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NPD Sales Results for February 2016 [Up1: Fire Emblem]

Nobody can say whats enough or not. What they were doing for "10years" isnt widly known either. If it reaches a target and square says it was a success thats all we have to go off

At least try to look at the situation objectively and critically. And any reasonable person can estimate potential costs and revenues and determine what part of PR statements are then reasonable and believable or dubious. If you just want to take that PR at face value, great. But don't tell others that they have to.

So, with that slight chance and my fondness of R&C, I am going to roll with it!

Alright, I'm with you. It would make me so happy to see R&C up at the top 3 or so.

Stop murdering my hopes. T_T

I'm sorry. I'll go get some coffee and get in a better mood. <3
 

RexNovis

Banned
Why does that make it a relief?

10 year development. 10 million copies @ $30 retail average price = $300m retail revenues. Take out retailer margin you're at, what $225m ballpark rev for the pub?

For a 10 year development? Yeah, that's still not enough.

I'm just going by their statement to Famitsu here. I mean we don't know that it was in active development for that entire time. It could have easily been placed on hold or had minimal staff allocated for much of that time. With the statements I quoted above I'm hopeful that this might be the case and that maybe SE isn't as batshit crazy as I thought they were. Let me hope Queso. Stop murdering my hopes. T_T
 
At least try to look at the situation objectively and critically. And any reasonable person can estimate potential costs and revenues and determine what part of PR statements are then reasonable and believable or dubious. If you just want to take that PR at face value, great. But don't tell others that they have to.



Alright, I'm with you. It would make me so happy to see R&C up at the top 3 or so.
Im not taking the pr at face value but im not stating theres no way this can be profitable either
 

RexNovis

Banned
What are the best selling $60 retail 7-10 hour singleplayer only games this generation on PS4/XB1?

Serious question.

Well Far Cry games and Batman Arkham Knight are substantially longer than that soooo hmmm. Is the only other example really The Order? I certainly can't think of any others. That's crazy. I didn't realize how few short narrative driven games released at retail. Maybe I'm missing some?

I'm sorry. I'll go get some coffee and get in a better mood. <3

It's ok CQ. I can relate. No hard feelings here. <3
 

Bruno MB

Member
Only the first 3 Ratchet & Clank titles for PS2 debuted over 100,000 units with Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal being the only title in the series that managed to cross 200,000 units on its launch month.

Ratchet & Clank (2002) - 112,000 units
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (2003) - 125,000 units
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (2004) - 207,500 units
Ratchet: Deadlocked (2005) - 55,300 units
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (2007) - 74,500 units

The remaining PS3 Ratchet & Clank titles sold less than Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction with the exception of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time which had a slightly better debut.
 
Only the first 3 Ratchet & Clank titles for PS2 debuted over 100,000 units with Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal being the only title in the series that managed to cross 200,000 units on its launch month.

Ratchet & Clank (2002) - 112,000 units
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (2003) - 125,000 units
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (2004) - 207,500 units
Ratchet: Deadlocked (2005) - 55,300 units
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (2007) - 74,500 units

The remaining PS3 Ratchet & Clank titles sold less than Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction with the exception of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time which had a slightly better debut.
Understandable, ratchet kinda took a dive after up your arsenal anyway. Hopeful this one can at least top its original
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Top 9:

inFAMOUS Second Son
Evil Within (a bit longer than 10)
Ryse
Wolf TNO
Tomb Raider 2013
Minecraft Story Mode
Thief
ROTTR
The Order 1886
Thanks. It seems like a lot of those were launch or near-launch titles as well, and I don't think any of them really bowled people over in terms of sales, at least at their initial sale price.

Wolfenstein did quite well on Steam in the long run, but it also spent much of its life as a $20-$30 or less title.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a tad longer with some side stuff, but it also seemed to heavily collapse compared to the previous entry.

Also, is Minecraft: Story Mode really $60? They must be making bank on that one.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Top 9:

inFAMOUS Second Son
Evil Within (a bit longer than 10)
Ryse
Wolf TNO
Tomb Raider 2013
Minecraft Story Mode
Thief
ROTTR
The Order 1886

Is that in order of sales or just random?

Completely forgot about The New Order, Theif and Ryse. All of those fit.

Not sure Infamous would count as its open world that's seems fairly different from the sort of experience Quantum Break offers. Evil Within is a different genre altogether so I'm not sure I would count that either. I thought Minecraft story mode had multiplayer functions? Is ROTTR really that short? Going by the comments I've read about the game I had expected it to be significantly longer than that and Im not sure I would call it a linear narrative driven experience either.

