1st Course
Member
So far it seems like the growth this year is all hardware, software still down vs last year.
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NPD Sales Results for July 2014 [Up1: 3DS LTDs, Wii U LTDs, Tomodachi]
- Thread starter Road
- Start date
Do the revenue charts you posted refer to hardware+software?
What we have to consider is that Xone even if it manages to sell as much as in last years holiday season there will be 100$ less revenue per console. another big difference is that this time there is no game of GTA5 calibre.
Great first-hand account. So March/April 2001 timeframe for PS2 shortages ending, then. Thanks!
You have to remember, this isn't the whole story. Internet sales are not accounted for. It's only about ~60% if not not mistaken. I'm sure Sony moved another 13k the other 40% and online sales. Same for Xbox One.
NPD accounts for 100% of hardware sales. They get direct data from retailers for 90%+ of the market and extrapolate the rest.
Only 3DS hardware is missing, can you do this favor for us telling the number?
Seriously, I'm sure a lot people here are interested in knowing.
Count me amongst the interested. It's really frustrating that we can't even get complete hardware numbers. Meanwhile in Japan, the MC top 1000 software has been posted. We really, really need some competition for NPD.
Wii was firing on all cylinders then. Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus all released in between 2007-2009 and sold 20m+ (ww)
lightning2k3
Member
Some people just have a sense of entitlement... Most people here appreciate all the work you guys do!
Yes, this includes hardware, software and accessories. I will make a hardware vs software chart when I get time.
Yes they track online sales now. Before they properly did that they estimated sales.
I want to highlight this comment to show how the numbers really don't back your observation (and your observation is common, so I'm not intending to pick on you here).
The PS2 launched globally in (very late) 2000, and we see a jump of ~44% in revenue the following year. This jump is then more or less sustained the entire PS2 generation. This tells us that the PS2 grew the industry significantly, and then consoles retained that growth going forward.
Now let's look at the Wii transition. The jump in revenue in 2008 is 48%, or slightly more than the jump the PS2 caused in 2001. In other words, the growth in 2007 and 2008 was not "unnaturally high," as that type of growth was very similar to the growth the PS2 caused (and the PS1 before that, by the way, it just isn't on the chart you quoted).
The growth isn't unnatural; it's just that, unlike in the past, consoles were unable to keep those new customers they had created. Thus, revenue shrunk as those customers were stolen away from consoles, rather than providing sustained growth as they had in the PS1 and PS2 days.
The console industry had seen a doubling of total consumer base before (that's nearly what we saw with the PS1 from Genesis/SNES, and the NES transition from Atari). The growth from the Wii was not weird or unusual or even particularly uncommon up until that point in the console industry's lifespan.
lightning2k3
Member
How much of that growth do you think you can attribute to gamers who grew up but stayed gamers? I feel like the NES really put gaming mainstream, and kids who played that console grew up and kept gaming, while new kids kept getting into games, and this growth is why later generations saw a larger consumer base. At this point though, we've reached the point where as many people leave gaming(due to other responsibilities like family) as enter it, so the market has become stagnant.
Imru al-Qays
Banned
The growth in 2007 was not unnaturally high, but the growth in 2008 arguably was.
The PS2 bump peaked in 2002, at 56% higher than 2000 (the year of the PS2's release). 2002 was 9.5% higher than 2001.
The Wii bump peaked in 2008, at 71% higher than 2006 (the year of the Wii's release). 2008 was 19% higher than 2007.
That seems a bit unnatural to me, especially in the context of a more mature market. This was a bubble and it popped.
The_lascar
Member
Must be something too big to ask, but can someone, like Aquamarine, give us the 2014 best selling games as of june? Even without sales numbers, just to put into perspective the same thing for Europe.
Imru’ al-Qays;125944229 said:
The PS1 nearly doubled the size of the market in terms of users (~90m for SNES/Genesis generation, ~160M users for PS1/N64/Saturn generation). The NES more than doubled the size of the console user base. The growth really isn't unnatural, even if you try to claim that 71% growth is somehow totally different than 56% growth.
Your analysis simply does not add up. If there was a "bubble," then we would have seen gamers exit the market. We did not see that; instead, we saw them migrate to platforms which better suited their needs. They aren't gone -- this isn't the Atari bubble -- they just migrated to better platforms, platforms that don't happen to be consoles.
Imru al-Qays
Banned
Markets don't stay immature forever. Explosive growth of that sort is unsustainable over the long term, especially when we consider that it hadn't occurred during the PS2 generation. The larger the market the more unusual it is for it to suddenly experience massive, sustained expansion.
It's a bubble in the sense that they entered the console market and then left it en masse a few years later.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
down ~28% from July 2013
1st Course
Member
Aquamarine
Member
You saw what the NPD Ninjas did to Gamecrate / Newegg, right? I heard about the details of the situation. It was brutal.
