• 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.

August 2014 NPD (U.S. Hardware) Predictions - Closes September 9th

T

theprodigy

Member
SwiftDeath said:
Eh the KL version offered a new entry point for consumers looking into an XB1, so while I think the Madden XB1 bundle clearly offers better value than the regular KL SKU I don't think it will have as strong an effect in persuading consumers to wait on it especially considering it's the same monetary amount even if the contents are better.

Sunset Overdrive I don't think is overly mainstream yet whereas Madden is superbly mainstream so I doubt that bundle will do much until October

COD:AW bundle is $100 more than KL and doesn't include kinect, I doubt it will persuade consumers interested in a XB1 to wait two months

For some subjective evidence on it

Code: 
Amazon Rankings

Month  | TF Bundle | KL Bundle | Madden Bundle |
-----------------------------------------------
June   |     50    |     49    |      N/A      | 
August |     NC    |     52    |       49      |

*NC = Not charted in Top 100 for month

Which would suggest the announcement of the Madden bundle probably didn't completely kill the sales of the KL bundle earlier in August unlike the early announcement of the KL bundle killing the sales of the kinect SKUs in May. Although it's worth noting that the Madden Bundle was announced I think August 12th or thereabouts? And was released on August 26th so within the same NPD tracking period which is important in regards to moving sales around as such
Click to expand...

huh what did the July positions look like?
 
J

jryi

Senior Analyst, Fanboy Drivel Research Partners LLC
donny2112 said:
Have said it multiple times, and it's in the OP. If you intend for your prediction to be counted in the results, please use the format in the OP. If you just want to post numbers to discuss, that's fine, too, though. :)
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity (and sorry for derailing, but I'm really interested about this), how do you process the answers? Lots of manual labor, scripts that do majority of the work automatically, a hybrid?

And my apologies to everybody who is not interested in this kind of minutia.
 
A

AniHawk

Member
[PS4] 179k
[XB1] 142k
[3DS] 100k
[WIU] 60k
[360] 45k
[PS3] 27k
[psv] 10k

sales in recent years seem to decline about 10k across the board, but not more than that. i think the wii u will experience a little more than that due to mario kart 8's spell wearing off.

the madden bundle will probably only have a minimal effect on august's sales as it only accounts for three days, but it should offset the standard decline somewhat.
 
H

hepburn3d

Member
Won't post this month. Still ashamed from last month's defeat to [SITE NAME REMOVED].

Enjoying the amazon research, well collated.
 
D

donny2112

Member
jryi said:
Out of curiosity (and sorry for derailing, but I'm really interested about this), how do you process the answers? Lots of manual labor, scripts that do majority of the work automatically, a hybrid?
Click to expand...

Hybrid. I have a script that keys off of "[360]", finds the username field, and then pulls out the list starting with "[" that does most of the initial work. However that has known issues with banned users, quoted predictions of others, and non-standard spacing of predictions. Therefore, I go through and manually skim the pages afterwards to look for those known issues to try to weed them out. Then convert the system formats to a simpler delimited field for Excel, put in a tab-delimited text file, pull into an external table in a database, and then process with scripts I've put together over the years to get the aggregate, cardinal orders, etc. Most of the time goes into the initial pulling the data out of the webpages and formatting it for entry to Excel, though. Could probably modify it to be a little cleaner overall, but since it's once a month and doesn't take an exceptionally long time (usually) to process through it all, improving it is not high on the priority list.

For comparison, Cheesemeister (previously ran predictions and did the weekly MC threads with an awesome script) had a script that did everything with one pass (I think). Mine's not near that advanced, but it works generally well. :)

Lefler's Law #36: You gotta go with what works.
 
Z

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
mejin said:
PS4] 200k
[XB1] 120k
[3DS] 75k
[WIU] 64k
[360] 43k
[PS3] 32k
Click to expand...

You forgot a bracket for the PS4 mejin.


Abdiel said:
Wii U seems to only be consistent at being all over the place. Some stores continue to sell the thing well, with MK8 still doing solid sales... Other stores haven't moved a unit in a week. It's pretty head-scratching, honestly.
Click to expand...

Does this have to do with store arrangement for example? The Best Buy I went to recently had a nice Wii U demo out near the back, but had like no popular games stocked (didn't find MK8, 3D World or DKC for example). Not sure if that means they sold out, have them near the counter or what. Anything on Hyrule Warriors preorders? You get the Skyward Sword costumes by preordering/buying from Best Buy right?

