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NPD Sales Results for April 2014 [Up2: XB1/360 hardware, PS4 #1/XB1 #2 best selling]

Easy, it can be platinumed in literally days. Its very short.

Word on the street is it can be rented and fully experienced within a week, two tops. And won't need to be touched again.

Word of mouth spreads. Its too short and slim on content.

So if that's the case, why did TF X1 collapse? Same reasons?
 

Sydle

Member
The interested consumer in dedicated gaming devices is contracting, more so than I thought would ever occur.

We should all be worried, not so much about the death of the industry, but rather further contraction of the industry or further deviations away from dedicated devices.

This is a bummer. :/

They don't have many games yet. Things will pick up.
 

Foshy

Member
Easy, it can be platinumed in literally days. Its very short.

Word on the street is it can be rented and fully experienced within a week, two tops. And won't need to be touched again.

Word of mouth spreads. Its too short and slim on content.
Which is exactly why everyone is so surprised it's outselling Titanfall XB1.
 

Zalman

Member
I just sold my Vita to Gamestop in hopes of getting a 2000.

These numbers are not making my re-purchase easy.

I might just sit back and see how it does for the following months.
Don't let sales numbers stop you from enjoying a machine if it has games of your interest.
 

Fandangox

Member
How much did Wii U did in April last year? I read on a site from 35k to 40k estimate which would put it at around 65k~ this month I think.
 

Oersted

Member
For a forum that promotes itself as being as smart as NeoGAF does, I'm surprised to see these "Kill Vita" comments. SCEA killed the platform on February 20th, 2013. Everything they've announced since then had a noticeable lack of money put behind it. SCEA hasn't advertised the platform since 2012. Remote Play and PlayStation Now are there to fill in the gaps caused by their software investment in the platform dwindling to just indie games and shoddily made ports. That's an exit strategy out of the handheld business, but they can't afford to just kill it off officially. If they do that, they stand to sour a userbase likely made out of their most loyal fans. Worse off, if they discontinue Vita they'll piss off a good amount of Japanese publishers as the platform is relevant over there. Given PS4 is currently underselling Wii U, Vita, and PS3 in Japan, Sony really can't afford to do that. So instead you'll see the hardware languish on store shelves until enough time has passed for Sony to pull the plug. Then they'll use their "consolation prize" of Remote Play and PlayStation Now as their mobile strategy.


The absolute majority of posts here is " But I love my Vita". *shrugs*
 
But why announce it and essentially forfeit a good chunk of sales in May? Why not wait until E3 to announce it? This whole situation has been weird.

Look at their sales. Assume sales in May go to 0. They haven't lost much.

Announcing it when they did was getting out in front of this month's disastrous number. This way, there's already a strategy built into the media coverage.
 
Anecdotal, but I know few people who just bought the PS3 a year or two ago, and they sure as hell aren't going to upgrade immediately. I'd wager there are many of those, who just recently entered last gen when prices went down, and game library grew and word of mouth spread.

there are lots, 70k just picked up a 360 in April, 6months after the next generation started.

That doesn't mean they don't have to create an new sku (packaging, etc.) for the kinectless Xbone. That does take time for both the factories to repackage them and to ship them over here. What I'm curious about is how early ago did MS decide to go kinectless in regards to their announcement Tuesday.

i read that the decision to go kinectless was made 5 weeks ago. some article posted here on gaf, one of the threads had it.
 

Megatron

Member
But the Titanfall SKU was $450, wasn't it?

I guess the casual consumer will bite on a $399 price tag based on perception alone, but it really isn't much of a deal when compared to the TF bundle.

Yep, and there were better deals that that. Target had that bundle plus a year of live for $450. Frys had the bundle plus Forza 5 for $450. Those are the deals that almost got me to buy an XB1 but I just don't have the time.
 
But the Titanfall SKU was $450, wasn't it?

I guess the casual consumer will bite on a $399 price tag based on perception alone, but it really isn't much of a deal when compared to the TF bundle.

It wasn't just the titanfall sku. There was also a $450 sku that included forza. At least on the microsoft store.

U2fZ3jz.png
 

Jomjom

Banned
If it did then Sony should provide some numbers instead of giving them to some random guy on Twitter. (I know he's trusted by some of you.)

Because honestly this seems like damage control to cover for the fact that ISS dropped completely off the map.

I have a feeling that I should post a time stamped pic of my copy of the game along with an image of me kissing my PS4 otherwise I'm going to be met with pitchforks and torches for making this statement. :)

I have insert race friends! I'm not racist!
 
there are lots, 70k just picked up a 360 in April, 6months after the next generation started.



i read that the decision to go kinectless was made 5 weeks ago. some article posted here on gaf, one of the threads had it.

Ah thanks, if that's the case, I wonder why they are then waiting til June to bring the new Sku out, unless it has something to do with the current stock that retailers are just swimming in atm...
 

artist

Banned
But why announce it and essentially forfeit a good chunk of sales in May? Why not wait until E3 to announce it? This whole situation has been weird.
The amount of people aware of the Kinectless SKU coming in June will actually not that big to be of consideration for Microsoft. Heck despite their back tracking on their original DRM vision, a large percentage of people were not aware of it. And that too with quite a big promotional campaign from Microsoft (DID YA KNOW!)
 

Gartooth

Member
Easy, it can be platinumed in literally days. Its very short.

Word on the street is it can be rented and fully experienced within a week, two tops. And won't need to be touched again.