Edit: nvm Nirolak never said linear narrative driven. I'm literally imagining things. I should go to sleep...


Oh shit! Hahahaha how could I have forgotten Knack?!? Wow I am ashamed. Yea that's a good one albeit it does have drop in drop out coop so maybe that disqualifies it from comparison here?
 
After Rex slashed the list:

Top 5:

Ryse
Wolf TNO
Tomb Raider 2013
Thief
The Order 1886

Not sure Infamous would count as its open world.

HLTB has it at 10 hours. It's single player. So. Shrug.

Evil Within is a different genre altogether so I'm not sure I would count that either.

Huh? You're a dude. You have inventory. You run through levels. How is it different? HLTB has it at 16 hours. So that is a stretch.

Is ROTTR really that short? Going by the comments I've read about the game I had expected it to be significantly longer than that and Im not sure I would call it s linear narrative driven experience either.

ROTTR not a narrative linear experience? Did we play the same game? HLTB has the main story at 12 hours. Main & Extra at 19.
 

Blanquito

Member
Since NPD threads seem to have more level-headed industry sales analysis than other threads, I thought I would ask it here:

How will PS4K/Xbox1.5 realistically affect the market? Obviously we don't know the full details of how everything will work, but I would like to talk about the possibilities here.

(From here on out, when I say PS4 I mean both PS4 & XB1, and when I say PS4K I mean PS4K & XB1.5 for brevity's sake)

My thoughts are (if the successors are announced at e3 for example), that there will be an immediate price drop at e3 for ps4, in order to help offset the potential lower sales of people waiting for the ps4k.

I see the prices of ps4 & ps4k staying where they are until it's reasonable to drop the price of the ps4k, and then both will get a price drop in unison.

I don't believe that ps4k sales will be high for several years, but the price drop of the ps4 will help it stay at decent sales numbers, but probably not as high as it is currently charting YOY.

I dunno.

Thoughts?
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
HLTB has it at 10 hours. It's single player. So. Shrug.

I think Infamous fits in the sense that its scope fits the type of product companies are phasing out.

The studio also got gutted after the game launched, so presumably Sony wasn't blown away with how it performed, and wanted the remaining team to spend a long time thinking about how to make something to fit where the market is headed.

For The Evil Within, I notice a lot of multiplayer/online focused jobs for Tango, so Bethesda is trying to make some product adjustments there as well.

Doom has been really focusing on trying to hype up its multiplayer component to boot, despite the main game otherwise being pretty comparable to Wolfenstein.
 

RexNovis

Banned
After Rex slashed the list:

Top 5:

Ryse
Wolf TNO
Tomb Raider 2013
Thief
The Order 1886



HLTB has it at 10 hours. It's single player. So. Shrug.



Huh? You're a dude. You have inventory. You run through levels. How is it different? HLTB has it at 16 hours. So that is a stretch.



ROTTR not a narrative linear experience? Did we play the same game? HLTB has the main story at 12 hours. Main & Extra at 19.

I haven't played ROTTR yet I'm just going off what I've read about the game thus far so if you say it is I believe you.

To me horror is its own thing so I don't really put it in the same category as Quantim Break. If that's not the case then maybe Outlast would count? Did it get a retail release?
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I haven't played ROTTR yet I'm just going off what I've read about the game thus far so if you say it is I believe you.

To me horror is its own thing so I don't really put it in the same category as Quantim Break. If that's not the case then maybe Outlast would count? Did it get a retail release?
Outlast isn't a $60 game.

The core of what I was trying to get at is that an 7-12-ish hour singleplayer only type game at $60 has gotten so hard to sell that they're starting to stop exist, and given that Quantum Break is one of these, I have low expectations for its actual sales.
 

cheesekao

Member
I think Infamous fits in the sense that its scope fits the type of product companies are phasing out.

The studio also got gutted after the game launched, so presumably Sony wasn't blown away with how it performed, and wanted the remaining team to spend a long time thinking about how to make something to fit where the market is headed.
They started rehiring a month or two after that and it would seem that those layoffs were the usual end of dev cycle layoffs.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Outlast isn't a $60 game.

The core of what I was trying to get at is that an 7-12-ish hour singleplayer only type game at $60 has gotten so hard to sell that they're starting to stop exist, and given that Quantum Break is one of these, I have low expectations for its actual sales.

