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NPD Sales Results for March 2014 [Up4: FFX/X-2 HD]

Foffy

Banned
So is it finally time to accept that it's time to worry?

At this point, outside of a hefty price cut, what else can MS do?

They threw in TF, launched a huge ad campaign, the media talked about nothing but TF/X1, they issued price cuts, and they still lost. And not only that, they sold less on average. I mean, how can you not be worried?

I am honestly just shocked that PS4 beat it. Just seriously.

In a way, I'm not surprised. Maybe it's because I fit in the camp that all of the hype for Titanfall was flakey and didn't seem particularly impressive, it seemed like the core hook of the game wasn't even what it did, but what it was being marketed as. Hard to "believe the hype" when the hype seemed like an aura that can't be seen to a game. Suffice to say, whatever target they were hoping for with the marketing missed on a major level. It seemed to move to owners of the system, when it was being marketed essentially as a relaunch of the entire platform. This is something we saw with Wii U and Super Mario 3D World, to an extent. Only Sony has been able to avoid that minefield.

It seems Microsoft is in a tornado of stumbles. I think it's fascinating to see, if only for their ego when they announced the system and all of the stuff leading into E3 and beyond. It'll be fun to see how this goes, as they can't rely on prestige of the last platform, intense marketing of a few key titles, and the overpriced nature of the platform. The burned the prestige away when they revealed the system, the marketing isn't working, and I believe many consumers can grasp what it is offering for what it costs is not good value.
 

Darknight

Member
So wasnt Xbone supposed to have beat PS4 numbers this month due to the Titanfall hype? Do I have this right or was this just talk here on GAF? I was lead to believe TF would push more consoles than ISS would.

I mean both sold well but to me its crazy PS4 remains the best selling due to supply constraint WW/ample NA supply.

Is this legit shocking to some or was this expected?
 

Slashlen

Member
I actually though MS would win this month.

Titanfall, bundles, and unprecedented discounts. MS did everything they could to give sales a boost, and they don't really seem to get anywhere. At this point, I'm wondering if Titanfall is the only thing that's kept them propped up this long.

What in the world happens in April?
 

Miles X

Member
About the 5 million shipped number... Did stores return unsold vanilla XBOX ONE's to MS in exchange for the new Titanfall bundles? Is it possible some of that 5 million includes ONE's that were shipped but already returned...? If so, yikes!

What the ... no obviously not. They're over 5m LTD which means that's how many they've made. It's illegal (in their financials) to do shady shit like that.
 

Salex_

Member
So Titanfall wasn't the "system seller" everyone claimed it was? Even after all those deals, insane marketing campaign, and hype from the media? The Xbox One sold lower per week than last month. That's crazy.

Does anyone think there's a chance for the Xbox One to win any NPD this year?
 

hohoXD123

Member
The day is April 18 2014 and a somber tension hangs in the air within the Polygon offices. The offices that just one year before were bustling with activity and laughter. But now the laughter has faded. The desks are lined with workers, with catatonic stares as the employees come to contemplate the news. The horrifying truth. There is no banter in the office, all that can be heard is a small echoing sobbing from the bathrooms and the furious mashing of a keyboard from Ben Kuchera's desk. Arthur Gies kicks over a small bin and whispers "Titanfall... Titanfall was going to change everything". But in his heart he comes to realise the dream is over.
Beautiful.
 
They should probably just take the money loss on Kinect and leave it in. At least they will have a differentiator, if only via a few things. They can't just bring things up to par(and can never do that with specs), but they have to now bring something to the table to turn perception around. I don't think they have anything in the wings that can do that.

I don't think a differentiator is all that important, in the grand scheme of things. But the real issue is I don't think there's much will inside Microsoft to eat the cost of Kinect. Let's just assume it costs them $100 to put it in the box, for simplicity. That's a billion dollars lost for every 10 million units sold if they just start giving it away. Eventually, the Xbox platform will have to turn into a consistent money maker, or else the investors will certainly get tired of it. Some are tired of it now, despite the profit potential. If it starts, or rather resumes, sapping profitability, then it will just face increasing calls to be sold / spun off / or simply shut down.
 

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
Didn't you expect Titanfall to start closing the gap between the two consoles? Why act like people didn't expect that now.


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=95496634&postcount=700


Haha that's gold.


miDnIghtEr20C said:
Wha? But I'm not changing any goal post. Lol.. wow. We all knew that the PS4 would outsell the X1. That's a known and was known thing. My opinion is that 160,000 isn't that big of a gap.

