I don't know why, but this is hilarious.
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"Hundreds Of Thousands" Playing Titanfall Since Release in US.
- Thread starter BoboBrazil
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I don't know why, but this is hilarious.
Yeah, it looked worse before. I fixed it now.
Umm... increasing sales during what would otherwise be a slow month of the year by 100k is pretty system seller-ish from my POV, especially for a franchise that hadn't quite hit its stride yet.
I've already explained why Second Son could easily become system seller, even if the two other games weren't huge system sellers. The two previous games + the excellent stand-alone DLC already build up a fan-base (that could be in the 1-2 million range, at least), some of who might've waited to buy a PS4 until now that inFamous is about to be released, and inFamous Second Son itself is such a huge jump over its predecessors in every way (gameplay seems (even) more fun, graphics are insane, acting & characters seem much better) that this game simply being so much better will launch this particular franchise into stardom. Kind of like how Uncharted 1 did well and was received well, but it wasn't until Uncharted 2 that the series blew up and became the system seller it is.
If you had based some Uncharted 2 sales predictions purely on how Uncharted 1 did and not considered how much & how clearly Uncharted 2 was improving on the formula and how much more impressive it was from every POV, then you'd have predicted Uncharted 2 probably wouldn't become anything too special. But everyone could see prior to its release that they had something special going on with Uncharted 2. I see similar things happening with Second Son. It's really all about Sucker Punch stepping up their game and delivering a game that is so much above its predecessors that it might lift it from the good-but-not-the-best-PS-has-to-offer game that sells 1-2 million copies into Uncharted tier seller/franchise
Galactic Barret
Member
I would have expected "over half a million" for over 500k or "Almost/nearly One million" for 700-900k. Ill wait for numbers, but I'm getting the 200-400k vibe from this. Probably wrong.
First of all, your entire premise is ridiculous. There's no precedence for consoles getting a bump the month prior to their marquee games release, only for the next month to be a complete dud in comparison. For example:
Gears of War release:
Sep. 2006 ~ 259.5k
Oct. 2006 ~ 218.0k <= Month before release.
Nov. 2006 ~ 511.0K <= Month of release.
Halo 3 release:
July 2007 ~ 170,000
August 2007 ~ 276,700 <= Month before release.
September ~ 527,800 <= Month of release.
Metal Gear Solid 4 release:
April 2008 ~ 187,000
May 2008 ~ 208,000 <= Month before release.
June 2008 ~ 405,500 (220,00 of which was from the MGS4 bundle) <= Month of release.
If anything, Titanfall hurt the Xbox One's sales in February considering the Titanfall bundle was announced on February 24th.
Big Papa Husker
Member
LOL...? Xbox One is the best place to play it? Uhh, my friends and I all disagree. It's best on PC.
BrokenEchelon
Banned
200,000 sales across three platforms. Got it.
Exactly, for all we know it could be one hundred thousand on both.
Galactic Barret
Member
I would assume shorter acronyms for consoles are more popular search terms than their full titles.
Only if you lack reading comprehension. If you're taking the words at value then 1) He's the UK Xbox Marketing Director and 2) the statement preceding the "hundreds of thousands" tidbit is "Millions of gamers around the world played the Xbox One Titanfall beta," suggesting that the underlying context for the entirety of his comments is purely Xbox One.
shinra-bansho
Member
People posting NPD numbers should realise that March, June, September and December are 5-week months, that needs to be factored into any bumps or dips.
No change from February sales rate should see the XB1 sell 325K in March purely due to the extra week.
No change from February sales rate should see the XB1 sell 325K in March purely due to the extra week.
Did those games have a beta the month before release?
halo beta move a good amount of units.
