freefornow
Gold Member
Gee, Microsoft with the top selling software on WiiU. MS can't take a trick can they.
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January 2017 NPD (U.S. Hardware) Predictions - Closes Tuesday, February 7th
Here are some more charts:
Pokken's legs are....interesting.
edit:
Or maybe being above splatoon and 3d world at this point isn't that impressive.
Still, I think those games added a decent amount last quarter.
I mean, it's going to turn to garbage like every other NPD thread that's not based on predictions
ethomaz
Banned
Well but we always have a thread for the TOP10 software with overall industry summary.
Apologies if this was already covered, but NES Classic was the #3 console last month.
http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/16/npd-nintendos-nes-classic-was-januarys-third-best-selling-console/ (via GoNintendo.com)
http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/16/npd-nintendos-nes-classic-was-januarys-third-best-selling-console/ (via GoNintendo.com)
Mat,
Does the NES hardware count toward the overall HW spending for the month, or is VB just including it as #3 console for kicks?
Sho_Nuff82
Member
The supply constrained rerelease of the NES is outselling the 3DS and Wii U? I now both should see depressed sales due to Switch presentation in January but still, wow.
3DS doesn't count for consoles.
It wasn't in the top 20 for either the US or Eu PlayStation store downloads
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1341701
Primethius
Banned
Yea, shouldn't really be a surprise. It's a super niche game that maybe doesn't give off that feeling cause we're on GAF.
Unknown?
Member
Tales of Berseria isn't just as niche? Also tons of people hated Zestiria and it soured the fan base.
Tales at least has anime going for it. Which is enough for some people.
dead souls
Member
Don't believe the hype. Yakuza games are not popular in the USA, and I type that as a fan who owns all of them. A Tales game outselling it is to be expected.
Sangetsu-II
Member
Not worth it I suppose, NPD isn't what it used to be.
Primethius
Banned
Nope, Tales has had far more appeal in the west than a Yakuza game. Always did. Maybe not significantly anymore, but clearly enough to outsell it this go around too.
Futurematic
Member
The Ars Technica thread about console sales had some brilliant stuff (aside from the warriors) circa 2006-2007, N'Gai Croal & Keighley discussing it every month at Newsweek, 1Up Yours always devoted a major section to it, massive articles by Matt Matthews at Gamasutra
It's sad that an entire cottage industry of analysis has been mostly destroyed, NPD discussion was one of my favourite corners of the internet. This latest NPD collapse of interest is like the miniature version of the ending of hardware numbers all those years ago.
Reineldinho
Member
Does people lose interest or not official thread make people lose interest? I've been waiting for the results for days and just show them in a web loosely explained.
I enjoy (and learn) a lot every week on the PAL threads (cheers to Bruno). It's a matter of visibility as well.
Here are some more charts:
Great charts. I can see the excuse for all Nintendo games on the Wii u chart but the 3DS one is no different. Are all the 3rd party games being bought on the eShop?
onemanasylum
Banned
No Numbers stink, I don't get why NPD and the game industry is so secretive over this. Anyone find it odd Win Central had numbers for 2 months and don't now? Wonder if it is because the gap is bigger?
So we don't even get a combine chart now. I think I need to stop commenting about NPD. Its not worth my commenting timeHere are some more charts:
Sho_Nuff82
Member
That would probably be best, we've got a decent amount of charts from normal news outlets.
Top10 combined was already posted, check back a page. Matt was kind enough to share the individual rankings with us.
January 2017 Top 10 Games
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Grand Theft Auto V
Battlefield 1
NBA 2K17
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue
Madden NFL 17
Watch Dogs 2
Overwatch (no Battle.net sales)
FIFA 17
MatPiscatella
Member
NES Classic does count for overall HW spend. The #3 ranking is based on unit sales.
FF month 1's are always quite good, but it also has one of the highest month 2 decay rates of any franchise.
Considering the chart is revenue based I'd agree with you.
To be fair, most of the threads that start up right after 1st party PR are done with a warz slant, so those threads are often set up to fail.
Would it be weird if I just did it?
Extremely timely NPD thread (sorry I thought this week was the subscriber only release): http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1344971
ethomaz
Banned
Thanks
Chobel
Member
$50 off Xbox One bundles from Feb 17th to Feb 25th
https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/832696221919748096
https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/832696221919748096
DriftingSpirit
Member
Dat counter.$50 off Xbox One bundles from Feb 17th to Feb 25th
https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/832696221919748096
HeisenbergWW62
Banned
I must have missed where Yakuza 0 was the top selling game
Sangetsu-II
Member
$50 off Xbox One bundles from Feb 17th to Feb 25th
https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/832696221919748096
Took them long enough, still most of their bundles are $300, so they are slightly behind.
onemanasylum
Banned
Sony caught MS by surprise this month. Price wars are good for all of us.
