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NPD Sales Results for December 2009

Zeitgeister said:
just because it has worked for CoD sequels doesn't mean it will work that way for a Halo prequel. Or that it would work for any installment of CoD.

Halo does have a larger story / universe of its own behind it (which takes some effort to get into), whereas CoD takes no effort at all. You just have to live in the US or EU to have access to its imagery. There is no garantee that this won't have an effect on the how purchase behaviour works and salestrends behave on a larger scale.

Halo sells for the multiplayer.

Do you really think most of the fanbase has read all of Nylund's novels? He'd be one of the most popular authors in the world. :lol

The quality of the story has been mostly irrelevant for the franchise - look at Halo 2. The bump the franchise name gave to Halo Wars probably represents the extent of the fanbase dedicated to the lore.

You're an armored space marine who fights large-scale battles against aliens, and you never see your protagonists face. You win.

Firestorm said:
2009 Top 10 Retail PC Game Software Titles, Sorted By Units
1. The Sims 3 - The Sims Studio / June 2009
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard / Nov. 2008
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Maxis / April 2008
4. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard / September 2007
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward / Nov. 2009
6. World of Warcraft - Blizzard / November 2004
7. The Sims 3: World Adventures Exp. - The Sims Studio / Nov. 2009
8. Spore - Maxis / September 2008
9. Dragon Age: Origins - BioWare / October 2009
10. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly / March 2009

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61955

9/10 published by EA or Activision. But really a pointless list without DD numbers.
 

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Mrbob said:
Scribblenauts must be selling by some insane word of mouth. Which isn't coming from GAF, that is for sure. :lol

Plenty of it is coming from me.

Controls aside - and I find them workable - the only thing wrong with it is that is utterly spoiled by spamming the same stuff over and over. Don't do that, and avoid the internet and it is a gem, with plenty of scope for imagination.
 
yurinka said:
Even Sony allowed the retailers to sell as they received stock, it's impossible to sell the console for the entire month. Maybe a week, or a week and a half aprox. in the best case.

Some shops don't care about street days and they sell the products some days before, but not a month before.

Ok, to state again since you weren't listening the first time. There was no official street date for the Slim. Sony instructed retailers to sell it when they got stock which was in August. The first day of August or the last day of August... is still August.

The Slim launched in August. Period. The poster I responded to said the PS3 outsold the 360 since launch and that is untrue. You can pick any date you want that you feel it was released but fact remains that Sony themselves never had an official release date... period and end of story. I bought mine from one of the largest retailers in America... Amazon.com and they pretty much always stick to street dates and I got my PS3 slim on 8/25/09.

JJConrad said:
It wasn't that long. The Slim had a soft release date of September 1. The new units started arriving within the week before that release, but still well after the pricedrop. Sony's reps were instructing retailers to start selling them as soon as they got them. There were estimates that about 70k Slims were sold in August. It's a moot point, as it doesn't really change anything but only leads to more symantecs.

Sony said the slim would be widely available by September 1st but never held that as an official street date. The reason it's brought up is that one poster said that the slim has outsold the 360 since launch and people are trying to dispute when the launch was instead of looking at that actual date that people started buying them.

yurinka said:
I mentioned PS3 exclusive line-up because I think it will be key in 2010 for them -specially in Europe, traditional pro Sony market- who is going to get the traditionally best selling IPs in Playstation consoles (Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy -even it isn't exclusive outside Japan-, God of War), and I think they combined are going to help PS3 sales specially in PAL land, closing this WW HW gap between 360 and PS3 which is coming from US.

While this is an NPD thread... PAL sales really aren't a concern and again. What if Sony outsells the 360 after 6 years on the market? What exactly is going to change? At what point does it become too long? 3 years ago, Sony making up the 360 lead would have been impressive coming from the greatness that was the PS2. Now... 6 years later. Who really cares and what is it going to change?
 

Takao

Banned
OldJadedGamer said:
While this is an NPD thread... PAL sales really aren't a concern and again. What if Sony outsells the 360 after 6 years on the market? What exactly is going to change? At what point does it become too long? 3 years ago, Sony making up the 360 lead would have been impressive coming from the greatness that was the PS2. Now... 6 years later. Who really cares and what is it going to change?

2006 (2007 in many markets)-2010= 6 years?
 
Takao said:
2006 (2007 in many markets)-2010= 6 years?