PowderedToast
Junior Member
to me the game was mainly hyped by media outlets, all keen on making sure it was the next big thing. i never saw any friends talking about it or any mentions on facebook.
games media should be embarrassed for the constant shilling they did for this
games media should be embarrassed for the constant shilling they did for this
A beta isn't going to move consoles, especially one that lasts a few days. The Halo 3 beta ran for damn near a month, was a sequel within an already MASSIVE franchise, and still didn't create a noteworthy bump. The Halo 3 beta ran from May 16th to June 6th:
April 2007 ~ 174,000 <= Month before beta.
May 2007 ~ 155,000 <= Beta month.
June 2007 ~ 198,400 <= Beta month.
July 2007 ~ 205,000 <= Month after beta.
Yoda
Member
I don't think it would have seriously impacted sales given it was so close to the end of the month. However is 250k is MS' monthy sales floor I do think it can hit close to 400k next month and I'm expecting a moderate bump. The only variable I haven't seen anyone accurately explain is tax-returns + no retail returns from the holidays for Feb's numbers.
Yoda
Member
I think its safe to assume it sold close to a million, but even then that sounds low for a AAA release so it gives them a reason to wait till all the versions our out to release a sales figure.
PanicFreak
Member
What do you mean extra week? 5 weekends?
Because I only count three extra days in March
Here's the thing with Titanfall - everyone that bought it is playing online. It's not like Halo where some people may actually not play tons of online matches. Yes. There are those people that play for the campaign.
Either you're playing Titanfall online or you're not playing it. Saying hundreds of thousands is giving a signal as to how it's selling.
Either you're playing Titanfall online or you're not playing it. Saying hundreds of thousands is giving a signal as to how it's selling.
February is 2-3 days shorter than other months, it doesn't make that big of a difference...
Manmademan
Member
There were only about 32 million N64s sold, with 11 million copies of "super mario 64".
That's something I've also been wondering about, assuming you're talking about players. One possibility thing that seems to make sense is dealing with the fact that people who spoke negatively of the game prior to its release were routinely attacked for some reason. That behavior could have resulted in a selection bias of comments. You speak positively or face the wrath. Now that people are starting to calm down you can see a lot more negative comments even in places like the OT thread.
It also could have been a pricing issue. Even if the game is fun it's also very bare bones yet they're asking a very premium $60 + $DLC + $Gold for it. I didn't think this would be that big an issue since I think early adopters, especially those of the XBone, are going to be somewhat less price sensitive than average but something clearly went wrong here and the price:content level is another factor that was brought up a lot.
shinra-bansho
Member
...
A calendar year is 365 days, (and occasionally 366 days) which does not actually divide into twelve 4-week periods.
NPD divides the calendar year into periods of 4 or 5 weeks of tracking, in a 4,4,5 sequence, to sum to 364 days.
March, June, September and December are 35 day tracking periods.
Periodically there will also be a 5-week January tracking month, to make up for the "missing" day of tracking.
A calendar year is 365 days, (and occasionally 366 days) which does not actually divide into twelve 4-week periods.
NPD divides the calendar year into periods of 4 or 5 weeks of tracking, in a 4,4,5 sequence, to sum to 364 days.
March, June, September and December are 35 day tracking periods.
Periodically there will also be a 5-week January tracking month, to make up for the "missing" day of tracking.
BruiserBear
Banned
There's also the issue that Shadowrun and Warhawk were not particularly well reveiewed, were released during slow summer months, and had very little in the way of marketing support. Yet somehow you think it's appropriate to compare them to a Halo game.
The Trophy Rarity on PSN is not at all related to your friends list -- it's for everyone on PSN. And it's not like the third chapter of Assassin's Creed takes endless hours to complete.
Only 20% of players completed that Battlefield 4 campaign on Normal mode, according to PSN. So your own experience of the game would not at all be the norm.
Terbinator
Member
But the 360 doubled it's numbers in the same month with no notable software.
That's fine, i'm suggesting why it may not be. I'm not saying your wrong.
But Uncharted 2 only had 1 game before it where as SS has had two flat game beforehand. UC1 didn't do that badly either, sales wise. Sure, it helped it was Christmas but it sold 117K compared to the 496K PS3s sold in the same month - jumping to 206K sales in December which had ~800K PS3s sold.