The point is that you don't want to be reliable.
Why do you think people are always so random each month with what they leak?
Also, I helped out with 3DS numbers a couple of months ago.
crazygambit
Member
I didn't. What happened?
Gracias. I can now post my monthly comps.
Year Over Year
Gen over Gen
Powerhouse™ vs the PSP and NDS
Year Over Year
Code:
2014 2013 % Change
XB1 131
360 54 107 -50%
PS4 187
PS3 32 79 -59%
WIU 81 29 179%
WII 14 35 -60%
3DS 108 150 -28%
NDS 31
PSV 17 16 6%
PSP 5
Family
MSFT 185 107 73%
SONY 236 100 136%
NINT 203 245 -17%
HAND 125 202 -38%
CONSOLE 499 250 100%Gen over Gen
Code:
Console 2014 2007 % Change
360 170
PS2 222
WII 425
PS3 159
TOTAL 499 976 -49%
Handheld 2014 2008 % Change
NDS 608
PSP 222
Total 125 830 -85%Powerhouse™ vs the PSP and NDS
Code:
3DS 2014 PSP 2008 NDS 2008
January 97 230 251
February 153 243 587
March 159 297 698
April 106 193 415
May 97 182 452
June 152 337 783
July 108 222 608
August 253 518
September 238 537
October 193 491
November 421 1570
December 1020 3040
Through July 872 1704 3794
TOTAL 3829 9950Aquamarine
Member
Gamecrate (a random gaming site sponsored by Newegg) was inadvertently leaking March 2014 Top 10 SKUs + Revenues, April 2014 Top 10 SKUs + Revenues, May 2014 Top 10 SKUs + Revenues + Hardware comparison, and June 2014 Top 10 SKUs + Revenues + Hardware comparison + LTD Hardware comparison.
It was completely unknown for a couple of months until someone decided to share it on NeoGAF and it started to spread all across the Internet at a rapid pace.
Once it was spread to places like NeoGAF, NPD freaked out and immediately confronted Newegg about it. The articles went offline very quickly...and a bunch of other behind-the-scenes stuff happened too.
prag16
Banned
What did they do? Sue them? (EDIT: Just read above. Doesn't really sound "brutal" unless there was a lot more to the story.)
Also, couldn't they lurk this thread, and then try to shake down EviLore for contact/IP/etc info of certain posters? Why do they stop short of that? Do they find creamsugar's pie charts amusing?
vinnygambini
Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
Providing a pie chart percentage (leading to draw one's own conclusions - not the exact number) comparatively to a print screen of the actual NP data report is very different.
Seeing how frontloaded and how games fell of the charts in MC that seemed reasonable, but you were right that numbers weren't trivial.
Wow at 3DS. I had a feeling it did much worse
hoping it could save my bad predictions 
I'm really grateful that we even get more than just PR stuff let alone info for all consoles and big titles. I try to be vague (don't be afraid to PM me if I'm too specific) to keep it this way and somehow these threads are much more fun than if everything got reported at once.
metalslimer
Member
I half expect NPD to get rid of the top 10 in the future just as a final fuck you. Also it seems like 100k is the current bottom for the 3DS, which while not good, shows at least a pulse in that market.
Aquamarine
Member
I presume there are three facets to it...the first is that NeoGAF LLC isn[t liable for the contents of its posters. So unless requested by NPD (see the deletion of pre-2006 NPD threads) the site won't take the time to remove leaks. And NPD Group is under no authority to strongarm NeoGAF into disclosing IPs unless it's ordered by the court system.
The second? Sentimentality, I guess. Once upon a time, NPD used to voluntarily give NeoGAF hardware and Top 10 software units. Maybe tolerating leaks is the modern-day version of that?
The third? No leaker on NeoGAF goes overboard. NPD Group isn't excessively harmed by leaking hardware and a couple of software figures.
Now, reliably giving units + revenue figures every month can be pretty harmful...what Gamecrate was doing was definitely worse than any leaker on GAF.
prag16
Banned
Not in practice, when the end result is not all that different. It just takes longer.
Scenario A: Nintendo gives some percentage via PR. Two hours later creamsugar posts a pie chart. People immediately come up with calculations. 1/2 hour later Harker or Aqua confirm relative accuracy. If any numbers are missing, one of them may state the last one a few hours later.
Scenario B: Somebody on gaf concisely posts all hardware numbers a little while after NPD PR starts coming out.
Why should NPD group be so much more livid about scenario A than scenario B? Sounds pretty illogical to me.
EDIT: Ah, ninja'd by aqua again.