So do Wii U sales seem to be down then? Since it sounds like it continues to sell well/about the same in certain places and has tanked in others.
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
Abdiel said:
Hey everyone, sorry for any delay in getting to this thread. I saw it was up the other day, but I've been a bit busier and wasn't able to really scan the system for general trends. And honestly, it hasn't really been all that 'interesting' as far as trends go.

PS4 remained in a similar pacing to what it has been, whether it's a bit up in some stores (Madden saw new systems purchased for both consoles), or a bit lowered in others. No real steep drop offs or anything, but not an exaggerated upsurge, either. We've got well over 500 of the White PS4 bundle preorders just in our district, which is kind of crazy. That game is going to be crazy. I await September's thread with wide eyes.

XB1 sales are still not great, but they haven't tanked, either. (The madden bundle has been the primary one sold since release, to coincide with the Madden-fever) The new bundles got a few pre-orders each, but that was kind of it. I feel like they will do better once they're on the floor, and customers are in 'grab from the shelf' mode. The PS4 mindshare is still really hurting them though. Customers come in aware that PS4 is 'winning' and that the gap between the two consoles continues to grow in terms of player base, too, which is a hard hurdle to leap.

Wii U seems to only be consistent at being all over the place. Some stores continue to sell the thing well, with MK8 still doing solid sales... Other stores haven't moved a unit in a week. It's pretty head-scratching, honestly.

So, yeah. Pretty boring month over all. I do feel like the Destiny PS4 bundle is tempering their monthly sales, because there's plenty of customers that ask about it, and choose not to pre-order, as well, but the scale in terms of who is even asking about the various bundles is very skewed in favor of the PS4.
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, are you limited to sales reports at the store-level / district-level? Is there any mechanism that allows you to see a summary of nationwide sales beyond manually checking each district?

I assume such an aggregation would be limited to Best Buy corporate, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Thank you so much for the channel checks you do provide, though! Any retail insights are much appreciated.
 
D

donny2112

Member
SwiftDeath said:
I would remove the tilda as it will probably mess up the script Donny uses to pull off your predictions if that makes sense
Click to expand...

The main thing is the system format being correct, and in particular the [360] one, since that's what it keys off of (will probably change that key one to [PS4], at some point). The format of the numbers comes into play when getting things lined up in Excel, but if the system format isn't correct, then it never made it that far. In practical terms, using "~" means nothing, though, as I'll just take it off for the prediction, so, yeah, no point in adding it. :p
 
F

FullMetaltech

Member
[PS4] 187k
[XB1] 156k
[3DS] 84k
[WIU] 55k
[360] 48k
[PS3] 39k

I think there will be a slow down in HW purchase due to the fact that September will have the new Destiny and SunsetOverdrive bundle on hand. So my guess is people will wait on those. Looking foward to next months NPD which will definately be interesting.
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
FullMetaltech said:
I think there will be a slow down in HW purchase due to the fact that September will have the new Destiny and SunsetOverdrive bundle on hand. So my guess is people will wait on those. Looking foward to next months NPD which will definately be interesting.
Click to expand...

SO releases at the end of October, not september
 
I

ironcreed

Banned
[PS4] 175k
[XB1] 147k - (with some nice fragrance sprayed on for good measure)
[3DS] 97k
[WIU] 76k
[360] 52k
[PS3] 34k
[PSV] 24k
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Circana (NPD) Hardware Sales for 2022 - NSW 5830k | PS5 5660k | XBS 4480k
Sales-Age 2 3 4 5
230
11K
Woopah replied
PS5 sales jumped 42% in the UK during August | UK Monthly Charts
2 3
131
10K
Luminoth-4545 replied
Circana (NPD) September 2023: #1 Starfield #2 Mortal Kombat 1 #3 EA FC24; PS5 #1 Units + Revenue, XBS #2 Units + Revenue
Sales-Age 7 8 9 10 11
526
31K
Thick Thighs Save Lives replied
Circana (NPD) October 2023: #1 Spider-Man 2 #2 Super Mario Wonder #3 AC Mirage; PS5 #1 Units + Revenue, NSW #2 Units, XBS #2 Revenue
Sales-Age 3 4 5 6 7
307
21K
Unknown? replied
Ampere Estimatez: PS5 sold 21 million, Xbox Series sold 13.8 million.
9 10 11 12 13
602
33K
SuperSaiyanWithDreads replied
Top Bottom