NPD Software sales from a Nintendo presentation

[Rangers]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8400170&postcount=1

By dividing the average length of time each console's owner had their system for in the Jan-Sep period by the tie-in ratio for the Jan-Sep period, it shows that the average gamer for each console on average bought software...

Wii: every ~8.69 weeks
360: every ~5.62 weeks
PS3: every ~8.12 weeks

Clearly, 360 had the much more active user base, with PS3 in a distant 2nd and Wii in 3rd. This does not include Wii Sports.

Excellent post here, quantifying the fact U.S. 360 owners buy more software. Wii sold slightly more software than 360 in it's first Jan-Sep period on the market, but it's attach rate was a good deal lower. The upshot being that Wii sold much more hardware than 360 did in it's first Jan-Sep, but only a little more software. PS3 also was around the same rate as Wii.

 

[one]

Is that "first year sales" pic not from the Nintendo presentation?

 

[Arwin]

I came across this a few days ago. It's a very interesting graph, the top one. It basically shows that the Playstation brand has lost a little bit to Nintendo, and a little bit to 360, but overall the sales market hasn't moved that much. The 360 sales are almost done completely replacing the Xbox1 sales, and the console market is showing growth already, which is probably owing most to the Wii, and a little (I assume partly some PC guys) the 360.

As an amateur forecaster, I would take from this that the 360 has almost completed the transition from Xbox to 360 (Halo 3's release will probably have all but completed that transition). The Wii is doing well with the GameCube, and has also converted most of the GameCube base to the Wii (SMG and SSB will probably complete most of that process).

The PS3 however has just barely started, and the fight is on for that huge box of PS2 owners that are still waiting to go next-gen out there. If in fact they will stay loyal for the most part, then sales numbers for the PS3 have a lot of potential for growth in the near future, and whether or not we'll see a big shift in market share among the 3 platforms very much depends on that large blue sea of PS2 owners.

The graph seems to suggest a considerable amount of loyalty / stability in terms of market share, but it's very clear that we'll find out soon enough whether or not that is the case.

This is definitely just about the best possible graph you could have to follow the progression of the console wars and market division though. Good stuff.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Gauranteed those Wii numbers include the free Wii Sports and $10 Wii Play.

Take those out and it would look pretty miserable for the Wii.

 

[Teasy]

It makes sense that Wii owners would have less need to buy more games, especially in the first months, when they were all given a good free game in Wii Sports. No doubt without that free game first year game sales per user would have been higher.

Gauranteed those Wii numbers include the free Wii Sports and $10 Wii Play.

Really?, from the first post in this thread:

Clearly, 360 had the much more active user base, with PS3 in a distant 2nd and Wii in 3rd. This does not include Wii Sports.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Don't forget the question of how many of those people will keep playing video games. How many gamers really last 10 years or more? There's always a certain percentage of new gamers every generation.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Really?, from the first post in this thread:

Woops, my bad. Still Wii Play is in there, and it's the top selling Wii title every month by a mile, it sells around 250k/month while the next best is typically 50k. And it costs $10.

It's a little misleading to include that, and not the XBL arcade titles which sell for a similar price, or Wii virtual console sales...

 

[AlphaWolf]

I came across this a few days ago. It's a very interesting graph, the top one. It basically shows that the Playstation brand has lost a little bit to Nintendo, and a little bit to 360, but overall the sales market hasn't moved that much. The 360 sales are almost done completely replacing the Xbox1 sales, and the console market is showing growth already, which is probably owing most to the Wii, and a little (I assume partly some PC guys) the 360.

As an amateur forecaster, I would take from this that the 360 has almost completed the transition from Xbox to 360 (Halo 3's release will probably have all but completed that transition). The Wii is doing well with the GameCube, and has also converted most of the GameCube base to the Wii (SMG and SSB will probably complete most of that process).

Actually MS is only a bit past halfway on covering the xbox user base, and that's assuming that every person who has bought a 360 was an xbox owner, and I know for a fact that's not the case as I never owned an xbox. No one is going to have sold out their base until they start to reach prices where the previous generation started to sell. ($199)

The PS3 however has just barely started, and the fight is on for that huge box of PS2 owners that are still waiting to go next-gen out there. If in fact they will stay loyal for the most part, then sales numbers for the PS3 have a lot of potential for growth in the near future, and whether or not we'll see a big shift in market share among the 3 platforms very much depends on that large blue sea of PS2 owners.

The graph seems to suggest a considerable amount of loyalty / stability in terms of market share, but it's very clear that we'll find out soon enough whether or not that is the case.