I thought it was sold bundled with its DLC for $60. Ah well nvm then

Since NPD threads seem to have more level-headed industry sales analysis than other threads, I thought I would ask it here:

How will PS4K/Xbox1.5 realistically affect the market? Obviously we don't know the full details of how everything will work, but I would like to talk about the possibilities here.

(From here on out, when I say PS4 I mean both PS4 & XB1, and when I say PS4K I mean PS4K & XB1.5 for brevity's sake)

My thoughts are (if the successors are announced at e3 for example), that there will be an immediate price drop at e3 for ps4, in order to help offset the potential lower sales of people waiting for the ps4k.

I see the prices of ps4 & ps4k staying where they are until it's reasonable to drop the price of the ps4k, and then both will get a price drop in unison.

I don't believe that ps4k sales will be high for several years, but the price drop of the ps4 will help it stay at decent sales numbers, but probably not as high as it is currently charting YOY.

I dunno.

Thoughts?

To be honest I'm not comfortable making predictions on these new iterative consoles yet. We just don't have much in the way of concrete info yet. There's a lot we don't know. Add to that that this is a very new unprecedented change in the home console industry which means we can't rely on precedent to guide our estimates. So yea I just don't think we have the information necesary to make these calls yet. But maybe that's just me.
 
The core of what I was trying to get at is that an 7-12-ish hour singleplayer only type game at $60 has gotten so hard to sell that they're starting to stop exist, and given that Quantum Break is one of these, I have low expectations for its actual sales.

Agreed. I think it'll be one of those games that charts in April, goes away in May, shows up on GwG in a year.

What I'd REALLY like to know, though, is how the cross-buy with the W10 store impacted pre-orders.

If it worked at all (it worked on me), then the digital share will be higher for QB, further confusing the issue.

To be honest I'm not comfortable making predictions on these new iterative consoles yet. We just don't have much in the way of concrete info yet.

Right.

And price changes to whatever the launch pricing strategy will be will actually come as a result of consumer sales and competitive market activity. And since we really have no idea how these things will be received, how many are being made or what it even is, really hard to get a gauge on what consumer sales might look like.
 

zsidane

Member
Since NPD threads seem to have more level-headed industry sales analysis than other threads, I thought I would ask it here:

How will PS4K/Xbox1.5 realistically affect the market? Obviously we don't know the full details of how everything will work, but I would like to talk about the possibilities here.

(From here on out, when I say PS4 I mean both PS4 & XB1, and when I say PS4K I mean PS4K & XB1.5 for brevity's sake)

My thoughts are (if the successors are announced at e3 for example), that there will be an immediate price drop at e3 for ps4, in order to help offset the potential lower sales of people waiting for the ps4k.

I see the prices of ps4 & ps4k staying where they are until it's reasonable to drop the price of the ps4k, and then both will get a price drop in unison.

I don't believe that ps4k sales will be high for several years, but the price drop of the ps4 will help it stay at decent sales numbers, but probably not as high as it is currently charting YOY.

I dunno.

Thoughts?

My take is that Sony & Microsoft are going the iPhone route: Releasing Incremental update/revisions of the hardware, that doesn't break the compatibility in the first year. Then you start seeing games that takes substantial advantage of the new hardware. When they abandon the first iteration (in this case PS4/XB1), no one would notice, or at least the majority would have moved on the next hardware.
It certainly helps them maintaining the same OS, same development tools, same UI, same branding, same online infrastructure... I think it might proove a way of doing business that saves them a lot of money.

I personally always bought the newest Samsung Galaxy since the S2, so I think they believe there are enough people with the same behaviour to justify it.

The question I ask myself is how long will be the cycle? 02 years ??
 

RexNovis

Banned
Ok so looking at Cosmic's list
Top 5:

Ryse
Wolf TNO
Tomb Raider 2013
Thief
The Order 1886

Do we have the debut sales figures for these games for eventual comparison with Quantum Breaks debut? I'm assuming they are not in order of sales as I'd doubt The Order or Ryse would've outsold Tomb Raider or The New Order.

Outlast isn't a $60 game.

The core of what I was trying to get at is that an 7-12-ish hour singleplayer only type game at $60 has gotten so hard to sell that they're starting to stop exist, and given that Quantum Break is one of these, I have low expectations for its actual sales.

Ah ok. I can understand that. But even as a genre in decline I'd imagine the overwhelmingly negative critical response to The Order would mean it would at least outsell that in its debut NPD. I mean we aren't simply talking about bad reviews here there was a lot of vitriol surrounding the game leading up to and following its release and that is certainly not the case for Quantum Break. As such I would expect it to sell at least a bit better. I certainly hope it does.
 
