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NPD Sales Results for April 2009
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Spiegel said:
New hardware isn't going to fix the real problem of lack of software.
I'm excited at the thought of a new PSP, but at the same time I would like to get more use out of the one I have now. It looks like it's just about to hit its stride, with games like LittleBigPlanet, Motor Storm and others coming this year.
DemonSwordsman
Banned
Paco said:
PSP has enough games.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Paco said:
Ditto
Jesse2040 said:
Personally, I think the game is too "Eastern" to gain mass-market success in the United States. It's an incredibly fun game, but it is pretty out there from a conceptual standpoint. Moreover, when parents are looking for a game for their kids, and don't know much to distinguish between games, the Rhythm Heaven packaging doesn't do much to make a sale. I'm surprised Nintendo would choose to market this game over other titles with more substance...that's not really the word I want to use, but hopefully you know what I mean.
charlequin
Banned
Chumly said:
Your post has a lot of math in it, but the assumptions are based on huge, very indirect assumptions: that those in-system's-top-20-but-outside-overall-top-10 software titles average 50k in total, a number that comes from nowhere and that should vary somewhat between systems, or that there are 100 titles that sell more than 1k outside the top 20 each month.
Because your assumptions here are such broad guesstimates, we can't really draw any useful information from them. If I change your numbers to 60k and 150 titles, we get a Wii average of 19,760. If I run 40k and 75 titles, I get an impossible 43k average. There's nothing to suggest that we can narrow this info down enough to actually get a "correct" answer here, which means that trying to draw a firm conclusion from one set of assumptions is unlikely to be productive. It doesn't support the point in any way.
As for me, I'm not going to try to "prove" anything given our extremely limited information here or be end-of-the-line authoritative. I'm just supporting stump's claim: back when we used to get full numbers all the time, the 21st game on even the most successful system would usually not break 20k in a non-holiday month. We can't be anywhere close certain of Madworld's sales performance this month, but this is the kind of ballpark figure that can help us temper our expectations accurately; given its debut last month, even in an optimistic case (Madworld in slot 21, with a high-performing Top 20) it is absolutely certain that Madworld didn't make it to 100k LTD this month, and fairly likely that it collapsed into 5-15k territory.
(The idea that there are are "20-30 titles" selling "20-50k" outside the Wii top 20 is flat-out ridiculous, though. That would make Wii an unprecedented software-selling machine and raise huge questions about why its overall figures aren't far higher than they are.)
charlequin said:
You're just factually incorrect there. Sorry. All PS2 below, in four week months (i.e. just like this one), since you said "even the most successful system."
Oct-04 - #20 > 40K
<skip a range for holidays>
Feb-05 - #20 > 35K
Apr-05 - #20 > 30K
May-05 - #20 > 20K
And that's in the PS2's fifth year. The few months I have with sufficient records in PS2's third year (for comparison, we're in Wii's third year) typically show ~50K for #20. I'm not saying that Wii is necessarily that high this month, but it is definitely possible based on past top system sales.
charlequin said:
The PS2 is an unprecedented software selling machine, and Wii is matching or beating it in total software numbers since launch in the U.S. almost everytime we get an update. Just saying.
timetokill
Banned
Teetris said:
The Dreamcast has been dead for some time now, you can call off the dogs, sheesh
This is starting to get interesting. I know the wii is ahead software wise compared to the ps2 if you launch align them, even if you subtract a holiday season to make it more fair the wii comes out ahead still. If PS2 was pulling in >20k with #20 in the off holiday season months there is certainly a chance the wii is doing the same. It would also help explain how wii doubled it's number of million sellers in a year, which is something few saw coming because most titles didn't chart. In that light the DS is even more impressive as far as off chart sells go.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Looks like the Wii's gains are slowing down, but this may just be the annual spring lull. Charts in a sec.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Linkup said:
I'd say ps2 was still a better software selling machine
Quoting an old post to help my point
kswiston said:
342 million (PS2) vs 353 million (Wii)
The Wii number includes 45 million of bundled Wii Sports games so the real software number is lower. The same goes for ps2 but there were less ps2 games bundled than Wii Sports at that time.
Anyway both consoles are/were, like someone has said, software selling beasts
Spiegel said:
Worldwide (Wii is stinking it up in Japan) and for third-parties, there's no question. (Of course there's the whole minor detail of third-parties putting everything they had into selling games on the PS2 and, by comparison, almost nothing into selling games on the Wii, but it's a minor detail, so I won't mention it.
Oh and just because I haven't seen it mentioned before and wanted to post it, third-parties on Wii outsold third-parties on the 360 in the U.S. for calendar year 2008.
speculawyer
Member
The console gods are giving us a subtle message to declare peace in the console war.
(Yeah OK, the P3 share needs to be split.)