This is definitely just about the best possible graph you could have to follow the progression of the console wars and market division though. Good stuff.

I don't think there's all that much brand loyalty involved. How are you seeing that in the graph? There's certainly going to be some people looking for more of what they had before, but I expect the majority of people aren't Nintendo/Sony or MS customers, they are just normal consumers looking for a product that suits their needs/wants at a reasonable price.

Don't forget the question of how many of those people will keep playing video games. How many gamers really last 10 years or more? There's always a certain percentage of new gamers every generation.

It's an expanding market. Yes there are transitions but the average age of a 'gamer' has increased dramatically in the last 20 years.
__________________

 

[scooby_dooby]

It makes sense that Wii owners would have less need to buy more games, especially in the first months, when they were all given a good free game in Wii Sports. No doubt without that free game first year game sales per user would have been higher.

Without that free game the Wii might not be the phenom it is today. Including Wii Sports was a brilliant move by Nintendo, it create an instant identity for the console which appealed to the demographics they were targeting.

 

[Arwin]

Actually MS is only a bit past halfway on covering the xbox user base, and that's assuming that every person who has bought a 360 was an xbox owner, and I know for a fact that's not the case as I never owned an xbox. No one is going to have sold out their base until they start to reach prices where the previous generation started to sell. ($199)

What the graph shows is how many consoles Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are selling each year. Over the three years in the graph, this figure has been fairly consistently spread over the three brands, but where we see change is in 360s vs Xboxes, and GameCubes vs Wiis. The total number of consoles sold has changed much less in comparison.

Note that this also means that some of the comments stating that the Playstation 2 was holding the Playstation 3 back have some merit. The Xbox was dropped like a brick by Microsoft in favor of the 360, and with the 360 also having been out a year longer, very clearly the incentive to buy an Xbox dropped, and those who did want an Xbox in the first place have found the 360 as a logical replacement. There may have been some trading around, some Xbox owners going Wii, some PS3, some all of them, and vice versa, but the net result is just as we see it.

With the PS3 being priced as high as it has been, relatively few games, having been released only last year, and with the PS2 still getting some decent games and generally being the last gen winner so having a huge library of existing games, etc. etc. there are plenty of PS2s still selling (look how long the Gameboy kept up against DS and PSP, same principle).

I don't think there's all that much brand loyalty involved. How are you seeing that in the graph? There's certainly going to be some people looking for more of what they had before, but I expect the majority of people aren't Nintendo/Sony or MS customers, they are just normal consumers looking for a product that suits their needs/wants at a reasonable price.

All three console manufacturors have been around for more than 5 years now. Playstation has been around for more than 10 years now. Nintendo has been around for ... ever. Brand loyalty is, was and always will be. It's value can fall fast, but scandals excepted generally brands go down slow. Success vice versa.

Yes there are transitions but the average age of a 'gamer' has increased dramatically in the last 20 years.

Exactly. Transitions generally go slow. Even with the Wii being as much of a record braking early success as it is, is still demonstrating that.

 

[AlphaWolf]

What the graph shows is how many consoles Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are selling each year. Over the three years in the graph, this figure has been fairly consistently spread over the three brands, but where we see change is in 360s vs Xboxes, and GameCubes vs Wiis. The total number of consoles sold has changed much less in comparison.

The graph doesn't show any hardware sales, at all. It's software.

Note that this also means that some of the comments stating that the Playstation 2 was holding the Playstation 3 back have some merit. The Xbox was dropped like a brick by Microsoft in favor of the 360, and with the 360 also having been out a year longer, very clearly the incentive to buy an Xbox dropped, and those who did want an Xbox in the first place have found the 360 as a logical replacement. There may have been some trading around, some Xbox owners going Wii, some PS3, some all of them, and vice versa, but the net result is just as we see it.

With the PS3 being priced as high as it has been, relatively few games, having been released only last year, and with the PS2 still getting some decent games and generally being the last gen winner so having a huge library of existing games, etc. etc. there are plenty of PS2s still selling (look how long the Gameboy kept up against DS and PSP, same principle).

It seems you're still trying to make an argument based on an unproven premise. You're assuming that most ps2 owners will become ps3 owners, which is doubtful at best.

All three console manufacturors have been around for more than 5 years now. Playstation has been around for more than 10 years now. Nintendo has been around for ... ever. Brand loyalty is, was and always will be. It's value can fall fast, but scandals excepted generally brands go down slow. Success vice versa.

There's some die hard fans (many of them found in forums), but I think the vast majority of people are just consumers buying products based on perceived need and value.