Ok so looking at Cosmic's list


Do we have the debut sales figures for these games for eventual comparison with Quantum Breaks debut? I'm assuming they are not in order of sales as I'd doubt The Order or Ryse would've outsold Tomb Raider or The New Order.

Off the top of my head, Order debuted to less then 200k and was around 231k in its second month.

That's all I got.
 
I am not sure that iterative consoles going to be an ongoing thing unless it turns out to be successful. The ps4k seems to be driven mainly due to AMD moving to a smaller die process. That doesn't really happen that often.
 

blakep267

Member
Agreed. I think it'll be one of those games that charts in April, goes away in May, shows up on GwG in a year.

What I'd REALLY like to know, though, is how the cross-buy with the W10 store impacted pre-orders.

If it worked at all (it worked on me), then the digital share will be higher for QB, further confusing the issue.



Right.

And price changes to whatever the launch pricing strategy will be will actually come as a result of consumer sales and competitive market activity. And since we really have no idea how these things will be received, how many are being made or what it even is, really hard to get a gauge on what consumer sales might look like.


Well Aaron Greenberg did say the QB pre- orders were above expectations( saw it on the Xbox Reddit) and I'm guessing since none of the retail guys have said it's pre-orders were amazing he could be including the digital Xbox pre-orders with the w10 cross buy
 

RexNovis

Banned
Agreed. I think it'll be one of those games that charts in April, goes away in May, shows up on GwG in a year.

What I'd REALLY like to know, though, is how the cross-buy with the W10 store impacted pre-orders.

If it worked at all (it worked on me), then the digital share will be higher for QB, further confusing the issue.

That's a good point I'd completely forgotten about that cross buy deal. No doubt it pushed some digital sales for sure.


Right.

And price changes to whatever the launch pricing strategy will be will actually come as a result of consumer sales and competitive market activity. And since we really have no idea how these things will be received, how many are being made or what it even is, really hard to get a gauge on what consumer sales might look like.

agreed. There are just too many major factors we don't know yet. Whatever estimates or predictions that would be made currently would be uninformed and as a result wildly unreliable. Some, like myself, are not comfortable making such predictions. Others are happy to guess which is fine but the guesses should be understood as the guesses they are and not an informed prediction/estimate.

Was sfv the biggest exclusive failure ever? Or was it order 1886?

Is this a serious question? Surely you are joking. No there have been far worse exclusive failures. You don't even need to look that far back.

And on that note I must bid you all a goodnight. It is way past my bedtime.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
They started rehiring a month or two after that and it would seem that those layoffs were the usual end of dev cycle layoffs.

You don't drop 10 year veterans as a normal end of development cycle process as they wouldn't be 10 year veterans if you did.

The people you do drop are temporary and contract workers, who are not actually laid off, but rather just have their contracts come to an end.

Similarly staff adjustments aren't on the scale of 20-40% of the entire studio.

If you were hiring permanent positions with the intention of laying them off at the end of the project, then you have awful employment practices and are intentionally deceiving your employees. If we want to go with that being Sony's standard operating practice, well, I don't think that looks very good for Sony at all.

Ah ok. I can understand that. But even as a genre in decline I'd imagine the overwhelmingly negative critical response to The Order would mean it would at least outsell that in its debut NPD. I mean we aren't simply talking about bad reviews here there was a lot of vitriol surrounding the game leading up to and following its release and that is certainly not the case for Quantum Break. As such I would expect it to sell at least a bit better. I certainly hope it does.
I guess my feeling is that The Order at least had the idea of being one of the first next-gen looking games out on the platforms, so there were people buying it to ogle at it, and also released a lot earlier in the generation in terms of where expectations were set.

Quantum Break looks to be a better product, but in a harder market. I'm not certain which of those will weigh in more, but I'm not holding my breath for it to do better.
 

Ryng_tolu

Banned
The Order Sold < 200,000 in 2 weeks.

Since Quantum Break has 4 weeks of Sales, and a Nice Bundle during a temporaney official XB1 pricedrop for $299, i wanna believe it will outsell The Order.

250,000 for April is my guess. I also Hope it will have legs.
 
The Order Sold < 200,000 in 2 weeks.

Since Quantum Break has 4 weeks of Sales, and a Nice Bundle during a temporaney official XB1 pricedrop for $299, i wanna believe it will outsell The Order.

250,000 for April is my guess. I also Hope it will have legs.

Me too. I would love to see Remedy get a hit. I love their games.
 