I think even for values < 1 the plural can be used, so 50K would also be hundrets of thousands.
NoirVisage
Banned
Agreed on that, and the ones who were at it the hardest are still at it..
Louis Cyphre
Banned
What's embarrassing is what looks to be you wanting the game to sell poorly, at least on the XBox One. Titanfall is a new ip and requires XBox Gold to play on the XBox One. So your requirements for it not to be an embarrassment is to sell 1 million copies in the first month? Wow, no wonder you don't think highly of the XBox One, you have set your standards set up so high that it most likely fails every time. How many new ip's that cost $60 and require online (with a paid membership) have an attach ratio of at least 25%?
Speaking of invested...you really are looking for people to fight with on this, aren't you? If the OP had really wanted to assume the "lowest numbers" he could have interpreted "hundreds of thousands" as 100-300k, not nearly DOUBLE that. You're not doing a particularly good job of closing down the war by misrepresenting his statement.
That's kind of changing the story now isn't it?
It was EAcrosoft's idea to turn an online-only multiplayer-only gold-only new IP shooter into THE NEXT BIG THING. This just hit my box:
A more reasonable comparison would be with previous THE NEXT BIG THINGs. It's still probably a bit too early to say there, but for now it's on pretty rocky footing.
Doesn't matter if it's one game or two games. While I personally think inFamous 2 is one of the better PS3 exclusives, I can acknowledge that they still lacked that certain uuuumph or... something that could really turn it into a powerhouse franchise. That something that Uncharted 2 had over Uncharted 1. And I believe Second Son could have that. While inFamous 2 didn't look bad, inFamous Second Son is just on a whole new level (not just because it's on PS4, although of course that has a lot to do with it), it makes some very critical improvements to gameplay (mainly the traversal/movement) that could turn former inFamous-pessimists into inFamous-believers (and be extremely fun to newcomers who weren't interested in 1 & 2 based on videos/reviews) and it's also a step-up in writing/storytelling as well, at least based on the dialogue & character interactions heard so far.
Final Fantasy basically had six releases behind it until the seventh came and made the franchise the powerhouse it stayed as for well over 10 years (still arguably is). It wasn't small before that, but especially in the west it was still a relatively small franchise. While I don't think Second Son will make inFamous quite as big as that (partly because PS4's install base still isn't quite big enough to do that), I do think it has the potential to lift Sucker Punch and the inFamous franchise from the obscurity of past games into mainstream spotlight. It could be that this is THE time when Sucker Punch gets their chance to make more name for themselves & the inFamous franchise and lift it from the secondary PS catalogue that usually isn't mentioned alongside the Uncharteds & God of Wars and such to primetime spotlight, which could GIVE it that system seller status (console has launched & been successful, the quality seems to be a step above previous games, Sony is really pushing it with the marketing etc.).
It probably will sell a million copies but a million in 3 days when there are 'only' 3-4 million X1's worldwide?, i think even EA/Microsoft won't be expecting that, not after only 3 days anyway.
It seems a certain section are already setting sales expectations ridiculously out of reach just so they can push their agenda.
That's kind of changing the story now isn't it?
It was EAcrosoft's idea to turn an online-only multiplayer-only gold-only new IP shooter into THE NEXT BIG THING. This just hit my box:
A more reasonable comparison would be with previous THE NEXT BIG THINGs. It's still probably a bit too early to say there, but for now it's on pretty rocky footing.
That is pretty awesome!
BruiserBear
Banned
It's embarrassing watching people spin this false narrative over and over again.
As if most companies don't want their new IP to be the next big thing. The collective of people being excited about the game are what built this game up, not EA.
It's even more embarrassing when you're making the comments you're making in a thread like this, that has basically no data of any kind within. We have no idea what this guy's comments mean, and the game just hit all territories yesterday. Could you possibly be any more a transparent hater? At least try and hide it a little better.