Since this is an NPD thread I'm going on topic and discussing this region. 360 came out in 2005 and another poster said it's possible for the PS3 to outsell the 360 in the next 18 months. That would have made the system available for 6 years at that point. 6 years was the time between the PS2 release and the PS3 release. That's a very long time for a game console. Even if you could the 2006 PS3 release as the starting point that's still 5 years it took for them to catch up coming from a system that previously had 75% of the market.

Also, MS has zero presence in Japan selling near PSP Go numbers. Is it really impressive to say that a company needs three regions to sell the same amount as a company can in just two?

Again, question still stands. Even if it happens... who is going to care and what does it change?
 

imtehman

Banned
Arnie said:
Agreed. GT5 and God of War 3 have the potential to be huge sellers. Although I think God of War needs the right marketing to fulfil it's sales potential, something which Sony seem to have been lacking pre Slim-era. But yes now that it is getting some "Playstation IP's" it should have a mega successful 2010.

there's no "huge" sales potential for GoW3. it'll sell a predictable 2-3 million WW
 

CrunchinJelly

formerly cjelly
OldJadedGamer said:
Since this is an NPD thread I'm going on topic and discussing this region. 360 came out in 2005 and another poster said it's possible for the PS3 to outsell the 360 in the next 18 months. That would have made the system available for 6 years at that point. 6 years was the time between the PS2 release and the PS3 release. That's a very long time for a game console. Even if you could the 2006 PS3 release as the starting point that's still 5 years it took for them to catch up coming from a system that previously had 75% of the market.

Also, MS has zero presence in Japan selling near PSP Go numbers. Is it really impressive to say that a company needs three regions to sell the same amount as a company can in just two?

Again, question still stands. Even if it happens... who is going to care and what does it change?
This generation hasn't just been about the sales.

It's about the major shift of previously PlayStation-exclusive franchises like Tekken, Final Fantasy etc etc etc... if you had said in 2004 that any of those games would appear day-and-date on a rival platform, you would have been laughed off the internet.

It's definitely not just about sales, as Sony can catch up using Europe and Japan. What they can't get back, however, is the mindshare of third party publishers.
 

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
OldJadedGamer said:
Again, question still stands. Even if it happens... who is going to care and what does it change?

It only changes perceptions. But that can influence rather a lot of things - launch timescales, prices, negotiating stances, premium cost of exclusives, marketing stance - essentially everything to do with who throws which eggs in which baskets next time round.

I can't see that it will make a really big difference unless Sony puts a really big dent into the US market, but next time round will be particularly interesting because people are unlikely to be quite so willing to commit early given Nintendo's surprise dominance this time round, so there will be plenty of brinkmanship - and any edge there is will give an advantage.
 
Massa said:
2-3, Really? The first Uncharted did 3 million.
So did the first God of War.

Though there seems to be some silly yet popular notion that Uncharted isn't popular. Despite selling multiple million, because it isn't doing Gears of War numbers
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Sho_Nuff82 said:
The last God of War game sold just over a million in the US and 2.5 million WW.

The last God of War game sold almost double what you just posted in the US--maybe double, actually, depending on if it continued to sell in 2009.

Chuck Norris said:
Though there seems to be some silly yet popular notion that Uncharted isn't popular. Despite selling multiple million, because it isn't doing Gears of War numbers

Uncharted 1 sold less than ~a third what either God of War game did in the US (again depends on GoW2's 2009 sales--I don't have any secret data to know where it ended up in the end)
 
Stumpokapow said:
The last God of War game sold almost double what you just posted in the US--maybe double, actually, depending on if it continued to sell in 2009.

I'm guessing the Wiki is totally wrong then. Hence the lack of citation.

Edit: Not that I doubt your numbers (or your tag), but what is your source? I'm finding nothing on google.
 

Arnie

Member
imtehman said:
there's no "huge" sales potential for GoW3. it'll sell a predictable 2-3 million WW
To be fair I meant in relation to most other 1st party Sony titles. 3 million is huge for a first party Sony title. Look at all the joy that Uncharted 2 has passed a million in the US, hell I'm one of those people. And I expect GT5 to sell around 5 million, although it will be hard to tell what it actually sells due to bundles.
 

Jokeropia

Member
speculawyer said:
And no one will. Even 'better than expected' games sell a small fraction of their PS360 counter-parts.
The PS360 "counterparts" aren't minimal efforts, and thus not really counterparts at all. (Though I'd like to make a distinction between selling power and quality here. A game like NMH has great quality but is not a game that can sell millions.)
speculawyer said:
Durrr. I was not correcting his grammar. I was pointing out that they made one DS game in the past and that I doubt they are planning any additional games considering how that very high quality game sold.
The PSP version sold much worse and that's with an established GTA audience. There might be something more than the platform here.
speculawyer said:
What is the point of this jihad beyond Nintendo fanboyism? If you want really good M-rated games, pick up a PS3 or 360. You can get 360s for less than $200.
eyes.gif
 

Massa

Member
Chuck Norris said:
So did the first God of War.

