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NPD Sales Results For February 2017 [Up1: For Honor highest LTD game of 2017 so far]

That guy tweeted platform rankings.



Right?

I mean, so many games like it have come out. Practically copy and paste every game the last 10 years.

What ARE you talking about.

here is the link:
https://t.co/I2DovsZQdG
all credits to Mat Piscatella and the NPD Group

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especially the trailing YTD ranking is some very very! useful info about game performance
don't ever say again we get less information from NPD than the past few years
 
Nice to see Nioh chart and RE7 hold. I figured For Honor would dominate, Ubisoft multiplayer games are doing really well this gen.

Obviously next month will be even more exciting, its not every year that you get a new Nier game, also there was a console launch.
 
MS not releasing digital data is a bad move. I would guess a lot of people who bought Halo Wars 2 bought it digital. I know I did.
the game had been at $40 in cdkeys even before launch, I expect the digital share to be higher for that game. Even though, I don't think the game would have charted anyway
 
How's the PS4/XB1 vs PS3/360 graph looking now? I'm guessing it's starting to turn in favour of last generation considering we're at the point where PS3 was recovering and the 360 was picking up steam (although not at the point of Kinect yet).
If we're only looking at those two, it's not even close to turning in favor of last gen. Since Microsoft launched a year earlier last time, but they came out in the same month this time, there's two ways we could compare:

1. Launch-aligned, so Nov 2005-Jan 2009 for 360, and Nov 2006-Jan 2010 for PS3
2. First three years with both on market, Nov 2006-Jan 2010 for both

But why bother choosing? Let's add option 3, cumulative sales of both machines from Nov 2005-Jan 2010: the first four years of 360 and the first three years of PS3. That total is 30.4m. By contrast, the combined sales for the Nov 2013-Jan 2017 of Xbox One/PS4 are 33.8m. So even with adding an extra year of sales to last gen, current gen still has a lead of ~3.4m units.

That gap will shrink in the next year, but not disappear. Last gen sold 11.1m units in that period, and I'd project current gen to hit ~9.8m. In 2011/2018, the numbers should be something like 11.8m/9.1m. So last gen takes over in January 2019...except all this is option 3, including that extra year of 360. Remove that, and you get option 2: last gen's HD twins don't pass this gen's until the end of 2019. Make the comparison launch-aligned as in option 1, and it'd be near the end of 2020 before last gen passes this.

Your guess is years too early. Whether almost two, three, or four years too early depends how you compare.

Total hardware sales will go down, yes. But that's mostly not due to Sony and Microsoft, but Nintendo. (And even that would be mitigated if you count WiiU and Switch as both being this generation.)
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Nice to see Kingdom Hearts still charting on individual charts.
 

Chris1

Member
Man Ubisoft just killing it with these games GAF (and critics) don't give a shit about. Gotta respect that market research.

They're the only publisher putting out constant new IP successes this gen, it's weird. Their followups and sequels tend to not do aswell but when it comes to new IP's they absolutely nail it sales wise.

Division, The Crew, Watch Dogs, For Honour all massive succeses. Their only real flop is probably Steep and that's an already extremely niche genre as it is. Wouldn't be surprised if even Steep outsold expectations.


Even though I don't fucking get it.. I always expected for honour to do well just based off the fact Ubisoft is making it lol. They have hit absolute gold this gen for new IPs.
 
The Ubisoft trend toward multiplayer centric games (For Honor, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, The Division) makes me really sad as a single player gamer. But it's hard to argue they aren't making smart business decisions. I'm just out of touch with today's market I guess.
 
The Ubisoft trend toward multiplayer centric games (For Honor, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, The Division) makes me really sad as a single player gamer. But it's hard to argue they aren't making smart business decisions. I'm just out of touch with today's market I guess.

Pretty much where im at.
 

Massa

Member
They're the only publisher putting out constant new IP successes this gen, it's weird. Their followups and sequels tend to not do aswell but when it comes to new IP's they absolutely nail it sales wise.

Of the big publishers they're the ones that are even trying so it's good to see the success. Activision is CoD and Destiny, and then there's the Sports & Star Wars publisher.
 

Teeth

Member
According to Ubisoft Steep is actually above expectations.

I do wonder if that was their release expectations or development expectations.

The big pubs will allocate budgets for titles based on sales expectations; as development comes near complete, they will do internal testing, mock reviews and social media reads and then reassess sales expectations and marketing budget allocation. Games that test low internally generally receive lower marketing budgets and Steep, as far as I could tell, had very little marketing or PR push.

That leads me to think that they reassessed sales expectations way down, but that doesn't mean that the game was successful by beating those lowered expectations. We have no idea what the dev budget was allocated (though with low marketing costs, the game would have an easier time being profitable).
 

