Kind of makes it seem like they should've tried going insane pushing PSP harder for now, at least until something like the Vita could've been sold at <$200. Which probably was doable with just another year actually.
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NPD October 2012 Sales Results [Up3: NBA, MoH, NSMB2 + History, Pokemon, RE6]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
metalslimer
Member
They should have launched in 2011 with the 3DS, and that was the first mistake they made. Launching a year later lost them Monster Hunter and let the 3DS build strength in Japan. Launching in 2013 would have been even worse for them in japan because no one would have went for it. Can you imagine trying to launch a platform while your competitor has the biggest franchises of the region coming out at the same time?
It's the freaking prices of things. People can point at how people are buying ipads or 500 bucks but that doesn't mean shit when the iPad is used for so much more than gaming. The PS3 is finally going to be 200 on Black Friday and that's not even a real price cut. Same for the 360. $60 games just don't work and if the industry continues on its current path I will be very scared
njean777
Member
I am sure it is because we are nearing the end of a cycle. Mostly everybody that has wanted a gaming console has one now, and with no price drops this year there is no incentive for the casual market just yet. The kinect did help MS out, but now it is time for new consoles.
perfectchaos007
Member
And apparently NOA's marketing team is constrained by Nintendo JPN. I understand they just want to make sure the brand is protected, but I would argue that their Japanese team doesn't know enough about American buying habits to market to us effectively. Nintendo Japan needs to swallow their pride and loosen their reigns on the Nintendo American marketing team, or give the project to an American Ad Agency like Ogilvy, McCann, or Chiat-Day.
Father_Brain
Banned
There is no other conceivable strategy for the current hardware. Third parties won't greenlight bigger (or practically any, in the case of Western pubs) Vita software until/unless it starts selling better, and Sony has never been able to carry a platform itself.
metalslimer
Member
Iwata seems to know there is a problem, but his solutions don't really make much sense to me. His idea is try a DS Lite redux and launch NSMB2 and the XL and hope for the best. Adding on this Luigi's Mansion was delayed. Nintendo is going to miss their 3DS forecast by a good amount so Nintendo as a company will be extremely interesting to watch.
Massive price drop and start bundling the thing with PS3s,laptops,tvs,etc. I'm serious. If there only strategy is to limp through next year, just end production on it now and port the games in development over to PS3 because that will just end of costing them money as they waste manufacturing money on it.
True, though the 2011 tsunami had a huge role in fucking that up. Maybe if they aimed a bit lower they could've gotten it out quicker and be affordable, even if the graphics weren't the same huge jump.
Duxxy3
Member
Time to revise the vita and shoot for $149. In my opinion, that is the sweet spot for dedicated handhelds.
Before you say its unrealistic, I can get a nexus 7 with an excellent 7" screen, 16GB of storage and a quad core processor for $199 RIGHT NOW. If Sony can't get a vita with onboard storage down to $150 a year from now, they have no business being a console maker.
metalslimer
Member
The components of Vita are still much more powerful than that Nexus 7. The OLED screen in Vita is also adding to that cost. The only way I could see them getting to 150 would be to drop the screen to a much lower quality, and actually weaken the system. Most phones still aren't as powerful as Vita and the new 199 tablets definitely aren't as powerful.
Sony as a company has many faces, and if it simply isn't worth spending the money to save a product they won't. We've already seen that they won't hesitate to do this in the gaming sector w/ the way they handled PSP Go; pre-launch treatment by Sony certainly made it seem they cared about it more than the 'experiment' they claimed it to be after it failed to take-off.
Sony's probably waiting for a miracle to happen now, spending as little as possible so as to minimize costs until the point where even a miracle won't be able to save the thing.
Yes.
Duxxy3
Member
Sony seriously was shooting for the moon with the vita. But that's not what the portable market is all about. It has been and always will be about cheap fun.
Gameboy, DS and now the new touch devices sell because of that simple idea.