(Yeah OK, the P3 share needs to be split.)
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
donny2112 said:Oh and just because I haven't seen it mentioned before and wanted to post it, third-parties on Wii outsold third-parties on the 360 in the U.S. for calendar year 2008.
Holy shit!
But unless 3rd parties on Wii outsold 360's and PS3's 3rd party sales COMBINED, nobody should care.
akilshohen
Member
Jesse2040 said:
I think some people saw the Beyonce ad as being one for the DSi too.
ViperVisor
Member
donny2112 said:Oh and just because I haven't seen it mentioned before and wanted to post it, third-parties on Wii outsold third-parties on the 360 in the U.S. for calendar year 2008.
Hope the drainage @ E3 is up to snuff. Lots of bitter tears with the graphs Nintendo will have. And maybe after that we won't have as much ignorance of what has really gone down this gen.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Actually Wii Sports is only included in Japanese numbers, where it's sold separately. Wii sales aren't counted as Wii Sports sales in America or Europe (or Australia but lol).Spiegel said:
The damage control has already started, man. Before it used to be "WELL WHAT WII GAMES SELL BESIDES FIRST PARTY" now it's "BESIDES FIRST PARTY AND GUITAR HERO/ROCK BAND" or "BESIDES ESTABLISHED FRANCHISES" when Resident Evil or Call of Duty are brought up.ViperVisor said:
Aaron Strife said:
I believe Spiegel is using Nintendo's shipped software figures, in which case the bundled Wii Sports would be included. Nintendo does include bundled Wii Sports in its reporting of software actually shipped but does not include bundled Wii Sports in its software shipment forecasts. It's kind of weird. Maybe they're hedging their bets in case they decide to pull Wii Sports out of the bundle in non-Japan locations. *shrugs*
lowlylowlycook
Member
PantherLotus said:
Given the cost of development on the various systems and the number of publishers losing money, that can't be right.
a Master Ninja
Member
Tomorrow a Best Buy sale begins where if you buy a Wii, you get a $20 giftcard. This marks the first time ever that they offered an additional incentive to buy the console.
a Master Ninja said:
Yeah, it needs a price drop.
Well, it doesn't need a price drop. It just had the third best April sales for a game system ever. What I mean is that it's been 30 months without a price drop, and it's about time it drops at least once.
But looking at the DS, which hasn't dropped in price in 4 years...
a Master Ninja said:
I'm pretty sure that I've seen gift cards with the console before. Dell had a % off deal. There have been tons of "Buy a Wii, get this game free/reduced cost" sales, too.
AniHawk said:But looking at the DS, which hasn't dropped in price in 4 years...
Japan: Two price increases, no price drops
U.S.: One price increase, one price drop
Better than Japan. :lol
timetokill
Banned
I see no reason for Nintendo to drop the price, especially in the US. It just wouldn't make sense.
lowlylowlycook
Member
AniHawk said:Yeah, it needs a price drop.
Well, it doesn't need a price drop. It just had the third best April sales for a game system ever. What I mean is that it's been 30 months without a price drop, and it's about time it drops at least once.
But looking at the DS, which hasn't dropped in price in 4 years...
They just managed to sell a million more by adding some cameras and not releasing any compelling games.
donny2112 said:
Its not like they are not doing any other offers either that week:
With the purchase of EA Active you get a $10 gc, with the purchase of EA Active and a Wii you get $10 gc, and if you are a RZ member you get a $10 gc with Punch Out
So pretty much if you get a Wii and at least one of the two big Tuesday games at BB you will get some gift cards
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
markatisu said:
"The Only Wii Games that Sell are those with High Sales!"
The Wii is doing great, it doesn't need a price drop yet. Depending on what Microsoft does with the ZCam, and if it has any impact at all on the Wii down the road could determine a pricedrop. Oh, and Sony yeah Sony and it's own waggle stick. To say that Wii won't see a pricedrop this gen is absurd, it definitely will as the price of 360 and PS3 fall so will that of the Wii. Probably Fall of 2010.
donny2112 said:Oh and just because I haven't seen it mentioned before and wanted to post it, third-parties on Wii outsold third-parties on the 360 in the U.S. for calendar year 2008.
Interesting. I wonder if that's true for revenue as well. Microsoft's NPD response for this month suggests 3rd party revenue is highest on the X360 while perhaps game sales is not (since they did not mention it).
http://www.edge-online.com/news/npd-big-three-respond
But revenue isn't an apples to apples comparison because 360 and PS3 games start with a +$10 revenue on each copy sold. For example the 360 could have 200k units sold at $60 each for $1.2 mil and the Wii could sell 220k for $1.1 million, and both statements would be true.w3stfa11 said:
Revenue is pointless compared to profitability and then units sold. Obviously the more units you sell the better chance at profitability, and the more you sell the more you will produce which will also lower your per units costs.
