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NPD Sales Results for May 2014 [Up1: Wii U Hardware]

AniHawk

Member
I don't know what to tell you then? Create your own retail tracking service?

all you need to do is add 10% to account for canada, and maybe another 10% to nintendo software because npd estimates wrong because of reasons. wow i can't believe mario kart 8 sold 495k units in the us in two days. well, 540k in 2.2 days if you are including canada.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Sure, if you're making blood spurt and gore blast. But the lines start blurring a little bit if you're looking at tiger woods or something to that nature. These invented lines of core and casual are often more blurred that many believe. Call of duty and gta for example have to sell far out of the hardcore to reach those sales

I was generalizing for simplicity.

I tend to use things like "shooter category", "racing category" "action adventure category" "active category (fitness, motion controlled).

Things like that. Category size is usually determined by te biggest seller in that category - that's the category ceiling.

You can also then segment that our by demo, m18-34, w34+ etc etc to identify a "target".

I recommend reading a few books or taking a class to anyone interested. There is a loooot more to it all then intuition (or bias). It's not even like this is gaming specific, it's just marketing 201.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
Not all games are created equal my friend.
If I'm selling just dance, why would I factor out wii sales this gen when trying to indentify my market and set forecasts? If I'm selling battlefield, why keep those numbers in? I'm not sellin to that audience anyway. I want to focus on spending channels that will increase my attach to the platforms that hold my target. Not get a skewed sense is scale and incorrectly allocate my mix. It's inefficient.

Edit:
Man I just piss away money here all the time haha. I can get $30k cultancy fees for this stuff. :)

Cultancy? Is that a new type of consultancy for cults?

Mario Golf really didn't made a dent, did it?
Mario Golf did like 17K in its first 2 days iirc... so it's above that at least?


Btw Harker, would you happen to have any new Wii U LTDs? Like 3D World for example? I figure that apart from MK8, it was the highest selling Wii U game in April & May.
 
i vaguely recall having this conversation before. anyway, i don't think the comparison of a decade-old medium to a popular emerging one is really strong, especially considering the popularity of dvds early on. second, i think the idea that the playstation brand is so strong because of the games coming to it is flawed. all of those big franchises and more were also coming to the ps3, exclusively even, but instead they all went multiplatform save for two, and the ps3 struggled in its early months because instead of having a hook, it had an anchor.

the ps2 was the first actual attempt at making a video game console a video game hub. it was on the bleeding edge of technology to have this brand new medium playable for so cheap. it was mentioned in most reviews of the hardware as being a positive element, and as you noted, it changed the nature in which game platforms were developed from now on, except now it's commonplace for a video game platform to play movies and music, not a novelty.
I simply see a distinct difference between the addition of multimedia functionality that simply improves the value proposition, but doesn't change the core function of the device, i.e. playing games the same way that people had previously, and who that function appeals to, i.e. the same young males, versus an actual shift in how people play, making a device deliberately simpler and more accessible to focus primarily on attracting a new audience for games.

The PS2 was the most successful console of its time (and eventually all time) because it was the best value core gaming machine of its time. The games that define it did not target an expanded audience; that audience was not the focus of its initial hardware and software design focus - some of that came later in its cycle, but never to the extent seen in the last gen. The Wii derived it's success by attracting a new market of gamers in their droves. The late cycle advent of Kinect managed to gain success attracting away part of that market.

You compare to the PS3; which had a new media, which played that media well at a fraction of the going price, which had that media as a bullet point in review. But couldn't compete in value as a machine against the 360 that played all the games the traditional consumers wanted. And so performed poorly until it could. The market the PS2 serviced, the market for GTAs split between these two ecosystems, because you had to pay $599 to stay in the Playstation ecosystem.
It's comforting to know that Leondexter, the guy who excluded the Wii from his charts, recognized up front that it wasn't the best solution, but he didn't have time to come up with something better. He recognized that it left an incomplete picture, but just didn't have a good way to compensate quickly.
It's definitely worthwhile to note of course. Some degree of the PS2, the 360, the PS3 should presumably be excluded too. Some degree of the Wii should be included. Obviously either blanket exclusion or inclusion reduces the completeness; but at the same time it can make a more meaningful picture if we're talking about specific segments, genres, consumers. For instance, I'm sure Ubisoft is definitely considering the "casual exodus" when they look at the future of their Just Dance franchise as JH mentioned, but I don't think the numbers as they are necessarily hold portents for Far Cry. And it leads to a better view of if the industry is undergoing imminent demise as some seem to be suggesting (or even wanting in some cases) or if there's simply been a contraction in a specific segment that expanded anomalously in the last cycle.
 

