• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

NPD Sales Results for March 2016

good god, grand theft auto 5 truly is a juggernaut. i said this before and I say it again...the fact that it is so successful going towards the middle of 8th gen makes me think that gta6 won't even be out till NEXT gen.


dope seeing pokken and zelda charting too, exclusive games on the wii u
 

Ryng_tolu

Banned
I'm back from school.

tumblr_nkvm0t3d4s1u1ry24o1_400.gif


Now, Welfare. You'r new avatar since now to 1 May 2016.

CgFXDe-W8AETO1e.jpg:large
 
OléGunner;201041974 said:
Indeed.

You don't go from being No.1 in the USA last gen to getting spanked on hardware and software the next.
No business person in this industry would plan ahead for that to be the case and be doing cart wheels.

Absolutely, not sure why people are trying to dispute it.

Has it recovered somewhat from the pre launch debacle, absolutely, it could have been alot worse, your talking WiiU levels if they had forged ahead with the Mattrick vision.

But even taking that into account its a disaster on all levels, first party game sales are weak, even a new mainline Halo entry was down by circa 50%, none of their new IPs's has taken off. They used to dominate 3rd party sales, thats gone, and despite heavy bundling, constant price drops and promotions, hardware sales have still plateaued, this is supposed to be a consoles peak years, and in its number one territory its down YOY, let alone the ROW.

In any business thats a disaster.
 

test_account

XP-39C²
GTA 5 sales are crazy. Cant wait to see how much GTA 6 will sell.


How exactly does a rushed product benefit anyone? The only thing "positive" about this was that people could play a very content light product earlier and shortly before an unsignificant tournament. Since SF5 didn´t go the route of a complete new character cast and instead to mostly rehashing old characters, I really can´t see anyone beneffitting in the actual lackluster amount of characters available, people actually have favourites and variety is always welcome by anyone. Guess what, also hardcore fighting gamers would have loved to play with or against the dozen still missing characters known from previous SF entries, instead of playing the waiting game even after buying the game.
People would had to play the waiting game regardless though. If the game is "finished" (so to speak) in 4 months, people would have to wait 4 months. Only difference is that people get to play it earlier with less content instead of getting all content at once, so technically it shouldnt matter when it comes to waiting. If people like this or not is a matter of opinion though. I've saw both positive and negative comments with Splatoon as well regarding this, which had on-disc DLC that were released bit by bit as time went by instead of just giving people access to all the content at once. Same thing goes for Street Fighter 5 (except the content not being on-disc).

Sales wise however, it looks like SF5 didnt benifit from using this developement method. Hard to say how it would have sold if they did it differently, but still.

By the way, are there any fighting game sequels that have gone the route of a complete new character roster?


Driveclub was a flop. I'll give you my reasoning: Evolution no longer exists.
They did continue to support the game for a long time though. If the base game was a flop, it wouldnt make much sense to support it so much after launch.


That's flawed logic, it could easily be because they didn't want to greenlight another racing project in the current market.
I think that might be one of the main reasons indeed.
 

shandy706

Member
Why is anyone surprised by SFV's sales?

Killer Instinct probably sold more of Season 3 in the last 15 days than SFV did as a brand new game in all of March.
 
Nah, man, the consoles already died a long, long time ago. Now, their corpses are being cremated. Next month, watch their ashes being scattered to the heartless sea. In May NPD, the PS4 will be reborn like a phoenix. :p
Those dead souls walk among us. They find no rest. And will haunt us once every month until the end of the internet.

American Console Story
 

rhandino

Banned
Bioshock Infinite sold over 5 million copies has a metascore above 90. Result...Irrational shut down.
Because it was a flop, the game needed to sold a LOT more than it did because how long and troubled that development was (I think they completly discarded entire builds of the game because auteur director and the final game was almost rushed to completition?)
 
Because it was a flop, the game needed to sold a LOT more than it did because how long and troubled that development was (I think they completly discarded entire builds of the game because auteur director and the final game was almost rushed to completition?)

I'm sorry, but that is not a flop. Poor resource management and planning don't invalidate what would otherwise be a great product and performance. No one thought it was a flop when it released. Revisionist history.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
Why is anyone surprised by SFV's sales?

Killer Instinct probably sold more of Season 3 in the last 15 days than SFV did as a brand new game in all of March.

I'm not sure if it's funny or sad the Killer instinct is probably a bigger game than SFV after all the shit talk and proclaimation for being dead.
 
