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[Abdiel]

So, instead of just a general Black Friday measurement, I'm kinda looking over the month perspective here -

With how our stores did today, and how they've done over the month?

I'm going to make an easy call for the PS4 from Best Buys.

This isn't the prediction thread, and the month hasn't fully closed yet, so I'll be refining this more with some more detailed analysis when things are a little quieter (I like to use my evenings where I get to do some paperwork to pull up the SKUs in the inventory system, haha. I have a list in my phone of the district numbers and the SKU numbers to quickly scan and run numbers for wider spectrums).

But at this point, with our BF weekend ahead of us, and our stores showing very consistent performance with no distinct way for the XB1 to pull ahead in any meaningful way at all, and the month behind us where we saw the excellent performance of the Battlefront bundles, and the less incredible, but still decent performance of the CoD bundles...

I feel pretty comfortable with this. I'll refine my comments for the prediction thread if I find anything different by then.

Also: Tomb Raider software is really nothing to write home about. There's little to no fanfare around Halo, either, so I'll be kind of surprised if that does manage to chart again this month.

 

[Boke1879]

They should have either pushed the launch back, or moved it up. It got buried under Fallout, Halo, CoD and Battlefront. SE must have made some bank or at least finsnial security from MS to make that deal.

Game should have come out in October or at least waited until December.

But I feel pressure was on to get it released in Nov. To try and grab Holiday sales and see if it could get a surge during BF weekend.

 

[watdaeff4]

So, instead of just a general Black Friday measurement, I'm kinda looking over the month perspective here -

With how our stores did today, and how they've done over the month?

I'm going to make an easy call for the PS4 from Best Buys.

This isn't the prediction thread, and the month hasn't fully closed yet, so I'll be refining this more with some more detailed analysis when things are a little quieter (I like to use my evenings where I get to do some paperwork to pull up the SKUs in the inventory system, haha. I have a list in my phone of the district numbers and the SKU numbers to quickly scan and run numbers for wider spectrums).

But at this point, with our BF weekend ahead of us, and our stores showing very consistent performance with no distinct way for the XB1 to pull ahead in any meaningful way at all, and the month behind us where we saw the excellent performance of the Battlefront bundles, and the less incredible, but still decent performance of the CoD bundles...

I feel pretty comfortable with this. I'll refine my comments for the prediction thread if I find anything different by then.

Also: Tomb Raider software is really nothing to write home about. There's little to no fanfare around Halo, either, so I'll be kind of surprised if that does manage to chart again this month.

Thanks for the insight.
Not surprised by what you are saying.

Hopefully Battlefront does well as its a fun game and will give EA incentive to maintain the game/franchise

 

[Shenmue]

It was really sad seeing the huge stack of TR bundles at my best buy this afternoon completely undisturbed.

All i hope for now is that SE has some great lawyers or businessmen who did the negotiating and managed to extract a huge amount of cash from Microsoft to keep this series healthy.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

Thanks for the insight.
Not surprised by what you are saying.

Hopefully Battlefront does well as its a fun game and will give EA incentive to maintain the game/franchise

I am very surprised that Halo 5 is doing bad enough to not chart.

 

[Elandyll]

Whatyearisthis.jpg

I'm so damn behind! In that case i feel more confident about my prediction that Xbox won BF and in turn November. Walmart is huge. I think they sell more games than BB right? Only second to GS?

I don't even think the Xbox will win Walmart for BF, let alone BF overall, and even less November.
Pretty much every.single.data we have points to a PS4 win, possibly a big one.

What makes you think this?

 

[Shenmue]

I am very surprised that Halo 5 is doing bad enough to not chart.

I dunno it might just be Best Buy (kinda like how Walmart shoppers seem more aligned with Xbox). In the 2 hours I was at mine I saw 1 guy buy xbox one games while I saw loads and loads of people picking up PS4 games.

I don't even think the Xbox will win Walmart for BF, let alone BF overall, and even less November.
Pretty much every.single.data we have points to a PS4 win, possibly a big one.

What makes you think this?

Unless I read Cornbread's post wrong I think he was saying xbox one did better at walmart.

Also I feel like gamestop shoppers are also more aligned with Xbox based on my observations frequenting the stores.

Best Buy and Amazon usually seem more aligned to PS4.

However GS and Walmart make up a way bigger section of the games market than Amazon and BB do.

PS remember how in October based on how Amazon looked and Abdiel's information it looked like PS4 would win? I predicted Xbox would still win for the same reasons.

 

[Boke1879]

It was really sad seeing the huge stack of TR bundles at my best buy this afternoon completely undisturbed.