Though there seems to be some silly yet popular notion that Uncharted isn't popular. Despite selling multiple million, because it isn't doing Gears of War numbers

I don't think Uncharted: DF is unpopular, on the contrary. 3 million is a great number for the game.

I just expect God of War 3 to easily outsell it, just like Uncharted 2 is doing.
 
Stumpokapow said:
The last God of War game sold almost double what you just posted in the US--maybe double, actually, depending on if it continued to sell in 2009.



Uncharted 1 sold less than ~a third what either God of War game did in the US (again depends on GoW2's 2009 sales--I don't have any secret data to know where it ended up in the end)
Well Uncharted sold 2.6 million as of July last year, and God of War sold 2.44 million as of September 2008. They seem to be pulling fairly similar numbers, I don't see where you got your 3 times as much figure from
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Chuck Norris said:
Well Uncharted sold 2.6 million as of July last year, and God of War sold 2.44 million as of September 2008.

God of War 1 sold that many copies in the US, excluding any kind of bundling. Uncharted... uhh.. shipped that many copies worldwide, including bundles. Are you just grabbing random numbers from Google or Wikipedia or DA ZARTZ?

They seem to be pulling fairly similar numbers,

US Sales:
Uncharted 1 ~600k
God of War 1 ~2.5 million.
God of War 2 ~1.7-2.0 million.
 
2.) Using CoD 5 as an example. The franchise exploded with CoD 4, a game that never released on Wii. CoD 3 however, sold more on Wii than PS3.
No, it exploded with CoD 2. CoD 1 if you want to get really technical. Also being able to buy two CoD 3s and two Wiis for the price of the cheapest PS3 might have had something to do with something.

Oh and CoD 3 was the falsely advertised game too! Can't forget that! CG renderings instead of Wii graphics.

The PS360 "counterparts" aren't minimal efforts, and thus not really counterparts at all.
Two words: Two Worlds. If there was ever a reason to laugh, it's that Two Worlds sold more in it's first month than *Insert Beloved Wii Bomb*.

Also God of War is going to sell gangstaz. Well, better than any other PS3 non-Call of Duty game for shure.
 
Arnie said:
To be fair I meant in relation to most other 1st party Sony titles. 3 million is huge for a first party Sony title. Look at all the joy that Uncharted 2 has passed a million in the US, hell I'm one of those people. And I expect GT5 to sell around 5 million, although it will be hard to tell what it actually sells due to bundles.

5 million? :lol

Worldwide
Title Units (K)*
Gran Turismo 10,850
Gran Turismo 2 9,370
Gran Turismo 3 A-spec 14,890
Gran Turismo Concept Series 1,560
Gran Turismo 4 “Prologue” 1,350
Gran Turismo 4 10,830
Gran Turismo 5 “Prologue” 4,170
Total 53,020

*as of September 2009

Basically, you're predicting more than 50% drop from the last game and something like 10 millions less than the first PS2 Gran Turismo? :lol
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Son of Godzilla said:
No, it exploded with CoD 2. CoD 1 if you want to get really technical. Also being able to buy two CoD 3s and two Wiis for the price of the cheapest PS3 might have had something to do with something.

Really?

US sales;
CoD on PS2: ~1 million copies
CoD 2 on PS2: ~1 million copies
CoD 3 on PS2: ~1 million copies

CoD 2 on 360: ~1 million copies
CoD 3 on 360: ~1 million copies
CoD 4 on 360: ~5 million copies
CoD 5 on 360: ~3.5 million copies
CoD 6 on 360: ~4.2+ million copies

CoD 3 on PS3: <500k
CoD 4 on PS3 ~2 million copies
CoD 5 on PS3: ~1.5 million copies
CoD 6 on PS3: ~2+ million copies

CoD 3 on Wii: ~500k
CoD 5 on Wii: ~750-1 million.

... it really doesn't look like the franchise exploded until CoD 4. *shrugs* If you want, you can do a graph of this to help me understand your point.
 