Driveclub was a flop. I'll give you my reasoning: Evolution no longer exists.

That's some faulty reasoning. The reasoning could work if Evo stopped existing a few months after Drive Club launched. But it launched in October of 2014. Was largely fixed a few months into the next year. And Evo shut down (and the staff went to Codemasters) a little less then a month ago.

I'm not sure if it's funny or sad the Killer instinct is probably a bigger game than SFV after all the shit talk and proclaimation for being dead.

Neither? Because we have no recent sales data on KI whatsoever. So it's hard to disprove any statements like that. But I suppose the game just being a bomb isn't enough. We have to start pretending that games with no sales data are now doing better then it to really drive home the failure point.

Edit: At least we have SFV sales numbers and they have translated to Twitch viewership and tournament turnout. The same cannot be said for KI.
 

Calamari41

41 > 38
Exciting sales for Twilight Princess!

Nintendo should just put Tantalus on retainer and release one (or even two) of these remasters per year. Twilight Princess is a special case as the highest selling Zelda to begin with, but the ROI would be very nice even for more modestly selling releases.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The Microsoft press realease is hilarious.

So this is what, 2nd/3rd? month in a row they do not even mention the Xbox One itself? And last month they only had one or two sentences about their console games, everything else was Win10?

And people say there is no pattern of shifting focus?... it sure looks like one is developing, and will be interesting to watch next months statement if they do not win. And even more hilarious of they do.

At least they didn't mention bullets.

Hard to measure when your current exclusive does not have any casings...

*rimshot* In all seriousness, what year is it?

It's a good fighter and also Pokemon, a brand as strong as Star Wars.

zToiLVE.gif


Until Dawn sold well too. Dunno what he's talking about...

"It was the summer, people had no choice but to get that."
 

Darius

Banned
GTA 5 sales are crazy. Cant wait to see how much GTA 6 will sell.



People would had to play the waiting game regardless though. If the game is "finished" (so to speak) in 4 months, people would have to wait 4 months. Only difference is that people get to play it earlier with less content instead of getting all content at once, so technically it shouldnt matter when it comes to waiting. If people like this or not is a matter of opinion though. I've saw both positive and negative comments with Splatoon as well regarding this, which had on-disc DLC that were released bit by bit as time went by instead of just giving people access to all the content at once. Same thing goes for Street Fighter 5 (except the content not being on-disc).

Sales wise however, it looks like SF5 didnt benifit from using this developement method. Hard to say how it would have sold if they did it differently, but still.

By the way, are there any fighting game sequels that have gone the route of a complete new character roster?



They did continue to support the game for a long time though. If the base game was a flop, it wouldnt make much sense to support it so much after launch.



I think that might be one of the main reasons indeed.

Before the game won´t be considered barebones by longtime Street Fighter fans it will take a very long time, it surely won´t be 4 months after launch. That´s more due to the chosen business-scheme more than due to not beeing possible to be realized differently. Characters are the absolute core for a fighting game and most have actual expectations in this regard especially when it comes to long standing fighting IPs. They´ll very slowly trickle down additional characters just to push sales of their ingame currencies and season passes.

The other option could have been to actually deliver on point a satisfactory character roster selection in quality and quantity from the beginning, like Tekken and MK. Smash Bros. 4 is a game that really shines in this regard. Even SNK manages to respect the legacy of the King of Fighters series with a character roster that covers the history of the IP adequately. Capcom/Sony on the other hand present you the exact opposit with an incredibly lackluster character roster, in favour of implementing F2P-games like schemes on top of still charging 60$ from the get go.
 

Deku Tree

Member
How much does MS have to pay for one month exclusive Division DLC? Does the price normally depend on how many sales could be lost when PS4 is the best selling platform?
 

e-gamer

Member
An exclusivity deal would definitely have resulted in less sales, but most of the core fighting game fans are on PlayStation anyway. Besides, the exclusivity deal wasn't the reason the game flopped. The bad word of mouth due to the lack of content killed sales. Very different reason from RotTR.

But KI was The fighting game with 6 millions unique players in March...

So I don't think the core are really on playstation. Sorry.

And if you have 6 million players willing only to test a fighting game in march (because we had season 3 and PC launch) could you imagine how many sfv copies capcom would sold for them?

And of course, we also must consider that all core fighting players that are on playstation also have a Xbox...
 

Chobel

Member
But KI was The fighting game with 6 millions unique players in March...

So I don't think the core are really on playstation. Sorry.