All i hope for now is that SE has some great lawyers or businessmen who did the negotiating and managed to extract a huge amount of cash from Microsoft to keep this series healthy.

I can see MS dropping the price of that bundle quick. Or at least adding value to it. But yea. I wonder if SE can do something? We know the PC release is in a few months, but waiting a whole year to launch the PS4 version is insane.

 

[boredandlazy]

I don't even think the Xbox will win Walmart for BF, let alone BF overall, and even less November.
Pretty much every.single.data we have points to a PS4 win, possibly a big one.

What makes you think this?

Except for 'social media'.

 

[RespectThySole]

Thanks for the insight.
Not surprised by what you are saying.

Hopefully Battlefront does well as its a fun game and will give EA incentive to maintain the game/franchise

Maybe things are different on PS4, but Battlefront is not doing well on Xbox One. Things are even more dire for Halo 5 though.

Man... It's really sad to see Halo falls back to number 11 in most played games.
COD
Fallout
Fifa
GTA
Destiny
BF
NBA
Minecraft
Madden
Rainbow Six beta

Aaaaaannnd and Halo 5.

What gives?? :/

 

[Abdiel]

I am very surprised that Halo 5 is doing bad enough to not chart.

One of the managers at my store traded in his copy of Halo 5 for Battlefront, because none of his gaming group were bothering to play anymore. He gets mad at me because almost all of our staff plays on PS4, and so he doesn't have any active players from the store crew.

 

[hawk2025]

RE: Halo 5

I thought the multiplayer was genuinely great, but honestly; Black Ops 3 came out, I've gone back a couple of times, but the maps just plain feel better enough on BLOPS3 that I just kept playing that.
Then I played some Warzone again, and was thoroughly crushed by some absolutely crazy weapons, that I assume people have unlocked through REQ packs.
Then I jumped in the Halo 5 OT here, and apparently half of the main people posting on the OT actually bought $25 dollar premium REQ pack bundles. I think I completely missed the boat on Warzone, and the mix of no JIP + being crushed by teams when matchmaking Solo, and no Casual playlists for Arena may have killed the game for good for me.

Seems like perhaps it's doing well enough with a core group of people that are pouring money into microtransactions. I'm sure the overall player numbers (it always seems to be hovering between 6th and just outside the top 10 over the past week) is enough to have healthy playlists, but it doesn't seem to me like the game has picked up steam after launch.

I can see MS dropping the price of that bundle quick. Or at least adding value to it. But yea. I wonder if SE can do something? We know the PC release is in a few months, but waiting a whole year to launch the PS4 version is insane.

At this point Nixxes probably already has a timeline that involves working on the PC version first, then PS4 (I assume all of this). Unless there's an exit clause in the contract AND they can accelerate development time, I don't see it happening.

Honestly, if they fix the input lag I'll buy the game again, so there's a small victory there.

 

[Elandyll]

Except for 'social media'.

Are you refering to the weird online Target thing?

I admit I had a chuckle with that

 

[watdaeff4]

I am very surprised that Halo 5 is doing bad enough to not chart.

I thought it might chart in the bottom 5 but wasn't holding my breath.

The (relatively) poor sales in October showed the signs.

It's somewhat of a shame really because it truly is a good game and IMO much better MP then this years CoD. And better campaign as well.
Opinions though and all that

 

[Plague Doctor]

Except for 'social media'.

Didn't South Park tackle this when the boys had to raise money for Canada by putting Butters on Youtube?

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

Unless the contracts have an underperformance clause, MS isn't obliged to support TR's need of success on other platforms.

Even PC, since they're unlikely to get much of a cut, if any.

It would be crazy of SE to negotiate a contract like this, at the start of a new console generation, without an underperformance clause. . .right?

 

[Boke1879]

It would be crazy of SE to negotiate a contract like this, at the start of a new console generation, without an underperformance clause. . .right?

Unless MS told them they'd support the game and all parties involved thought the game would see better sales than this.

It also depends on what's IN the actual deal. How much money did MS spend? What other terms are there.

 

[Aceofspades]

So, instead of just a general Black Friday measurement, I'm kinda looking over the month perspective here -

With how our stores did today, and how they've done over the month?

I'm going to make an easy call for the PS4 from Best Buys.

This isn't the prediction thread, and the month hasn't fully closed yet, so I'll be refining this more with some more detailed analysis when things are a little quieter (I like to use my evenings where I get to do some paperwork to pull up the SKUs in the inventory system, haha. I have a list in my phone of the district numbers and the SKU numbers to quickly scan and run numbers for wider spectrums).