Sure, but how would say Harker for example coming in here at 8pm eastern time and providing a full list of hardware numbers be any worse than the end result arrived at anyway?
Imru al-Qays
Banned
Why did they stop?
lightning2k3
Member
Summary of what happened? Did they get sued or something? Everytime you say ninjas I imagine actual ninjas beating up some clueless intern who was releasing the NPD numbers.
metalslimer
Member
Maybe this has been gone over before, but why exactly is such simple data like hardware and software so expensive? I can understand detailed analysis that would be used for marketing firms, but for such simple (monthly which is even worse) data it seems really weird. Do the stores that NPD have a contract with charge them excessively?
It would be funny if some huge company that didn't give a fuck just started leaking data.
It would be funny if some huge company that didn't give a fuck just started leaking data.
SwiftDeath
Member
I really didn't mean it in the extent that you thought I did [assuming I understand your intent]
Unnatural in the specific rates of growth not in the overall market behavior. Looking at the data, YOY change for 2006 - 2008 was +19%, +44%, and +19% respectively for an average growth rate of ~27% across those three years. The largest average 3 year growth rate during PS2's period was ~16% from 2001 - 2003.
It appears to be unnatural to the generalized data within the confines of the chart as presented. If I had to try and interpret it on a larger level contextually I would probably say something along the lines that the Wii [and the NDS] managed to hit along a lot of the same demographics that the PS1 and PS2 managed to hit but and here's the important part of my thought process, the Wii did it in a much much shorter time period which to the best of my knowledge is entirely unusual for the console market of which the US retail revenue mostly consists of. The end result doesn't appear to be too unusual for the larger market until the notable decline due to another platform taking over but the growth rate in that time period is certainly a lot more condensed than I have ever seen before. I wouldn't be surprised though if the likes of that had been seen before during 3 year periods during the Atari to Nintendo transition in the 80's but I don't have that data.
Thanks for the help again John. I did well this month
I don't expect you to know this offhand, but I'm just throwing this out there.
What exactly is the quantity of difference between the general economic downturn 2008-2013 in terms of spending/growth versus what the video game industry experienced in the same time frame?
I'm guessing that the videogame industry outpaced the overall recession in general decline (there is/was other factors in play), but by how much and when specific periods of decline occurred in the same context I just don't know/have readily available information to compare against.
prag16
Banned
Basically this. It doesn't seem to make sense. Hence the impetus for my last couple posts.
Historically speaking, the MOM is fine, but the YOY is bad. Here's a comparison of 3DS vs PSP vs NDS for the comparable years:
Code:
3DS PSP NDS
June 07 or 13 225 290 561
July 07 or 13 150 214 405
June 08 or 14 152 337 783
July 08 or 14 108 222 608
First Year MOM -17% -8% -10%
Second Year MOM -11% -18% -3%
June YOY -32% 16% 40%
July YOY -28% 4% 50%The MOMs are adjusted for the 5 weeks of June. Based on the previous gen, July being weaker than June is to be expected, but both the PSP and 3DS were growing in 2008, not shrinking like the 3DS is.
It's not reliable. They have to keep refreshing a neogaf thread and get random numbers in the middle of the night. After all of that they're still missing numbers.
Monopoly.
lightning2k3
Member
It's expensive data to track and collect, and I'm sure they pay money to retailers for their data as well. They want to sell that data to other companies and they cant if its publicly posted in gaming forums.
metalslimer
Member
Even the monopoly reason doesn't seem to explain why they became so restrictive in regards to the top 10. It seems to me that anyone who actually is willing to pay the cash for those subscriptions would not be happy with just a top 10/hardware. It really just seems like they are assholes. Not only that NPD deals with a lot more than video game sales, so the removal of the top 10 (and not only that but making it combined) from a video game forum seems ridiculous.
Aquamarine
Member
Imru al-Qays;125963054 said:
I wasn't on GAF at the time, so I don't know.
If anybody from classic Sales-GAF wants to chime in, go ahead.
SonyCowboy was asked about it a couple of months ago...but he didn't really give an answer.
Well, a massive part of their business is these simple numbers. So they're quite valuable...despite being simple numbers. When you have something so disposable simultaneously be so valuable...you have to protect it.
Its cost and harsh NDA provisions deter leaking.
Anybody who would seriously utilise the data to help make future, major business decisions...can afford the extravagant costs to acquire it and decide to make the investment regardless.
And, it helps increase the liability in the event of a data breach. You can keep tabs on all of your clients more easily.
And yeah. They do it because they can.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
now now boys, let's not point fingers or use names
Aquamarine
Member
As time passes, the amount of websites that leech off of NeoGAF and spread sensitive information around the Internet...decreases drastically.
Nobody cares about the late stages of an NPD thread...but all eyes are on NeoGAF right when it starts out.