Word of mouth spreads. Its too short and slim on content.

I got inFamous only a few weeks back and managed to reach the ending in 3 days.

inFamous games aren't typically super long to begin with, but Second Son is probably only half as long as the two previous games.
 
Reading this thread reads like Titanfall was a massive failure, pure insanity

There are two perspectives on Titanfall. In regards to being sold as a game, it has obviously done amazingly well. Top of the charts and obviously strong 360 sales will make some people very happy.

But it had a more important job for Microsoft. That is to sell xbox live subscriptions on the xbox one. Each sale of Titanfall on the xbox one also represents a subscription, because you can't play it otherwise.

If it isn't selling that great on the new console, which seems to be the case, this means people are also not getting locking into the xbox one ecosystem. There is no reason for instance, that 360 players will not switch to PS4 and sign up to PS+ in the process.

So in that regard, it doesn't seem to be doing quite the job that is needed. The further problem is this particular battle for subscriptions is very front loaded, once a console becomes "the home" for online games that perception is very difficult to overcome (see the continued dominance of the 360 in these areas). If the PS4 does continue to dominate for the next few months at least (and there is nothing to suggest otherwise) things could get a lot worse for Microsoft in the long run.
 
The interested consumer in dedicated gaming devices is contracting, more so than I thought would ever occur.

We should all be worried, not so much about the death of the industry, but rather further contraction of the industry or further deviations away from dedicated devices.

This is a bummer. :/

Or maybe it's just a slow month in the first year of the new consoles. Xbone is horribly (okay, maybe not horribly) overpriced and the software line-up was barren on both platforms.

Things will pick up later in the year with more releases, price-drops, and bundles.
 

Hawk269

Member
But why announce it and essentially forfeit a good chunk of sales in May? Why not wait until E3 to announce it? This whole situation has been weird.

First reason is what they already said. The did not want the announcement of the $399.99 Sku to be the headline of E3, they want to focus on the games for the platform, not hardware. This ties into what Phil Spencer has been saying all along.

Second reason and this is just me speculating, there is something else afoot. I get why they announced it early, but why release it on the same day as your conference (A Monday). I think there is something else that has not been said. I don't believe for a second it is price related, I doubt they would announce a $399.99 unit and 25 odd days later say it is now lower. I think there is a pack in or some added value to it that they will mention at the show.

Even with this announcement, they will still sell the existing unit. A friend that works at Best Buy told me they sold 4 units today, even though the customer knew that a $399.99 Sku was coming, he said they wanted the Kinect. So there is still a market for the existing hardware and they still will sell.
 

hawk2025

Member
Easy, it can be platinumed in literally days. Its very short.

Word on the street is it can be rented and fully experienced within a week, two tops. And won't need to be touched again.

Word of mouth spreads. Its too short and slim on content.




Exactly.


And yet it sells more than Titanfall on the Xbox One.

...which I suppose CAN be fully experienced in a week, two tops as well, so there's that.



First reason is what they already said. The did not want the announcement of the $399.99 Sku to be the headline of E3, they want to focus on the games for the platform, not hardware. This ties into what Phil Spencer has been saying all along.

Second reason and this is just me speculating, there is something else afoot. I get why they announced it early, but why release it on the same day as your conference (A Monday). I think there is something else that has not been said. I don't believe for a second it is price related, I doubt they would announce a $399.99 unit and 25 odd days later say it is now lower. I think there is a pack in or some added value to it that they will mention at the show.

Even with this announcement, they will still sell the existing unit. A friend that works at Best Buy told me they sold 4 units today, even though the customer knew that a $399.99 Sku was coming, he said they wanted the Kinect. So there is still a market for the existing hardware and they still will sell.

There's a VERY simple explanation: Like 95% of other price drops, it wasn't meant to be revealed until E3, hence the June 9th date.

But the awful NPD numbers plus the probability of the information leaking anyways had them decide that it was best to just go ahead and do it.
 
But the Titanfall SKU was $450, wasn't it?

I guess the casual consumer will bite on a $399 price tag based on perception alone, but it really isn't much of a deal when compared to the TF bundle.
No, there were sales at $450 but I'm pretty sure the normal price was $500.
 

Spiegel

Member
I just hope if the Vita 5K number is real, it just means they were waiting to clear the stock of the original model....

Vita did 10k last month and April is a bad month compared to March.

Stock might have something to do with the past two months numbers, but it's no like Vita is going to do 30k or higher with the release of the new model.
 

Bundy

Banned
If it did then Sony should provide some numbers instead of giving them to some random guy on Twitter. (I know he's trusted by some of you.)

Because honestly this seems like damage control to cover for the fact that ISS dropped completely off the map.

I have a feeling that I should post a time stamped pic of my copy of the game along with an image of me kissing my PS4 otherwise I'm going to be met with pitchforks and torches for making this statement. :)

Here:

 
But why announce it and essentially forfeit a good chunk of sales in May? Why not wait until E3 to announce it? This whole situation has been weird.

The price cut announcement had no impact on April sales and they are abysmal. Sales would have been just as bad or worse in May, with or without the announcement.

Announcing now means they can build up some press, and they can also blame their bad performance in April and May on the price cut (like they did just now).
 
The XBO can only rely on so many temporary boosters. To be quite honest, I don't think the $399 Kinect-less SKU will do much at all. Titanfall did very little to stop the PS4's momentum and if the XBO keeps lagging like this, then it's going to track behind the 360 by the end of its first year in the market.
 
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