donny2112

Member
How did third party games do on the biggest selling console from last gen? Maybe we should use that as a benchmark.

Despite not having almost all of the big pushed third-party games, including not having a simultaneously released version of the biggest trendsetter from last gen with COD4? I'd say they started off pretty good since they sold more third-party software after 23 months on the market than 360 had.

In the interests of beating a dead horse, if the third-party publishers had supported the Wii like they supported the PS2 in terms of significant support, 1) the Wii wouldn't have died out so quickly, and 2) the overall market would've been in a ton better position last gen than they were. But, they didn't, traditional core games on the Wii were from Nintendo and almost no one else (Activision!), Wii died out sooner, traditional core market had to rely on PS360 only, middle fell out of the market, etc. Everything might not have been peachy rosy if third-parties had treated Wii like the real market leader, but I have to come to the conclusion that they'd have been a whole lot better than they were.

Nintendo screwed up, particularly in making a weak system that couldn't get easy ports.
Third-parties screwed up in not supporting the Wii anywhere near like they should have.
Nintendo screwed up in not working with those third-parties to overcome their reticence and believing the lie of the GameCube generation that the only reason games stayed off GameCube was due to userbase.
Everybody screwed up on Wii.

Anyways, dead horse, etc.

all you need to do is add 10% to account for canada, and maybe another 10% to nintendo software because npd estimates wrong because of reasons. wow i can't believe mario kart 8 sold 495k units in the us in two days. well, 540k in 2.2 days if you are including canada.

I'd 'Favorite' this post, if it was Twitter. :lol
 

AniHawk

Member
I simply see a distinct difference between the addition of multimedia functionality that simply improves the value proposition, but doesn't change the core function of the device, i.e. playing games the same way that people had previously, and who that function appeals to, i.e. the same young males, versus an actual shift in how people play, making a device deliberately simpler and more accessible to focus primarily on attracting a new audience for games.

The PS2 was the most successful console of its time (and eventually all time) because it was the best value core gaming machine of its time. The games that define it did not target an expanded audience; that audience was not the focus of its initial hardware and software design focus - some of that came later in its cycle, but never to the extent seen in the last gen. The Wii derived it's success by attracting a new market of gamers in their droves. The late cycle advent of Kinect managed to gain success attracting away part of that market.

and what i'm saying is that there are more audiences than just women and grandparents that can be considered casual, people who buy mainstream brands for social status or value and then not a lot of games. i'm not comparing the kinds of value people saw in the ps2 or the wii, just that there was a boom unrelated to software on the ps2. it's hard for me to look at an attach ratio of under 2 for the ps2's launch and assume that people were driven there by games alone, and it's hard for me to consider evidence that these people were waiting for software a year or more away when i haven't been presented with any.
 

Hero

Member
and what i'm saying is that there are more audiences than just women and grandparents that can be considered casual, people who buy mainstream brands for social status or value and then not a lot of games. i'm not comparing the kinds of value people saw in the ps2 or the wii, just that there was a boom unrelated to software on the ps2. it's hard for me to look at an attach ratio of under 2 for the ps2's launch and assume that people were driven there by games alone, and it's hard for me to consider evidence that these people were waiting for software a year or more away when i haven't been presented with any.