PS4 has outsold it. That's clear. I'm not saying that. How are you reading that? My post are saying that I don't think that is a big gap.

I'll edit in that I think that number is an easy reach to make up when TitanFall comes out. Geez, imagine if they make a X1 themed TF console. My point is that the gap isn't big. That's a small number to make up. Despite all the crap MS did to themselves at the start of E3 and all that.. 160k is small potatoes.


Yep, those Sony fans sure can't seem to come to grips with reality alright.
 

Dahbomb

Member
uc
God damn I love me some Kuroko no Basketball gifs.

Should've used Taiga "in the zone" for more accuracy.
 
I actually though MS would win this month.

Titanfall, bundles, and unprecedented sales. MS did everything they could to give sales a boost, and they don't really seem to get anywhere. At this point, I'm wondering if Titanfall is the only thing that's kept them propped up this long.

What in the world happens in April?

Let's not forget about availability.
 

Chobel

Member
It really is but I'm not looking at this from the PR pov. Gamers aren't stupid and we knew this was just another shooter with far less features than games in the genre offered ten years ago.

The answer to MS is clear; when there is a game that has a wider mass appeal than Titanfall, it'll see the success it wants. It's entire run this gen will not be dictated by a single game 5 months into the gen.

Hopefully both EA and MS learn not to waste so much money in pointless marketing hyperbole since it clearly did not give them the output they were looking for.

This standard quotes for you?
"It's hard to overstate the importance of Titanfall to the Xbox One release this year," Mehdi told Bloomberg Businessweek. "For us, it's a game changer. It's a system seller.""

http://www.businessweek.com/article...hopes-titanfalls-robots-can-save-the-xbox-one
 

REV 09

Member
MS needs to drop the price if they care about market share, but they may care more about profit. Titanfall was a disappointment to me, so I don't care much for its sales or impact.

Sony needs more games. I feel like I can still go another year without ps4 by looking at this years lineup.
 
We know the PlayStation sold through numbers and the Xbox One sold-in (shipment) numbers.

For Sony they're selling out pretty quickly so the sold-through isn't very different, so their incentive is to report sold-through as it's the more impressive way to report numbers.

For Microsoft there's definitely a lag, so reporting sold-in for an extra 500K or whatever is more worthwhile to them.

When the PS4 stabilizes for a while they will probably move to shipments, at which point we can compare them directly from that front.
Ok, that makes sense. Seeing that PS4 stock is becoming a little more readily available (I actually saw one on the shelf in my local Target for the first time last week), maybe Sony will shift to sold-in (shipment) numbers as soon as next month.
 

Mask

Member
I think Microsofts is in trouble now.

Sony has MLB14 coming up for the Ps4.
They have exclusive marketing for Watchdogs.
They have The Last Of Us Remastered coming up.
They have DriveClub coming up.
They have exclusive marketing for Destiny.
They have The Order 1886 coming up.
They have Planetside2 coming up.

Microsoft has basically nothing until SunsetOverdrive, Halo2 Anniversary or Forza Horizon2 hit.

Microsofts really needs to knock it out of the park at E3.
By that I mean not only games wise. They need to show something amazing like Illumiroom or a VR/AR solution.
They need to drop the price below Ps4.
And they need to show a of amazing exclusives.

Yep, until E3, we don't actually know many of the release dates for the upcoming Xbone games.

They really need to announce a lot of release dates, indie games and new exclusives for the rest of the year, or the Xbone is gonna be pretty barren release-wise.
 

Kusagari

Member
It really is but I'm not looking at this from the PR pov. Gamers aren't stupid and we knew this was just another shooter with far less features than games in the genre offered ten years ago.

The answer to MS is clear; when there is a game that has a wider mass appeal than Titanfall, it'll see the success it wants. It's entire run this gen will not be dictated by a single game 5 months into the gen.

Hopefully both EA and MS learn not to waste so much money in pointless marketing hyperbole since it clearly did not give them the output they were looking for.

You literally said Titanfall wasn't marketed as the second coming of Jesus to the gaming community. It was by EA, MS and various game journalists for months on end. And MS was quite obviously banking heavily on Titanfall boosting their fortunes.

What you just said here has absolutely nothing to do with what you said prior.
 

TS-08

Member
I think Microsofts is in trouble now.