I'll throw out a bold prediction: the original ds will outsell the vita this holiday and not by a small margin.
Sony has nobody but themselves to blame.
There's definitely a hunger for bigger experiences on handhelds, I think. Problem is that the 3DS seems to be big ENOUGH for those that want that.
Though I kind of expect even in a worst case scenario the Vita actually could kick around for quite awhile through DD games. Playing stuff like Retro City Rampage on that is fantastic.
metalslimer
Member
Not in the west it seems. If there was a really a hunger for bigger experiences the Vita would most certainly be doing better. Let's not kid ourselves here. The reason the 3DS is selling at all right now is because Nintendo has Mario. Pick up and play games like Mario Kart and NSMB2 are the reason why the 3DS is selling. Sony's idiotic mistake was assuming that stuff like Uncharted and Resistance would actually sell people Vitas.
AgentOtaku
Member
F Yeah for Dishonored!
Also, hooray for X-Com I suppose. I feel guilty as I still haven't bought it yet =(
I <3 RE6
Also, hooray for X-Com I suppose. I feel guilty as I still haven't bought it yet =(
I <3 RE6
Hardware sales are awful across the board, like every month this year. Soon we will be able to see if a lot of it had to do with lack of new consoles in 6 years and fatigue in general.
Nintendo really needs to kill the DS. I know its the budget choice for consumers but honestly how much money could they realistically be making off of DS software aside from Pokemon, nothing else is going to come out for the system.
Then again, Wal-mart put advertisement space for NSMB and Mario Kart on DS for their Black Friday ad at only 5 dollars off, so maybe that stuff is still selling well.
Nintendo really needs to kill the DS. I know its the budget choice for consumers but honestly how much money could they realistically be making off of DS software aside from Pokemon, nothing else is going to come out for the system.
Then again, Wal-mart put advertisement space for NSMB and Mario Kart on DS for their Black Friday ad at only 5 dollars off, so maybe that stuff is still selling well.
wooha,nice numbers for Dishonored (without Steam digital numbers too),for s stealth game to do this I'm really really surprised,but it's a well deserved number..game is great (my Goty so far).
Dishonored 2 is a guarantee now I guess (unless if Zenimax want to throw Arkane Studio to finish Prey 2 development first)
Dishonored 2 is a guarantee now I guess (unless if Zenimax want to throw Arkane Studio to finish Prey 2 development first)
hurting much
Be glad that they are. If Sony and MS had to drop the price that much their console business would never have gotten out of the red. This way they can offset at least a part of the billions they sunk early this gen.
Hyperbole much? Maybe you should smoke some more and calm down. Pour one out for Vita.
Power doesnt matter much to be but region locking has a left sour taste and NoA sucks in genreal as well
electroplankton
Banned
Code of Princess at 20k seems a nice numbers. It will outsell Japan's sales.
Metal Gear?!
Member
AHA-Lambda
Member
Glad to see the (relative) successes and failings of dishonoured, xcom and re6 and moh.
Really believe the reviews hurt re6 badly, less so for moh; that wasn't tracking too well to begin with. Unfortunate we can't see xcom numbers but that game was always going to shift most units through steam.
Ps: no indication of Horizon numbers? Seemed to be doing quite well in the UK at least.
Really believe the reviews hurt re6 badly, less so for moh; that wasn't tracking too well to begin with. Unfortunate we can't see xcom numbers but that game was always going to shift most units through steam.
Ps: no indication of Horizon numbers? Seemed to be doing quite well in the UK at least.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
ugh, this is bad. like, ugh. I'm so tired of the bad results. I don't mean to over do the hyperbole, but Ive never been more scared for my industry.