 

[Acert93]

Gauranteed those Wii numbers include the free Wii Sports and $10 Wii Play.

Take those out and it would look pretty miserable for the Wii.

It doesn't include Wii Sports, but it does include Wii Play. And Wii Play has sold nearly 2.6M copies in NA.

And while a month old, this is what their million sellers look like WW:

Wii Sports (Nintendo) 8.78M
Wii Play (Nintendo) 5.31M
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo) 3.70M
Mario Party 8 (Nintendo) 2.32M
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves (Nintendo) 1.82M
Super Paper Mario (Nintendo) 1.28M
Rayman Raving Rabbids (Ubisoft) 1.02M
Red Steel (Ubisoft) 1.01M

As one multiplatform developer put it, "As much [they] try to convince people that its software numbers are ok, they aren't, that is unless you are Nintendo. If those same third party million sellers launched today, instead of being launch titles...I would almost guarantee they wouldn't break 300-500k (still good/great numbers)".

Metroid Prime 3 sales have been pretty dissappointing, especially if a I was a publisher looking to bring a serious FPS to the Wii. On the good side Nintendo has a lot of sales volume and with their install base growing quickly publishers who target the games Wii consumers are adopting (like Wii Sports, Mario Party, etc i.e. minigames and the quick pick-up and play Wiimote based games) there is a bounty of sales pontential. Kind of a catch 22 though. Do you keep a dev team on a proven franchise that you know will sell 500k on the PS3/PC/360 or do you move them to a new Wii IP and gamble the concept will be a hit on the Wii and you can compete with Nintendo.

Of course a couple very successful multi-million selling 3rd party IPs on the Wii could totally change this picture.

What is most striking in those numbers isn't the Wii or 360 data. It is the PS3. The PS3 has the lower attach rate of the Wii but a significantly smaller install base which means their total sales volume is very low. The next 6 months will be pretty important for the PS3 to capture some market share and to recapture software sales momentum.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Prime 3 hit .5m faster than Prime 2 did on a console with a smaller user base and still hasn't launched in Europe. I wouldn't be so fast to call it "disappointing," given that the franchise was sliding downhill with Prime 2. People think of Prime as this ultimate gangbuster sales franchise because it was one of the most prominent "hardcore" titles on Cube, but the reality is that the highest-selling game in the series didn't quite get to 3m, and the sequel didn't even sell half as many. Given the performance of the series, there was absolutely no reason to expect Prime 3 to sell 4m units or something. How many times has a critically well-received part 3 of a series outsold part 1 when part 2 was somewhat disappointing? Devil May Cry didn't, Jak III didn't, Metal Gear Solid 3 didn't, Twilight Princess didn't, etc etc.

 

[Arwin]

The graph doesn't show any hardware sales, at all. It's software.

It's both. Don't let the chart title fool you, software can't run by itself.

It seems you're still trying to make an argument based on an unproven premise. You're assuming that most ps2 owners will become ps3 owners, which is doubtful at best.

No, I am implying that it is not unlikely that a lot of ps2 sales will translate to ps3 sales eventually, as that is the trend that the other two platforms are showing. I'm also implying this based on other console transitions (example: some people seem to think Nintendo was suddenly wiped off the map by Sony's Playstation 1, but they had lost their dominant position to Sega first in the generation before, just like I'm saying 360's march forward in the U.S. started in the previous generation already, where just like with the 360, 66% of Xbox sales are taking place. Do you see the trends?).

And I'm saying that if I'm right and the charts at least seem to hint at some form of brand loyalty, combined with the shifting support from previous to next gen transitioning slower from PS2 to PS3 than with the other two platforms, that suggests that the PS3 has a lot of untapped market potential. Obviously, the 360 and Wii are going to try to tap into that potential, but so far, they've just competed with their own previous generation (though the Wii is starting to visibly take a bite out of the Playstation piece of the market pie, even that piece is not that big because it is also growing the market, just as it promised ... I expect that bite will get larger though before it gets smaller).

But it's a good reminder that what some people expected and others have disagreed with, the fact is that so far a considerable amount (or in the case of 360 nearly all) of the next-gen sales are replacing old gen sales of the same brand. Even if I'm wrong and next years sales aren't going to be related to these charts in any way and everything will completely change by then, that fact, undisputably visible in these charts, remains. Whatever value you choose to attach to it is up to you.

There's some die hard fans (many of them found in forums), but I think the vast majority of people are just consumers buying products based on perceived need and value.

...

 

[PARANOiA]

the fact is that so far a considerable amount (or in the case of 360 nearly all) of the next-gen sales are replacing old gen sales of the same brand. ...