Sony has MLB14 coming up for the Ps4.
They have exclusive marketing for Watchdogs.
They have The Last Of Us Remastered coming up.
They have DriveClub coming up.
They have exclusive marketing for Destiny.
They have The Order 1886 coming up.
They have Planetside2 coming up.

Microsoft has basically nothing until SunsetOverdrive, Halo2 Anniversary or Forza Horizon2 hit.

Microsofts really needs to knock it out of the park at E3.
By that I mean not only games wise. They need to show something amazing like Illumiroom or a VR/AR solution.
They need to drop the price below Ps4.
And they need to show a of amazing exclusives.

And you can't discount PS4's status as the multiplat king even with games they have no marketing partnership for. Where are people going to go when they decide to take the next gen plunge for Arkham Knight? Madden? Even something like Call of Duty could potentially lose its Xbox-favored identity, which would be a big blow. A serious price cut needs to happen fast, and exclusives need to be good and plentiful.
 

Malice215

Member
Good to see healthy numbers for both next gen consoles, but MS needs a permanent price cut/Kinectless Xbone/Halo 5 to keep pace, otherwise PS4 is going to dominate. They're out of aces to play at this point.
 

Vashetti

Banned
Seems to me that XB1 sales are already stagnating like Wii U's did after the first couple of months while the PS4 easily pulls ahead.

It really is the PS2 gen all over again. Return of the King indeed.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
....

...........

...................

[screaming internally]

Why do you bother, of course there's going to people who link XB1 failings to Titanfall's faling, you can set your clock by it.

Truth be told we don't actually know much it sold this month could any NPD holders give a hint?
 

Dragon

Banned
It's funny because it is kind of ridiculous, I've fallen into that trap myself but as long as it's sales don't significantly affect your variety of games it does matter which company vying for your money is doing better than another company vying for your money. Of course if it does affecting your choice in software then it makes sense for your concern.

It's simply a retrospective laugh at this whole situation.

I think sales do have an effect on publishers and games being developed, which is why I get interested in them. Sure, if the PS4 outsells the XB1 by 50k in March it really isn't going to determine shit. I think it helps to put things into perspective. Everyone has opinions about things and frankly they have opinions about how they want video games to change in one way or another. Even the mods that try to remain impartial (well except bish because we all know how he feels about things at the moment).

This is more sports than the stock market. Even moreso than sports (where you get successful teams disbanding and not getting the investment they deserve) successful consoles are usually rewarded with more games (sorry third party Wii games).
 
The day is April 18 2014 and a somber tension hangs in the air within the Polygon offices. The offices that just one year before were bustling with activity and laughter. But now the laughter has faded. The desks are lined with workers, with catatonic stares as the employees come to contemplate the news. The horrifying truth. There is no banter in the office, all that can be heard is a small echoing sobbing from the bathrooms and the furious mashing of a keyboard from Ben Kuchera's desk. Arthur Gies kicks over a small bin and whispers "Titanfall... Titanfall was going to change everything". But in his heart he comes to realise the dream is over.
Incredible, hahaha.
 
Every publisher loves to brag about millions of sales on day xx as that is a hype generator and does push consumers to buy into it that it is a popular item.

Instead, there were price drops from major retailers, bundles with the game included free and silence from MS.

VERY interested in TF numbers.
 
While PC physical sales aren't what they used to be the PC version if Titanfall is included in the numbers to make it #1.

Wonder what the split is and what the X1 sales of Titanfall were compared to Infamous.
 
The day is April 18 2014 and a somber tension hangs in the air within the Polygon offices. The offices that just one year before were bustling with activity and laughter. But now the laughter has faded. The desks are lined with workers, with catatonic stares as the employees come to contemplate the news. The horrifying truth. There is no banter in the office, all that can be heard is a small echoing sobbing from the bathrooms and the furious mashing of a keyboard from Ben Kuchera's desk. Arthur Gies kicks over a small bin and whispers "Titanfall... Titanfall was going to change everything". But in his heart he comes to realise the dream is over.

I love me some Polygon fan fiction.
 
Ignoring the MS angle do we have any idea if Respawn and/or EA are happy with Titanfall sales? I bought the game for PC on a whim a few days ago and while it is a barebones package I've gotten hooked. Hope there is an opportunity for Titanfall 2 to drop in 2 years and be even better.
 

catmario

Member
Anyway, Very good numbers for South Park.

As I expected, NO.1 software was Titanfall. So good.

And PS4 and XBONE are both doing well. :)
 
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