Petrae
Member
Gotta hope it's generational fatigue, but I think that consumer contraction is underway and is here to stay. The bar for success will be lowered. It has to be.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Well, let's put it this way: the market is smaller. It's not as big as it was this generation. Was this generation "inflated?" Perhaps. But it's shrunk, and it's more than generational fatigue. Case-in-point: Just Dance 4 launced this month. Where is it? It was the #2 title in 2011. Only beaten in sales by COD. It came out early October, and it's no where to be seen in top 10. In only one year. That entire casual segment is eviscerated. Is this new? Not really, it's been trending down all year. But that is just such real proof that a huge segment has moved on, it's brutal to overall industry decline. Only 5 games are going to make a lot of money this year. And they are going to make a lot of money. But so few are going to benefit. How scary is this? Next gen is going to just be insane.
Petrae
Member
The omission of Just Dance 4, by my estimation, is a result of Wii finally going belly up. The lion's share of sales for the IP were Wii-centric... so, with WiiU (finally) on the horizon, I think it makes sense to see sales slow for it. I was surprised to not see it chart at all, though.
I do agree with the casual demographic has largely been lost. Lots of competition for free time these days, between digital streaming, mobile, TV, e-mail & web surfing, etc. Consoles are going to have bigger challenge in the next generation staying competitive with more demo groups than the core. And the hope is that the core demo doesn't decide to jump to PC.
The next generation will be interesting to observe. I'm not sold on a doom-ish outlook, but am relatively confident in consumer contraction and the need to lower the bar of expectations as we're simply not going to see numbers close to what we saw during this generation. The industry must adapt, and I do believe that it will.
Yes, next gen we'll probably see all the actors doing worse due to the many alternatives now available to customers.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Burn, you piece of trash. Burn, I say.
I think there's one ray of hope depending on tastes: the industry definitely did just fine with a smaller base than now... and it tended to be more diverse. Maybe once it's pointless to blow big bucks on the flashiest of games (or they learn how to be flashy and CHEAP) we can see more diversity come to game design. Hell, the sales of Dishonored are encouraging on that front.
walking fiend
Member
haha, I thought JD4 was released just recently; the casual market has almost vanished, but franchises like Just Dance are partly to blame themselves; if they had released the game annually and focused on the DLCs, and had stuck to the Wii, the brand wouldn't become so thin.
But gaming industry is basically becoming something like Hollywood; only blockbusters will sell.
pieatorium
Member
SolarPowered
Member
I hope Capcom never fucking goes crazy with the handheld exclusive(SFxT characters and UMvC3's replay modes) features again. This shit is their first and final warning.
goddamn
Same as in Japan. Honestly... these bombas are bigger than I expected.
MrCookiepants
Member
Maybe people don't need another Just Dance game? It also doesn't help that its primary platform, the Wii, is just about dead. Was the industry in trouble when everyone got tired of Guitar Hero in 2009? No, this happens all the time. Casuals are fickle. They'll be back for the next fad.
Why are you all ignoring the fact that Skylanders and NBA are significantly outperforming last year's games? And Dishonored having one of the biggest new IP launches in recent years? RE6 and MoH flops would happen any year. Brand name can only do so much.
This doom and gloom shit is getting old. In November we may well have 3 games sell over 3 million copies and a new console launch. If the next two months see decline YoY, then you can cry.
walking fiend
Member
I am not sure if Mario is going to sell nearly as much as CoD; WW it may reach 3-4m; maybe unless you mean the whole franchise. But I guess EA Sport games sold pretty well this year.
NBA increase is because this year it was the only NBA, and Skylanders success is mostly due to the toys they will with.
And I think you partly answered yourself; a new AAA gaming selling like 500K and becoming one of the biggest new IP launches just shows how poorly new IPs are doing.
It may sell 2m and still not warrant a sequel; while last gen a lot of new IPs become million sellers, while the production costs and risks were much lower.
I'd up that: if we don't start seeing a bound back once new consoles debut THEN cry. Well, so long as it's within the levels of the earlier parts of this generation, I do imagine it's only going to reach great heights once the systems are out for a few years.
Thats a bit hard to determine, there is no real comprehensive overview to be had, with the fragmentation especially in the mobile business going on.