Here are some more charts:
Hey Matt any chance you could clarify the thought process behind switching from units sold to revenue on the public rankings? Given that some publishers aren't reporting digital sales it seems like a very flawed way of examining the market. Why not do a Unit sales at retail ranking and an additional ranking including digital revenue. That would give us a much clearer picture of what's really happening in the industry. As it is now with all the uncertainty there just isn't a lot to discuss or dissect based on the current rankings alone.
P.S: do the digital rankings include season passes and pos purchase in game transactions towards their revenue or is t solely revenue from SW sold? I'm sure this has been clarified before but I can't seem to find any confirmation either way.
I'm sure it'll do fine but this is a fairly slow month and remember this is by revenue not units sold so let's not get ahead of ourselves. Either way it's good news for KH fans though.
Bruno MB
Member
It seems that after 10 years this might be the end for these prediction games
If I'm not wrong this is the first month in NeoGAF history where no NPD data was leaked, we have no figures for any single piece of hardware or software.
I guess I will have to say congratulations to the NPD Group and the big US video game publishers for the success in their incessant labour in obfuscating the data about the health of the industry to the public / media. Now we are very vulnerable to PR spins.
If I'm not wrong this is the first month in NeoGAF history where no NPD data was leaked, we have no figures for any single piece of hardware or software.
I guess I will have to say congratulations to the NPD Group and the big US video game publishers for the success in their incessant labour in obfuscating the data about the health of the industry to the public / media. Now we are very vulnerable to PR spins.
Sangetsu-II
Member
It seems that after 10 years this might be the end for these prediction games
If I'm not wrong this is the first month in NeoGAF history where no NPD data was leaked, we have no figures for any single piece of hardware or software.
I guess I will have to say congratulations to the NPD Group and the big US video game publishers for the success in their incessant labour in obfuscating the data about the health of the industry to the public / media. Now we are very vulnerable to PR spins.
Mat must be so proud
onemanasylum
Banned
It seems that after 10 years this might be the end for these prediction games
If I'm not wrong this is the first month in NeoGAF history where no NPD data was leaked, we have no figures for any single piece of hardware or software.
I guess I will have to say congratulations to the NPD Group and the big US video game publishers for the success in their incessant labour in obfuscating the data about the health of the industry to the public / media. Now we are very vulnerable to PR spins.
So stupid. I don't understand the secrecy.
Bits N Pieces
Member
It seems that after 10 years this might be the end for these prediction games
If I'm not wrong this is the first month in NeoGAF history where no NPD data was leaked, we have no figures for any single piece of hardware or software.
I guess I will have to say congratulations to the NPD Group and the big US video game publishers for the success in their incessant labour in obfuscating the data about the health of the industry to the public / media. Now we are very vulnerable to PR spins.
Industry peers looking out for there own industry, makes sense in the grand scheme of things - they get to control the narrative.
FanDeNintendo
Neo Member
It seems that after 10 years this might be the end for these prediction games
If I'm not wrong this is the first month in NeoGAF history where no NPD data was leaked, we have no figures for any single piece of hardware or software.
I guess I will have to say congratulations to the NPD Group and the big US video game publishers for the success in their incessant labour in obfuscating the data about the health of the industry to the public / media. Now we are very vulnerable to PR spins.
It was great info and now look, we are supposed to believe what they tell us. So sad.
MatPiscatella
Member
I get it. I wish I could go into detail about why things are the way they are, but surely you can understand why I can't. Any participating publisher or 1st party could talk about their sales data anytime they wished. NPD does not own this information, we are only caretakers of it. It's not my data to give. I try to be helpful, as far as I'm able to be. I've never talked to any mod about any poster on the board nor have I ever ratted on anyone that has spoken to any numbers that did find their way into the public.
Mat must be so proud
I get the frustration. I don't know what happened to Cream, or any of the other posters that threw numbers out there. I've never spoken with or about any of them.
It is flawed, no question. Here's the thing... with digital, particularly digital sales, units can shift dramatically based on discounting. A STEAM or PSN/XBX sale of a game at 90% off can shift tens or even hundreds of thousands of units. A game may sell more units in one day at a significant sale price than it did life to date up to that sale.