Jokeropia

Member
Stumpokapow took care of the CoD 4 part much more thoroughly than I was going to. Thank you.
Son of Godzilla said:
Also being able to buy two CoD 3s and two Wiis for the price of the cheapest PS3 might have had something to do with something.
That has also very much something to do with the fact that PS3 is still miles behind Wii. The point is that there was an audience there from the start. Red Steel (as dubious quality as it had) also sold really well here.
Son of Godzilla said:
Two words: Two Worlds. If there was ever a reason to laugh, it's that Two Worlds sold more in it's first month than *Insert Beloved Wii Bomb*.
It sold pretty much exactly the same as Red Steel first month, actually. Red Steel obviously outpaced it the long run, though.
 
Stumpokapow said:
... it really doesn't look like the franchise exploded until CoD 4. *shrugs* If you want, you can do a graph of this to help me understand your point.
This do it for ya?

e0msz.jpg


In five years you better not be saying Call of Duty didn't really take off till the MMO sold 24 million in one holiday.
 
Lagspike_exe said:
5 million? :lol



Basically, you're predicting more than 50% drop from the last game and something like 10 millions less than the first PS2 Gran Turismo? :lol
Racing games haven't been doing as hot lately. How much did Gran Turismo PSP sell?
 
Lagspike_exe said:
Yeah, that's an awesome comparison. :lol

Did you even look at the Gran Turismo 5: Prologue stats I posted?
Well if you're using the Gran Turismo 5: Prologue stats then his estimate of 5 million seems fair. I don't see why it's laugh worthy.
 
Wickerbasket said:
Well if you're using the Gran Turismo 5: Prologue stats then his estimate of 5 million seems fair. I don't see why it's laugh worthy.

All right, since you seem unable (or unwilling) to grasp the connection between Prologue and Full versions sales, I'll help you out.

Do you see how much GT4: Prologue sold? Now, check GT4. See the difference?

Sure, there are many other factors involved, and GT5 won't sell 1000% more than it's Prologue, but saying that GT5, one of the strongest series in the entire world, is going to sell 50% less than it's predecessor is simply laughable.

Can you give me one single name of a game on a Playstation platform that went from selling >10kk to around 5?
 
Lagspike_exe said:
All right, since you seem unable (or unwilling) to grasp the connection between Prologue and Full versions sales, I'll help you out.

Do you see how much GT4: Prologue sold? Now, check GT4. See the difference?

Sure, there are many other factors involved, and GT5 won't sell 1000% more than it's Prologue, but saying that GT5, one of the strongest series in the entire world, is going to sell 50% less than it's predecessor is simply laughable.

Can you give me one single name of a game on a Playstation platform that went from selling >10kk to around 5?
The reason GT5 prologue sold so well is because it came out at a time when there weren't many games, it was also a graphical showcase for the system. I think you're deluding yourself if you think GT5 is going to do as well as the previous games in the series considering the fact that it doesn't have a 100million+ userbase.

Also, didn't MGS4 sell half as much as MGS2? Wouldn't that be a good example?
 
Wickerbasket said:
The reason GT5 prologue sold so well is because it came out at a time when there weren't many games, it was also a graphical showcase for the system. I think you're deluding yourself if you think GT5 is going to do as well as the previous games in the series considering the fact that it doesn't have a 100million+ userbase.

Also, didn't MGS4 sell half as much as MGS2? Wouldn't that be a good example?

MGS2 is over 7 million (probably counting the multiplatform re-release), while MGS4 is over 5 million.
 
Lagspike_exe said:
Basically, you're predicting more than 50% drop from the last game and something like 10 millions less than the first PS2 Gran Turismo? :lol

GT3 was a pack in with the system and the source you are using is counting those pack in's as units sold. NPD doesn't count pack in games.

jett said:
GOW2 sold 900k in its first month, holmes.

In the US alone? Obviously since this is an NPD thread that's what you're talking about. I don't remember that, have a link?
 
OldJadedGamer said:
GT3 was a pack in with the system and the source you are using is counting those pack in's as units sold. NPD doesn't count pack in games.

All right, so you agree with him that GT5 is going to sell 5kk ww?
 
Lagspike_exe said:
MGS2 is over 7 million (probably counting the multiplatform re-release), while MGS4 is over 5 million.
MGS2 has 7 million sales to MGS4's 4million shipped. And that's in a genre that's still popular. Anyways, it shows a decline in ps2 to ps3 franchises which was kind of the point.
 
Wickerbasket said:
MGS2 has 7 million sales to MGS4's 4million shipped. And that's in a genre that's still popular. Anyways, it shows a decline in ps2 to ps3 franchises which was kind of the point.

Wikipedia shows 5 million as of August 2009. Don't know the source.
 

Narcosis

Member
Wickerbasket said:
MGS2 has 7 million sales to MGS4's 4million shipped. And that's in a genre that's still popular. Anyways, it shows a decline in ps2 to ps3 franchises which was kind of the point.