And if you have 6 million players willing only to test a fighting game in march (because we had season 3 and PC launch) could you imagine how many sfv copies capcom would sold for them?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

EDIT for you edit
And of course, we also must consider that all core fighting players that are on playstation also have a Xbox...

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!
 
But KI was The fighting game with 6 millions unique players in March...

So I don't think the core are really on playstation. Sorry.

And if you have 6 million players willing only to test a fighting game in march (because we had season 3 and PC launch) could you imagine how many sfv copies capcom would sold for them?

And of course, we also must consider that all core fighting players that are on playstation also have a Xbox...

I'm glad you edited in that last line. I almost fell for the joke post.
 

Javin98

Banned
But KI was The fighting game with 6 millions unique players in March...

So I don't think the core are really on playstation. Sorry.

And if you have 6 million players willing only to test a fighting game in march (because we had season 3 and PC launch) could you imagine how many sfv copies capcom would sold for them?

And of course, we also must consider that all core fighting players that are on playstation also have a Xbox...
Like Primethius said, I really hope this was a joke post.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
But KI was The fighting game with 6 millions unique players in March...

So I don't think the core are really on playstation. Sorry.

And if you have 6 million players willing only to test a fighting game in march (because we had season 3 and PC launch) could you imagine how many sfv copies capcom would sold for them?

And of course, we also must consider that all core fighting players that are on playstation also have a Xbox...

That is a lot of unique ad revenue for that MAU.
 

e-gamer

Member
I'm glad you edited in that last line. I almost fell for the joke post.

Like Primethius said, I really hope this was a joke post.

To be honest I think what killed SFV was not exclusivity or content.

I think it was timming between the games. Could Capcom be more successful if they start this generation with a f2p version of sf4 and make SFV only on the next one?

IMHO I think they would...
 
Splatoon and SFV are similar in their release content wise.

I wonder why it worked for the former and didn't for the latter. Despite the brand advantage.

Splatoon had a lot of finished content, they just spaced the release of content roughly weekly, and was a pretty original game. Oh and it was all free.

Sfv was a sequel in a well worn genre that was put on market before they'd made most of the game, planning on getting to it later
 

Busaiku

Member
I imagine 3DS can do well this month as well, since Bravely Second is out today.
May will likely be bad, but June has a bunch of stuff coming, so it might rebound then.

The main problem last year was a lack of bog software after March or so. This year, most months have a bunch of good stuff coming, so it'll likely hold better.
 
Splatoon had a lot of finished content, they just spaced the release of content roughly weekly, and was a pretty original game. Oh and it was all free.

Sfv was a sequel in a well worn genre that was put on market before they'd made most of the game, planning on getting to it later

More like the Splatoon had nothing else to compete with. While the PS4 had a ton of third party games to choose from.
 

farisr

Member
More like the Splatoon had nothing else to compete with. While the PS4 had a ton of third party games to choose from.
Nah, it's more like this:

This really has nothing to do with it.

- Splatoon is a new IP, so content expectations were different than an almost 30 year old franchise
- Splatoon had a solid single player component
- Nintendo started rolling out new content two days after the game launched
- Nintendo released a 30 minute Nintendo Direct specifically laying out, in great detail, the game's short and long term release strategy
- Amiibo
- Three Global Testfire demos for people to play before the game released (I think it might have actually been more, I can't recall).

Nintendo nailed Splatoon's launch and its success doesn't simply boil down to a light Wii U release schedule. If it did, every first party WiI U game of high quality would have sold millions of units.
 

CCIE

Banned
i really thought MS would win March. WW not a chance, but in the US? Will they ever win a hardware month again if they don't somehow win April?

I thought the Division would help them. Will be interesting to see QB numbers next month.
 
Do we know yet if Division with bundles is XB1 > PS4.

I was kinda skipping over the SFV talk earlier on in the thread and might have missed it.
 

Sterok

Member
I imagine 3DS can do well this month as well, since Bravely Second is out today.
May will likely be bad, but June has a bunch of stuff coming, so it might rebound then.

The main problem last year was a lack of bog software after March or so. This year, most months have a bunch of good stuff coming, so it'll likely hold better.

Eh, 3DS might hold better than expected in April, but Bravely Second will probably underwhelm compared to its predecessor. Kirby will do nice for June. Federation Force is still due for spring yet doesn't have a release date, which basically puts it in May. So yeah, May will be bad.
 

jmizzal

Member
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD at 3 and Pokken charted wow good job

And SFV didnt chart ouch with a bigger user base
 
Top Bottom