The Order Sold < 200,000 in 2 weeks.

Since Quantum Break has 4 weeks of Sales, and a Nice Bundle during a temporaney official XB1 pricedrop for $299, i wanna believe it will outsell The Order.

250,000 for April is my guess. I also Hope it will have legs.

250k physical in April would make it a massive hit in comparison to other April launches of recent years. Seems quite aggressive.
 

Ryng_tolu

Banned
Me too. I would love to see Remedy get a hit. I love their games.

I don't "love" their Games, but i think Quantum Break has The potential... Too bad there isn't The online...

250k physical in April would make it a massive hit in comparison to other April launches of recent years. Seems quite aggressive.

Like i Said... I believe The XB1 Bundle will help.
It Looks Like a Nice Bundle, and is The First $349 ( now $299 ) after Gears.

I think a good 70/75% of XB1 Sales in April will be from Gears or Quantum Break bundle.

With an intere month of Sales, i Can see this happen. I know, i'm optmist. But i Hope This Game will have great Sales after all.

Under 200K could be... Terrible. Terrible low.
 

cakely

Member
Here's a question: when the PS4K is released, for sales tracking purposes, will it be treated as new SKU for the PlayStation 4 or will it get its own tracking?

This is for talking points like "The PlayStation 4 hit 100M units sold in generation 8", etc.
 
Like i Said... I believe The XB1 Bundle will help.
It Looks Like a Nice Bundle, and is The First $349 ( now $299 ) after Gears.

I think a good 70/75% of XB1 Sales in April will be from Gears or Quantum Break bundle.

With an intere month of Sales, i Can see this happen. I know, i'm optmist. But i Hope This Game will have great Sales after all.

Under 200K could be... Terrible. Terrible low.

But the bundle won't count in the NPD, so you're not talking apples:apples with what would show up in the charts. But whatever.
 

sense

Member
I think Infamous fits in the sense that its scope fits the type of product companies are phasing out.

The studio also got gutted after the game launched, so presumably Sony wasn't blown away with how it performed, and wanted the remaining team to spend a long time thinking about how to make something to fit where the market is headed.

For The Evil Within, I notice a lot of multiplayer/online focused jobs for Tango, so Bethesda is trying to make some product adjustments there as well.

Doom has been really focusing on trying to hype up its multiplayer component to boot, despite the main game otherwise being pretty comparable to Wolfenstein.


not sure how to interpret second son sales when it looks like it is the best selling infamous game and sony actually made a blog post celebrating the 1 million milestone within 9 days

"So it comes with great excitement to learn that within the first nine days of launch, global sales of inFAMOUS Second Son exceeded over 1 million units*, making Second Son the fastest selling inFAMOUS title to date!"
 

Ryng_tolu

Banned
But the bundle won't count in the NPD, so you're not talking apples:apples with what would show up in the charts. But whatever.

In The Chart it won't count, but NPD will track it Sales, no? I talk about retail + bundle... But yeah, only retail, i expect sub 200K easy.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
not sure how to interpret second son sales when it looks like it is the best selling infamous game and sony actually made a blog post celebrating the 1 million milestone within 9 days

"So it comes with great excitement to learn that within the first nine days of launch, global sales of inFAMOUS Second Son exceeded over 1 million units*, making Second Son the fastest selling inFAMOUS title to date!"
How many companies do you see bragging about 1 million units for AAA retail games these days though?

Even if that worked for Second Son, there's also the consideration of how the budget would go for the next one with raising standards.

Here's what Tempy even said about Horizon: Zero Dawn:

The fear is real though. Focus testing showed many males disliked playing a female character, and I've definitely seen a few posts on GAF asking whether they could play as a male. Seeing as a lot of money is involved, you want to make sure it sells more like Tomb Raider and less like Heavenly Sword.

Heavenly Sword ended up doing 1.5 million copies in its lifetime and that was a PS3 launch title budgeted game: https://www.vg247.com/2010/03/29/ninja-theory-heavenly-sword-sales-still-not-enough-to-break-even/

“Heavenly Sword came out pretty early on the PS3, and we sold, I think, a million and a half copies, and that’s still not enough as an independent studio to break even.”

So, while 1 million in 9 days might be good, the legs on the game might not have been super inspiring.

They did layoffs in August while the game launched in March
 
Celebrating selling 1 million units of a AAA game in 2016 is like celebrating getting a $100 check on the 15th of the month when your $2,000 rent is due on the 1st.

"We're getting there!"
 
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