Yeah, I'm guessing you didn't pay attention to the dropoff between MGS2 and MGS3, which would indicate the dropoff has nothing to do with the system and more to do with the appeal of the franchise itself.
 

Jokeropia

Member
Lagspike_exe said:
Can you give me one single name of a game on a Playstation platform that went from selling >10kk to around 5?
The only games that have sold more than 10m on a Playstation platform are GTA and GT. GTA did drop to ~5m on PS3, but of course the situations aren't the same since GT is exclusive. (Still, even on all platforms GTA dropped almost 10m from San Andreas to GTAIV.)

Anyway, none of what I'm saying really affects your point, I'm just musing.
 
Lagspike_exe said:
All right, so you agree with him that GT5 is going to sell 5kk ww?

I'm not saying anything. GT5 sales are a crap shoot IMO. I don't know how many people were dumb enough to buy GT5P thinking it was GT5 (remember, no Prologue has ever been released here). And the racing genre isn't what is used to be IMO just like fighting games and the user base isn't what it was with GT4. So I'm really up in the air. I think I'll be surprised either way but in no way am I making any predictions. And again, since this is NPD thread... I'm only talking about US numbers. Not worldwide.

Busaiku said:

Yeah, I didn't think it broke 900k. Still pretty decent for a March and the userbase didn't hurt at the time. It will be interesting to see what GoW3 sells.
 

imtehman

Banned
Stumpokapow said:
God of War 1 sold 2.5 million in the US.

You predict such a steep decline?

is it really that steep? Considering that a lot of playstation franchises are failing to even sell the same as its predecessor i think its pretty generous for me to predict that GoW would sell relatively the same.

plus if you add that GoW 2 did sell less than Gow 1 then i can assume there will be a decline for Gow3 as well
 

Meier

Member
Stumpokapow said:
God of War 1 sold 2.5 million in the US.

You predict such a steep decline?
On a user base of 30 million or something. God of War 3 will probably do at most 1 million copies in the US this year.
 
Firestorm said:
2009 Top 10 Retail PC Game Software Titles, Sorted By Units
1. The Sims 3 - The Sims Studio / June 2009
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard / Nov. 2008
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Maxis / April 2008
4. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard / September 2007
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward / Nov. 2009
6. World of Warcraft - Blizzard / November 2004
7. The Sims 3: World Adventures Exp. - The Sims Studio / Nov. 2009
8. Spore - Maxis / September 2008
9. Dragon Age: Origins - BioWare / October 2009
10. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly / March 2009

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61955

It is a top 10 but really only 6 different games. That is kinda sad.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
OldJadedGamer said:
Ok, to state again since you weren't listening the first time. There was no official street date for the Slim. Sony instructed retailers to sell it when they got stock which was in August. The first day of August or the last day of August... is still August.

The Slim launched in August. Period. The poster I responded to said the PS3 outsold the 360 since launch and that is untrue.
Amazon broke the launch date:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94165-Amazon-Breaks-PS3-Slim-Launch-Date

Even if what you're saying is true as far as the launch date officially not existing, unless Slim did indeed start selling on 1st of August (it didn't, it was close to the end of August), and was counted into NPD from that date, you cannot claim with any certainty that what he was saying is untrue. It may have well outsold X360 just by a bit less than 150K, if you count from 25th of August, instead of 1st of September.
 
Jokeropia said:
The PS360 "counterparts" aren't minimal efforts, and thus not really counterparts at all.
No matter how much you hope, the Wii simply cannot run the CoD:MW, RAGE, Unreal, or other engines used in most M-rated games on the HD consoles. Sorry.

Jokeropia said:
The PSP version sold much worse and that's with an established GTA audience. There might be something more than the platform here.
Yes . . . piracy on the PSP is out of control and people are not big fans of 2D.

Jokeropia said:
Is there any point here?
 
Firestorm said:
2009 Top 10 Retail PC Game Software Titles, Sorted By Units
1. The Sims 3 - The Sims Studio / June 2009
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard / Nov. 2008
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Maxis / April 2008
4. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard / September 2007
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward / Nov. 2009
6. World of Warcraft - Blizzard / November 2004
7. The Sims 3: World Adventures Exp. - The Sims Studio / Nov. 2009
8. Spore - Maxis / September 2008
9. Dragon Age: Origins - BioWare / October 2009
10. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly / March 2009

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61955

It would be nice to see the way that chart changes when DD is added. I do believe a Valve title or two might sneak their way on to that list.
 
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