But at this point, with our BF weekend ahead of us, and our stores showing very consistent performance with no distinct way for the XB1 to pull ahead in any meaningful way at all, and the month behind us where we saw the excellent performance of the Battlefront bundles, and the less incredible, but still decent performance of the CoD bundles...

I feel pretty comfortable with this. I'll refine my comments for the prediction thread if I find anything different by then.

Also: Tomb Raider software is really nothing to write home about. There's little to no fanfare around Halo, either, so I'll be kind of surprised if that does manage to chart again this month.

Your efforts are highly appreciated, thank you very much.

 

[Shenmue]

It would be crazy of SE to negotiate a contract like this, at the start of a new console generation, without an underperformance clause. . .right?

1) it's SE. You should never give SE the benefit of the doubt.

2) Crystal is a pretty pro-xbox dev team. I kinda get the feeling that their upper management are good buddies with the xbox guys or something. Relationships could have made it so that they trusted MS and didn't play hardball when negotiating.

My own personal guess is that SE, in terms of straight cash, actually got what we would probably consider a pittance. Of course we'll never find out.

 

[boredandlazy]

Are you refering to the weird online Target thing?

I admit I had a chuckle with that

Nah. There was someone earlier in the thread who said they worked in social media, and that the XBOne was getting a lot more mentions.

 

[Y2Kev]

I played 3 hrs of Tomb Bomber today. OMFG It's so good. So sad this is cratering. It's fantastic.

edit: Where is this walmart thing coming from?

 

[Nightengale]

It would be crazy of SE to negotiate a contract like this, at the start of a new console generation, without an underperformance clause. . .right?

MS : don't worry, 360 install base will make up for it!

 

[hawk2025]

I played 3 hrs of Tomb Bomber today. OMFG It's so good. So sad this is cratering. It's fantastic.

Yeeep.

Game is amazing.

MS : don't worry, 360 install base will make up for it!

I have no doubt this happened.

"Don't worry, we'll foot the bill for the 360 port"

...whoops.

 

[N.Domixis]

any xbox tweets like last time that showed they were winning on BF?

 

[Nightengale]

any xbox tweets like last time that showed they were winning on BF?

It's still too early for any company to pump chest.

 

[Y2Kev]

I'm sad they are going to get the message that linear/highly directed experiences don't sell and we're going to lose all our small sandbox/hub games in favor of ubisoft clustershits. Though even those are bombing out, lol.

 

[Elandyll]

Unless I read Cornbread's post wrong I think he was saying xbox one did better at walmart.

I coulf be wrong, but isn't Cornbread talking about 1 store where the PS4 was selling quicker and they just happened to have more XB1 stock?

PS remember how in October based on how Amazon looked and Abdiel's information it looked like PS4 would win? I predicted Xbox would still win for the same reasons.

October had a big unknown which was favorable to XB1: August pre-orders and Halo5.
In November, the big unknown (2 months of pre orders for LE bundles) is actually in favor of the PS4.

To logically have a chance in Nov, the XB1 would have to clearly do better during BF.
Afaik with what we've seen, at best (for the XB1) they are neck and neck, and at worst the XB1 is getting trounced wherever they have more PS4 stock.

Man, November NPD will be super Inter#$%?&!@ [User choked. Communication Terminated]

 

[Beautiful Ninja]

I'm sad they are going to get the message that linear/highly directed experiences don't sell and we're going to lose all our small sandbox/hub games in favor of ubisoft clustershits. Though even those are bombing out, lol.

It's pretty clear from today's sales that Until Dawn is the most desired game and game developers will take chances on experiences like that from now on.

No, no they won't. They'll just try to get CD Project Red to make a Madden RPG.

 

[hawk2025]

I'm sad they are going to get the message that linear/highly directed experiences don't sell and we're going to lose all our small sandbox/hub games in favor of ubisoft clustershits. Though even those are bombing out, lol.

I really like the hub-style approach in Tomb Raider.

If anything, they went TOO FAR on the open world direction with ROTTR (you didn't quite play enough to get there, but you'll see) by adding pointless quests (they literally just give you new challenges) and shops (there's literally only one shop with half a dozen items).

All of that could and should have been excised for a more focused experience IMO.

 

[3rdbass]

Between last night and today I was at 5 stores 2 BB, 2 Targets and 1 Walmart. I can say at 4 of the stores I was asking who was selling most and 3 of the 4 said PS4. 1 target during Thursday night was the opposite an sold a lot more XBOX 1. Weird not too far away at another Target it was the exact opposite. I also noticed like a another poster mentioned that the TOMB Raider bundles were just sitting there in stacks at BB. Too bad as I bought it on the 360 and it is a really well done game at least graphically. I'm in the city of Atlanta so my anecdotal evidence might not mean much as I'm sure in the red neck area's of GA could be different situation.

