come true, but I think the reality will play out somewhere along the lines of this.
 
Rangers said:
Pro's biggest problem is simple, Scorpio's bigger spec sheet nerfed the hype.
Click to expand...
What hype? I'm not seeing hype for any of these new machines, because they aren't new consoles. Unlike this gen, where people were desperate for an upgrade, or last gen where we were seeing unrealistic concept renders and getting all excited, these new machines basically look the same game wise. Not a great deal to get excited about.

In fact the end of clear upgrades with notable generational improvements in graphics probably means an end to console hype. Instead of extreme excitement and eager purchasing, we'll just have comfortable upgrade cycles and a more leisurely interest in upgrading.
 
iroboto said:
But no data points suggest that PS4 Pro will perform better in sales than any of the existing consoles to date.
These consoles are actually now a very good exercise in microeconomics, at least from an observation point.
XBO, PS4, and 4Pro are all substitute goods, or rather a bundle of goods, and this becomes an exercise in price and demand, as well as consumer preference. We should all be rubbing our hands together to see the outcome of November.

Just a quick copy and paste from Wikipedia:


Using the above, A, B and C, would be the consoles (bundles of commodities), with a specific price point to encapsulate their commodities.
X, Y and Z, are commodities (features of the consoles) in which for our needs
A) MP game library
B) Exclusive library
C) Game Performance
D) Other features on the console, ie. Controller, UHD Player, Online Services, OS, built in PSU, quietness, reliability, look of the console, etc

In the past, for the last 3 years, PS4 has been preferred good over XBO at most price points in general.
Yet we are seeing somewhat of a reverse role happening in the last 3 months here, as even as Sony attempted to clear old stock for PS4 slim, it was unable to outsell XBO S. And PS4 to PS4 S is not very different at all. (Quieter, draws less power, slightly smaller)
And the price point is the same.

If XBO S continues to win October, Sony may have accidentally positioned the XBO in ways they did not expect, or rather their market data was wrong about graphical power being the ultimate driver for purchasing behaviour.

I recognize that November is a critical month in which the expectations are for 4Pro to sell the most.
But data points suggest caution in preferring this perspective.
a) 4Pro will not generate more pre-order sales than PS4 will, for the reasons indicated above (and it's not coming off a 8 year wait), and the price point, and it is a marginal incremental improvement over the existing base PS4 - only providing higher fidelity graphics, pre-order period is less, etc.
b) Both XBO and PS4 sold 1 million in pre order sales
c) Both XBO and PS4 have sold in the 1 million mark for Black Friday sales
d) There are few methods to reduce the price of 4Pro during black friday sales in 2016, most of which we expect will not be significant.

So you can see the bind Sony is in if XBO S wins October.
  • Winning October (4 months in a row) Sales would indicate that XBO S is now the preferred good over PS4. Majority of consumers have finally identified value in the XBO.
  • You can't discount 4Pro because it's launching in the month of November and because it's supposed to be the premium model.
  • 4Pro is the superior good over PS4. As in, Price sensitivity is the only reason you would ever buy a PS4 over 4Pro. It contains the same commodities as PS4 does as well as better features.
  • XBO S can lower its price/bundle to achieve a lofty amount of sales
  • It is expected for MS and Sony to discount their base units for BF, in which I would anticipate XBO to sell more than PS4 unless Sony is able to cut a price point lower than MS
  • MS has a large bank and can afford to discount as much as possible to gain user base, in threat of a new competitor (4Pro)
Anyway, these are my observations. Not saying they will come true, but I think the reality will play out somewhere along the lines of this.
Click to expand...

Edit: Meh. NPD thread. Never mind.
 
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