Based on?

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's both. Don't let the chart title fool you, software can't run by itself.



No, I am implying that it is not unlikely that a lot of ps2 sales will translate to ps3 sales eventually, as that is the trend that the other two platforms are showing. I'm also implying this based on other console transitions (example: some people seem to think Nintendo was suddenly wiped off the map by Sony's Playstation 1, but they had lost their dominant position to Sega first in the generation before, just like I'm saying 360's march forward in the U.S. started in the previous generation already, where just like with the 360, 66% of Xbox sales are taking place. Do you see the trends?).

And I'm saying that if I'm right and the charts at least seem to hint at some form of brand loyalty, combined with the shifting support from previous to next gen transitioning slower from PS2 to PS3 than with the other two platforms, that suggests that the PS3 has a lot of untapped market potential. Obviously, the 360 and Wii are going to try to tap into that potential, but so far, they've just competed with their own previous generation (though the Wii is starting to visibly take a bite out of the Playstation piece of the market pie, even that piece is not that big because it is also growing the market, just as it promised ... I expect that bite will get larger though before it gets smaller).

But it's a good reminder that what some people expected and others have disagreed with, the fact is that so far a considerable amount (or in the case of 360 nearly all) of the next-gen sales are replacing old gen sales of the same brand. Even if I'm wrong and next years sales aren't going to be related to these charts in any way and everything will completely change by then, that fact, undisputably visible in these charts, remains. Whatever value you choose to attach to it is up to you.



...

You keep claiming you see things in that chart that quite simply are not there. If you want to provide some factual data to back up your claims feel free to do so, but I'm not seeing them so far.

 

[Arwin]

Based on?

Jeez, I'm almost starting to doubt myself here. If you look at the first chart, and compare 2005 and 2006. The green bars are Xbox software sales, dark green is old Xbox software, light green is 360 software. In 2005, it's all Xbox1, about, say, 22k's worth (following the chart's numbers). In 2006, XBox1 sales are down to 15k, but now we have say, 8k of 360 sales. But the total number of Xbox games sold is now 23k, which is only 1k up from 2005. In 2007, 360 software sales went up further, to about 20k, but now Xbox1 sales also went down further to about 4k, so that the total amount of Xbox games sold is only 1k further up from 2006. In terms of market percentage, since 2007's total sales are larger, it's actually a little down.

Of course, this chart only compares the first three quarters of each year, so who knows what happens in that fourth quarter, eh?

I'm not a math wizard though, so maybe I'm reading this chart wrong?

 

[AlphaWolf]

Jeez, I'm almost starting to doubt myself here. If you look at the first chart, and compare 2005 and 2006. The green bars are Xbox software sales, dark green is old Xbox software, light green is 360 software. In 2005, it's all Xbox1, about, say, 22k's worth (following the chart's numbers). In 2006, XBox1 sales are down to 15k, but now we have say, 8k of 360 sales. But the total number of Xbox games sold is now 23k, which is only 1k up from 2005. In 2007, 360 software sales went up further, to about 20k, but now Xbox1 sales also went down further to about 4k, so that the total amount of Xbox games sold is only 1k further up from 2006. In terms of market percentage, since 2007's total sales are larger, it's actually a little down.

Of course, this chart only compares the first three quarters of each year, so who knows what happens in that fourth quarter, eh?

I'm not a math wizard though, so maybe I'm reading this chart wrong?

That doesn't show causation, that just shows some new products increasing in demand as older products decrease. You're trying to attribute them by platform, the chart doesn't show that.

 

[PARANOiA]

Indeed, Arwin is assuming the software market had the same people buying games year on year, just hopping platform. This is not in any way provable (or disprovable) by those charts.

I'd suggest there are very different market segments at work here - people buying 360 games (even today) are in my mind fairly early adopters. That's not the audience buying Xbox1 games in 2005 - though again I can't prove or disprove this from the charts.

Arwin, you really need to stop throwing the work "fact" around when you really mean "my assumption is" or "my opinion is"

 

[Arwin]

Yes, sure, fine, the downfall of Xbox1 games isn't in any way related to the rise in 360 sales, and this combines with a stable amount of Xbox software sold is all just purely coincidential.

Whatever you are accusing me of though, you are also accusing Nintendo of. The ffing chart is callled sales transitions, and their point is showing their investors what Wii is doing in 2007 (i.e. gaining market share). If you are disputing the figures in the chart, then say so, but until you do, you can't really object to at least pointing those figures out as facts. If you think my interpretation is so far fetched, fine. Whatever. I've stated my case.