 

[Y2Kev]

I really like the hub-style approach in Tomb Raider.

If anything, they went TOO FAR on the open world direction with ROTTR (you didn't quite play enough to get there, but you'll see) by adding pointless quests (they literally just give you new challenges) and shops (there's literally only one shop with half a dozen items).

All of that could and should have been excised for a more focused experience IMO.

Eh, I kinda see where it's going-- quest givers, collecting shit-- and that's annoying. But still, not tooooo bad.

 

[boredandlazy]

I'm sad they are going to get the message that linear/highly directed experiences don't sell and we're going to lose all our small sandbox/hub games in favor of ubisoft clustershits. Though even those are bombing out, lol.

Well you'd hope SE would realise why the initial sales don't seem to be favourable, and learn from it,

 

[Abdiel]

I dunno it might just be Best Buy (kinda like how Walmart shoppers seem more aligned with Xbox). In the 2 hours I was at mine I saw 1 guy buy xbox one games while I saw loads and loads of people picking up PS4 games.



Unless I read Cornbread's post wrong I think he was saying xbox one did better at walmart.

Also I feel like gamestop shoppers are also more aligned with Xbox based on my observations frequenting the stores.

Best Buy and Amazon usually seem more aligned to PS4.

However GS and Walmart make up a way bigger section of the games market than Amazon and BB do.

PS remember how in October based on how Amazon looked and Abdiel's information it looked like PS4 would win? I predicted Xbox would still win for the same reasons.

I've always tried to make sure and clarify I specifically only provide my insights for Best Buy, and that I align that Best Buy is only what, 10-12% of the retail market? 15% at most now? GameStop and Walmart are massive by comparison.

Honestly, last month's gap was enough it could have entirely been made up with just one of those retailers leaning one way or the other, so to speak. But even with my comment above, I'm only speaking on behalf of Best Buy impressions, and I don't want to come across any other way, so I don't ever overstep that line.

Certainly don't want to act like my insights are an infallible metric for the US market, let alone during holiday madness.

 

[hawk2025]

Eh, I kinda see where it's going-- quest givers, collecting shit-- and that's annoying. But still, not tooooo bad.

Yeah, it's ultimately minor stuff. A bit of an attempt at checklisting -- "Our game has quests now! And shops! And learning new languages!" that at the end of the day add absolutely nothing to the game.

BUT you can still have a very much guided, very fun, polished experience that's nearly 15+ hours long and a blast to play through IMO. Game is great!

 

[Mister Megative]

So, instead of just a general Black Friday measurement, I'm kinda looking over the month perspective here -

With how our stores did today, and how they've done over the month?

I'm going to make an easy call for the PS4 from Best Buys.

This isn't the prediction thread, and the month hasn't fully closed yet, so I'll be refining this more with some more detailed analysis when things are a little quieter (I like to use my evenings where I get to do some paperwork to pull up the SKUs in the inventory system, haha. I have a list in my phone of the district numbers and the SKU numbers to quickly scan and run numbers for wider spectrums).

But at this point, with our BF weekend ahead of us, and our stores showing very consistent performance with no distinct way for the XB1 to pull ahead in any meaningful way at all, and the month behind us where we saw the excellent performance of the Battlefront bundles, and the less incredible, but still decent performance of the CoD bundles...

I feel pretty comfortable with this. I'll refine my comments for the prediction thread if I find anything different by then.

Also: Tomb Raider software is really nothing to write home about. There's little to no fanfare around Halo, either, so I'll be kind of surprised if that does manage to chart again this month.

Appreciated as always my friend. When you say excellent for the Battlefront bundles, is that comparable to Xbox performance last November?

 

[Liabe Brave]

Making the Tomb Raider bundle a high-priced one made NO sense.

It actually makes a lot of sense. That's the one bundled game that Microsoft had already paid the publisher for. What sense does it make to pay the publisher again so you can offer it free to consumers?

Keep in mind that last year adding the AC games for free to their cheapest bundle cost them about a billion dollars in lost revenue.

Nah. There was someone earlier in the thread who said they worked in social media, and that the XBOne was getting a lot more mentions.

Just to be clear, they were tracking social media for only one outlet. They didn't say whether it was Dell, Target, or Wal-mart.