So, had we kept the ranking at units, it would be incredibly easy for someone to manipulate those rankings.
By using revenues, we are able to normalize the units with pricing. Again, not perfect, but better than units alone.
We have most of the major publishers participating, but not having Bethesda or Battle.net sales hurts, sure.
All the digital rankings are for full game spending only. DLC/MTX is not included. Hopefully we get there someday soon.
hanspampel
Banned
quick question.
does NPD have digital Revenue AND units and only report Revenue in the release,
or does NPD only get the total Revenue figures from the participating publisher and does not know the ASP for those titles?
It's a big difference between not having that data or just not willing to share it publicly
I wouldn't want to share to much of my business details with the public, either. I get where the publisher comes from.
the most honest ranking would be Revenue including Digital with 100% off all publisher for all storefronts participating and the ASP of the Titel as additional Information.
Something like GFK is doing for the Yearly Pal Charts (without digital, yet)
does NPD have digital Revenue AND units and only report Revenue in the release,
or does NPD only get the total Revenue figures from the participating publisher and does not know the ASP for those titles?
It's a big difference between not having that data or just not willing to share it publicly
I wouldn't want to share to much of my business details with the public, either. I get where the publisher comes from.
the most honest ranking would be Revenue including Digital with 100% off all publisher for all storefronts participating and the ASP of the Titel as additional Information.
Something like GFK is doing for the Yearly Pal Charts (without digital, yet)
FinaruDensetsu
Member
Don't know if it factored into your guys' thinking, but I'd add that even retail games go on fairly deep discounts pretty fast now, so I think the revenue is an even better marker than units based on that.
MatPiscatella
Member
Yes. Revenue, Units and ASP are all in the data set.
That would certainly be more complete. We added the platform ranking charts, are looking to add more as we can.
True. Pricing can move very quickly now, with steeper discounting than we used to see. Unit rankings just hid a lot. I also realize how ironic this statement is.
Revenue gives us a proxy value on how much the publisher made on the game, but from a gaming enthusiast standpoint, we usually want to know how many of game X we care about made it into people's hands to also enjoy it. That also leads to hope for sequels, as shown with Tomb Raider, which had long-standing $5 digital sales after failing to meet initial SE sales goals, which probably led a lot to RotTR getting greenlit. From that perspective, units is much more meaningful to us personally, if not as meaningful to the publisher who needs to make quarterly revenue numbers for stockholders. Firesale unit results can definitely be misleading (e.g. Ni no Kumi on DS in Japan), but there's usually not that level of overshipment to muck things up.
To summarize, I care more that 50K people are also playing a game that I love than that it made $1m in revenue, but I'm not the one who NPD has to sell the report to. :lol
To summarize, I care more that 50K people are also playing a game that I love than that it made $1m in revenue, but I'm not the one who NPD has to sell the report to. :lol
ethomaz
Banned
Revenue shows a wrong ideia of the game success for gamers in my opinion...
The price of a game is variable... more in retail than in digital... at launch it is easy to see some games getting cut to $40 or even $35... after some weeks some games reach low like $10.
So in a ranking by Revenue you will see a game ranked lower but at the end it reach way more consumers than the revenue alone shows if happened any type of deal or cutoff... that is even more important for new IPs because you are creating your user base and units shows the success of that... revenue not.
If you care only about how much money a game made then revenue is a good tracking...
But if you care about userbase and how the IP growing across the consumers units is the best you have and the definitive success of the game... that is where you see how to you can work in the sequel to be successful too because you know your userbase.
The price of a game is variable... more in retail than in digital... at launch it is easy to see some games getting cut to $40 or even $35... after some weeks some games reach low like $10.
So in a ranking by Revenue you will see a game ranked lower but at the end it reach way more consumers than the revenue alone shows if happened any type of deal or cutoff... that is even more important for new IPs because you are creating your user base and units shows the success of that... revenue not.
If you care only about how much money a game made then revenue is a good tracking...
But if you care about userbase and how the IP growing across the consumers units is the best you have and the definitive success of the game... that is where you see how to you can work in the sequel to be successful too because you know your userbase.
MatPiscatella
Member
Pretty much.
hanspampel
Banned
well the publisher already have your back
they gladly report total user and monthly or daily active user numbers as one of, or even the, most important metric
(active) user, revenue and gross margin increase are the hot topics today
and with the shift to many different monetisation models the intital $60 unit sale becomes less and less important
it's just not a fitting metric anymore, that represents or let you gauge the success in a good way, when you look at the direction the business is moving to right now