Kill3r7

Member
Ubi could potentially have back to back top games of the month depending on how well GRW does against MEA. Really important for them considering they did not have a particularly strong holiday season this past year.

The Division and Overwatch are the only new IP in the top 10 for the trailing 12 months. Impressive job by Dark Souls III.

Lack of full disclosure on digital figures skews those numbers. UC4 and probably even DOOM should be ahead of DS3.
 

AEdouard

Member
I do wonder if that was their release expectations or development expectations.

The big pubs will allocate budgets for titles based on sales expectations; as development comes near complete, they will do internal testing, mock reviews and social media reads and then reassess sales expectations and marketing budget allocation. Games that test low internally generally receive lower marketing budgets and Steep, as far as I could tell, had very little marketing or PR push.

That leads me to think that they reassessed sales expectations way down, but that doesn't mean that the game was successful by beating those lowered expectations. We have no idea what the dev budget was allocated (though with low marketing costs, the game would have an easier time being profitable).

I'm pretty sure Steep had a budget on the smaller side. It was mainly developed by one of their smaller French studios. We're very far from AC/Watch Dogs/Far Cry Montreal led projects.
 
Of course. Pro accounted for 18.5% of PS4 sales averaged between Nov and Dec.

As for stock shortages, anecdotally the Pro seems very hard to come by in some territories like SE Asia.


i can attest to that...am from singapore...people have been searching left and right for the pro in our Local forums.
 
Happy for RE7's strong Feburary, and happy to see Overwatch on there again.

Wish I could be happy for For Honor, but that game still plays like it's a goddamn beta at times with all of the connection errors and crashes.
 

Hyun Sai

Member
Not surprised by For Honor success. Despite the "fighting game" stigma, the core and most popular mode, Dominion, is very "moba" like, so it will always have a solid active base of players.

I expect Wildlands to dominate this month as well. Open world coop focused shooter, and entirely doable offline solo. It's a fucking impressive complete package.

Those games got issues (especially For Honor due to its competitive nature), but judging by the R6 Siege turnaround, I feel confident.
 

Hoje0308

Banned
"Not a good fit!"
*bans Zhuge*
"You can't quote him."
*closes thread*

And now you're linking to him in the NPD thread. Fucking LOL
 

pixelation

Member
Does Ubisoft have a deal with the devil?... i mean... most of their new IP's do stupidly good (regardless of their quality). And other companies new IP's fare nowhere near as good.
 
Ubisoft has the mass gaming market in the palm of their hand.

I'm sure Vivendi is salivating at the prospects. Maybe they can use this income to buy some stock back...

Does Ubisoft have a deal with the devil?... i mean... most of their new IP's do stupidly good (regardless of their quality). And other companies new IP's fare nowhere near as good.

It seems like it. Their games don't even need to review particularly well to sell. To be fair Destiny did the same though. This will probably encourage more focus on games as service for other publishers going forward. Mediocre multiplayer games outsell great single player games.
 

Welfare

Member
Does Ubisoft have a deal with the devil?... i mean... most of their new IP's do stupidly good (regardless of their quality). And other companies new IP's fare nowhere near as good.
"All of our new IP's are successful"

Monkey's Paw

"The sequels shall falter."
 

Ravage

Member
I'm impressed by Nioh's performance, especially when its digital sales are not included. Physical shortage might have pushed up the digital % too.
 
It was out of stock for a while and games are heavily font-loaded in sales. Who knows how many people just picked up something else, especially in this busy season?

That's where the theee DLCs come in.

Every two or three months one of those suckers pop up and reignites interest in the game. Then we would cap off the end of the year with Nioh: Kiwami GOTY edition
 
Yeah, didn't notice that (I even missed Siege as I just ran across the top and bottom a bit)

I admit to not be a lover of high sales in some sort of way that many of us do. I appreciate games being made that I like and honestly

it isn't salt, it isn't being hurt but the way I really see it is that if games that are rather poor in my eyes are doing good (for honor, ghosts wild) I see it as something that will continue from said publisher or be copied a bit over into other games and will continue to drive games like Nioh that feel more inspired and have better design IMO to be driven out of the industry

As we have seen from arcade racers and horror titles or good first person shooter campaigns etc

Now, I am all for diversity but it seems marketing is winning out over solid made games. I get that sounds a bit salty though, but hopefully my idea is a little more clear over that.


Opinions, how do they work?


Just because For Honor and Wildlands aren't your cup of tea doesn't mean they're not good. They are good, and they appeal to a wider user base.



Do you have any idea how good it is that a niche game (samurai dark souls, come on) charted top 10?

Perspective.


Edit: also, a critically acclaimed female-led robot dinosaur game is likely to be #1 or 2 next month.
 

Kaako

Felium Defensor
I'm glad to see Nioh up there considering digital/deluxe not counted. My most played game this gen currently hour wise. Love this game.
 
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