I 100% agree with this.
Also it doesn't matter at this point how much it sells. I think it's pretty safe to say that their will be a sequel and that this series will end up being a multi game franchise.
crazygambit
Member
Actually since it's an online only game they know the exact figure of people playing. It doesn't correspond 1 to 1 with sales, but they were talking about people playing, so I think we can conclude with some certainty that the number is below 500k.
It's a mutiplayer only game. The number of people playing online should be very close to the sales numbers IMO.
-MD-
Member
Pretty naive if you think MS/EA aren't trying their absolute hardest to turn this game into the next Halo/CoD. They're not waiting around for the next big thing to happen, they're making it happen on their time.
No, I'm definitely not. It's important to note that every time games increase in graphical fidelity and scope, you are getting "more" for your money, if you consider better graphics to be "more". It certainly costs more. Just over the course of the PS3/360 generation, the average cost of a major title went up by millions of dollars.
Instead of saying consumers should get less for their money, I'm saying they can no longer get more for their money than they are already getting. The high end of the market is no longer profitable in aggregate to any meaningful degree. If you want more of one thing, you'll have to give something else up to compensate. If you want better graphics, you'll have to sacrifice something else to allow for the budgetary increase that higher fidelity and more detail requires.
You missed the part where he is the marketing director. His job is to paint things in a positive light, and to use grammar to its maximum advantage.
Of course you expect hi to be talking only about Xbox one, because of the reasons you give. But the fact that he doesn't state hundreds of thousands of Xbox one users leaves wiggle room.
(I expect it is most likely talking about Xbox one, just pointing out you can't be too careful with marketing/PR comments)
As for 'how many does it need to sell to justify the investment'? Well that depends. Even if it doesn't sell millions, if it can cement Xbox one as the best box to play FPS games on, then that might be success enough for MS (CoD sold more on Xbox than PS4, not sure about Bf4)
crazygambit
Member
I agree, but not exactly 1 to 1 since you could have more than 1 player on a single household and people that have bought the game, but haven't gotten around to play it yet. But yeah it should be pretty close.
TechnicPuppet
Nothing! I said nothing!
It was only behind ghosts for twitter mentions. So your anecdotal evidence doesn't apply to the real world.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
Where in the UK?
Most of my friends who lean mostly towards shooters are from the midlands area and I was pretty surprised to see that most of them didn't mention Xbox one or Titanfall this week. The ones that did were ultra hyped and already had preloaded the Steam/were buying the digital version
Edit: Thinking about it, is there really any point in buy this game on disk, outside of saving bandwith and getting started earlier?
No, I think it's appropriate to debunk your wildly revisionist notion that this is the first time that this kind of thing has been tried and your other so far lame rationales for why what Respawn is doing is somehow forging new territory. The Halo comparison was just to counter your claim that low broadband penetration in 2007 was somehow the reason for small audiences in an online MP mode. If you prefer, I can stick to online only games - we've had those since the late 90s and many did very well for themselves before even Shadowrun and Warhawk existed.
For the record, Warhawk stands at a metacritic rating of 84, only 2 pts lower than Titanfall right now. But review scores don't change the fact that there's nothing "Finally" about what's happening with this game.
Right it's for everyone *on* PSN, so only those who are online with their PS consoles and who synch their trophies. And only per platform which I'm guessing is the PS4 number in this case. It stands to reason that people who are most interested in playing offline SP only are going to be more greatly excluded from these stats as well. PSN trophy rarity stats are fun to look at but they're far from inclusive for even just the platforms they report on, nevermind accounting for possible significant variance across other platforms that they obviously don't track.
In any case I didn't suggest my experience was "the norm" but I would think that it could go as high as the 30-40% range when all other factors are accounted for. In the meantime, 20% is hardly an amount to scoff at when you're selling millions or aiming to sell millions. If you're targeting a 5-6 million seller, that's a million or more of those sales that could be adversely affected.
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