 

[hawk2025]

It actually makes a lot of sense. That's the one bundled game that Microsoft had already paid the developer for. What sense does it make to pay the developer again so you can offer it free to consumers?

Keep in mind that last year adding the AC games for free to their cheapest bundle cost them about a billion dollars in lost revenue.


Just to be clear, they were tracking social media for only one outlet. They didn't say whether it was Dell, Target, or Wal-mart.

I don't follow.

 

[Y2Kev]

Microsoft paid Square Enix for the exclusive. They're not going to eat the cost of the game AGAIN and pay for a copy of the game and then give it to you for free.

 

[hawk2025]

Oh, oh.

So the Tomb Raider bundle ends up being relatively high-priced, and restricted to only one retailer or their own online store. Meaning they have to buy less download codes from SE.

That does make a lot of sense, you are right. But then shouldn't the specifics of the bundle be written into the exclusivity contract? Maybe it was, and they ordered just-the-minimum of the download codes the contract had agreed to?

Well I imagine they bought a set number from SE as part of the contract.

Edited that in just before
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Thank you both

I had a customer today buy a used XB360 today specifically to play the new Tomb Raider - he has a ps4.

360 port was a bad idea.

Like someone said above, maybe it was thrown in to sweeten the deal back then, and was kind of unavoidable.

 

[Y2Kev]

Well I imagine they bought a set number from SE as part of the contract.

 

[LightningXCE]

I had a customer today buy a used XB360 today specifically to play the new Tomb Raider - he has a ps4.

360 port was a bad idea.

 

[Abdiel]

Appreciated as always my friend. When you say excellent for the Battlefront bundles, is that comparable to Xbox performance last November?

Hmm... That's a good question. Hard to gauge, too. See, with last year, with the XB1 november deals, it was just constant flux. The entire holiday deal didn't really have any sort of preorders available, it just went into effect, so people could just start buying then, and then they had their black friday event pricing across the board.

This time around, the Battlefront bundles had a really solid long term build up, with a growing wave of excitement around the established franchise, and frankly, some of the best advertisement I've ever seen (I've actually had customers specifically mention the one about the guy sitting at his desk in the office building as a nostalgia trip). As a result, you had the limited edition consoles sell out completely for us, and even the regular bundle still did really well, because it's the brand new game free with the console, and even then those value pack ins were a nice touch.

So it's had a really great performance here, it did awesome, a great boom of upswell leading in, though this weekend its not really the star of the show, since this weekend is all about price.

That's what makes it a harder comparison there, at least directly. The Battlefront bundle isn't directly competing in those specific angles, like the MS bundles arrangement was last year.

Both were very successful, in very different ways.

 

[Nightengale]

I had a customer today buy a used XB360 today specifically to play the new Tomb Raider - he has a ps4.

360 port was a bad idea.

Your case is almost assuredly a minority situation though.

 

[Liabe Brave]

I don't follow.

Sorry, I meant to say "publisher", not "developer". I've edited my post.

 

[Shenmue]

I've always tried to make sure and clarify I specifically only provide my insights for Best Buy, and that I align that Best Buy is only what, 10-12% of the retail market? 15% at most now? GameStop and Walmart are massive by comparison.

Honestly, last month's gap was enough it could have entirely been made up with just one of those retailers leaning one way or the other, so to speak. But even with my comment above, I'm only speaking on behalf of Best Buy impressions, and I don't want to come across any other way, so I don't ever overstep that line.

Certainly don't want to act like my insights are an infallible metric for the US market, let alone during holiday madness.

Oh no no I'm not doubting your info or trying to imply you speak for the market at large. I know you provide BB info (and great info at that!). My point was exactly that, that because BB and Amazon account for a smaller portion of the market, even if it appears that one console did better there it may not reflect what happens in NPD.

 

[The Power Of Snap]

I wouldn't worry about tomb raider. They still have a buffer until Christmas to lower the bundle price or the game price.

 

[hawk2025]

I wouldn't worry about tomb raider. They still have a buffer until Christmas to lower the bundle price or the game price.

Same logic was applied for Black Friday.

All it did as far as we know for now was get crushed by everything else, again.

 

[Nightengale]

I wouldn't worry about tomb raider. They still have a buffer until Christmas to lower the bundle price or the game price.

Anecdotally, even if the above happens, it'll be only to clear unsold BF stock.

 

[FleetFeet]

That's a damn good animatronic.

 

[sjagolinzer]

Your case is almost assuredly a minority situation though.

#blackcustomersmatter

How much does a used 360 go for now? Because at that point why not spend a little extra money to get a X1 to at least be able to play other exclusives vesus buying a dead console for the one game.