Also relative costs as well... I would love to be able to have a true average cost to develop per title for each system. That way we could have a better idea of where it's better for devs to put their money.
eastside49er
Member
Are these the real numbers because they look awfully low? If so, the PS3 is dying a slow, painful death. It also looks like we have seen the best the Wii has to offer as far as sales go. I see those things every where now.
Then again, this year looks like it will be a dry year as far as games go. The last 3 years (2006, 2007 and 2008) have been pretty amazing though.
Then again, this year looks like it will be a dry year as far as games go. The last 3 years (2006, 2007 and 2008) have been pretty amazing though.
tebunker said:
Data is from 2007 released games and japan only and i also don't know where the numbers are from, so it's not excactly what you were asking for.
The top number is development cost in 10,000 yen i believe, in brackets is the number of games. The bottom number is for budget/best of releases and shovelware i believe
LINK
Lets see what you said.....charlequin said:
There is NO DATA that suggests that this is true. In fact EVERYTHING points to it being false. Considering the data I gave you (Sure use 60k and 150 titles you still get a 20k AVERAGE meaning there are going to be a lot of titles >20k) and the data donny gave you (PS2 did the same thing GASP). With the Wii selling software at the same rate the PS2 is its going to be selling a lot outside the top 20. Please though do try and prove us wrong with your bullshit claim that makes no sense at all that Wii titles outside the top 20 are selling sub 15k. There is ZERO evidence out there that supports this.
As donny said its not unprecendented and in addition the Wii currently IS an unprecedented software-selling machine (doing better than PS2) and the overall figures ARE really high (just look at how the million seller list grew on the Wii).
I think Microsoft is doing a lot better than straight NPD numbers would indicate as far as software goes.
Take a game like Call of Duty: World at War where over 2 million people paid for extra maps. That is a solid revenue stream that doesn't show up on NPD.
Take a game like Call of Duty: World at War where over 2 million people paid for extra maps. That is a solid revenue stream that doesn't show up on NPD.
lowlylowlycook
Member
OnPoint said:
I meant games that were only for DSi. But I also forgot to mention the price rose as well.
That comparison isn't fair as well. You can't subtract the first 8 months of sales in Japan. Obviously software sales will increase as installed base grows.Spiegel said:
Through March 2003, production shipment of softwares for PS2 (which without a doubt were higher than the actual shipment figures) were:
NA - 162m
Europe - 103m
Through Jun. 2002, production shipment of softwares for PS2 in Japan was 54m.
So the total of 28 months of software sales in Japan, 29 months of software sales in NA and 28 months of software sales in Europe were 319m for PS2.
How many of those are bundled games? I don't know.
Through Mar. 2009 which means 28 months of software sales in NA, Europe and Japan, total software shipments for Wii was 308m.
Given the facts that there's a difference between shipments and production shipments and also millions of those 319m were bundled games, probably even worldwide Wii is a better selling system. In NA? It's not even debatable.
charlequin
Banned
Chumly said:
What I'm trying to say is that you didn't give me very much data. The only actual concrete information was the original "3.1 million software sold on average outside the top 10 for Wii figure" -- everything else was using your own assumptions to argue how that number was distributed over the software sales.
The reason I gave the figures I did was to show that even if your ballpark guesses were correct, small changes in your assumption numbers drastically change the outcome; if either of your assumptions is significantly off (say, there are way way more than 100 games that do over 1000 off the charts each month), the actual figures will wind up looking very, very different -- and if you don't accept your assumptions, that initial figure tells us nothing about how quickly sales drop off for outside-the-top-10 Wii titles.
I'll accept donny's correction (that the PS2's #20 game was hitting 20-40k in '05) because the argument is "hey, this is what our old data actually showed" and apparently the PS2's performance in '05 was stronger than I remembered. I don't have a problem with revising my own position based on alternate information -- only with using math where you start with a single real, reported number and then try to extrapolate data via a four or five step process populated with assumed numbers.
...
Re: my problem with the "20-30 games selling 20-50k off the charts" thing, it lines up with what I perceive to be a problem with your assumptions: you're assuming that a very small portion of games on each system are selling relatively briskly while everything else is selling basically zero copies. In a month where the Wii's #20 game sells 55k or something, then yes, I would concede that you probably have twenty to thirty additional titles >20k in the top 50, but if the #20 game does 25k or something, you should see <20k by like #25 or #26. I would guess that with online retail like Amazon and large title diversity across retail (I would guess there are well more than 100 titles on display per system just amongst my regional Gamestops and Best Buys, much less all such stores across American) the titles lower on the chart decrease at a gradual rate for quite some time before actually hitting zero, and that a large portion of sales is still generated from titles doing numbers in the 3-10k range each month.