Drop the mic Ani.
 
third parties sold about 500m units on the wii, or about as many games that were ever sold on the nes or game boy if you want a frame of reference.
The audience for the Wii is different from the audience of the HD twins. Multiplats which sell on the Wii do not necessarily reflects the core audience which most of third parties target. COD sold 1-2 million on the Wii while it sold 20 million on PS360PC, while just dance sold much more on the Wii than it did on PS360. Even when third parties sell on the Wii and these sales are way, it does not mean that most third parties who target specific audiences will suffer because most of them did not put their games on the Wii. The Wii is never a measure how most third third parties who target specific audiences.
 
and what i'm saying is that there are more audiences than just women and grandparents that can be considered casual, people who buy mainstream brands for social status or value and then not a lot of games. i'm not comparing the kinds of value people saw in the ps2 or the wii, just that there was a boom unrelated to software on the ps2. it's hard for me to look at an attach ratio of under 2 for the ps2's launch and assume that people were driven there by games alone, and it's hard for me to consider evidence that these people were waiting for software a year or more away when i haven't been presented with any.
What does one derive from the PS4's attach ratio at launch (1.89)? Are people buying it for Netflix? What does one derive from the PS3's 1.1 game tie ratio in November 2007? What does one take from the PS2's eventual 12.4 tie ratio? I just don't think that value adding is necessarily equivalent to changing the primary value.

I'm not really disputing the idea that the term casual audience can have a broader meaning (I don't really want to get into a long semantic discussion with you again). But that if someone was looking at the numbers for the last decade and a half, the PS2 doesn't stand as a success driven predominantly by some transient and anomalous expansion. That the audiences that drove the PS2 to being a successful console have dissipated from the console market.

As we've discussed before, I believe, you can call the segment whatever you want. You can call the expanded market segment of older gamers, female gamers, the googlymoogly market if you want. But the googlymoogly market wasn't the driver of the PS2's success. It did drive the Wii's success, I don't know if anyone would dispute this. And it's questionable whether the googlymoogly market is still receptive to console gaming. Given that does it make sense to look at the information differently for different purposes?

Are the types of consumers that drove the PS2's success still in the market, I believe so. (I'm going to assume you don't though.) If they weren't, I'm not really sure who was buying the 360 and PS3 for the last generation, and who is buying the PS4 and XBO now. I don't think the sky is falling, I think it's the North American Summer.
 

AniHawk

Member
The audience for the Wii is different from the audience of the HD twins. Multiplats which sell on the Wii do not necessarily reflects the core audience which most of third parties target. COD sold 1-2 million on the Wii while it sold 20 million on PS360PC, while just dance sold much more on the Wii than it did on PS360. Even when third parties sell on the Wii and these sales are way, it does not mean that most third parties who target specific audiences will suffer because most of them did not put their games on the Wii. The Wii is never a measure how most third third parties who target specific audiences.

not sure how that makes losing a potential half a billion units of software is a good thing for really any business, especially if that consumer base was swallowed up by a large competing element that they have no big stake in, and one that is training new gamers to buy more games at inexpensive prices instead of a premium.

What does one derive from the PS4's attach ratio at launch (1.89)? Are people buying it for Netflix? What does one derive from the PS3's 1.1 game tie ratio in November 2007? What does one take from the PS2's eventual 12.4 tie ratio?

do you really want me to answer these questions, or are you placing numbers out of context and facetiously looking for a single answer that would satisfy them all?

I'm not really disputing the idea that the term casual audience can have a broader meaning (I don't really want to get into a long semantic discussion with you again). But that if someone was looking at the numbers for the last decade and a half, the PS2 doesn't stand as a success driven predominantly by some transient and anomalous expansion.

As we've discussed before, I believe, you can call the segment whatever you want. You can call the expanded market segment of older gamers, female gamers, the googlymoogly market if you want. But the googlymoogly market wasn't the driver of the PS2's success.

then there must be some confusion, because i'm really only talking about the early part of the ps2's life where the dvd was a novelty and the ps2 was valuable because of it, and not its software library.

Are the types of consumers that drove the PS2's success still in the market, I believe so. (I'm going to assume you don't though.)

i think the playstation 2 gamers spread out far and wide after the ps3's introduction. the ones really attracted to sony's software bought a ps3. the madden fanbase seemingly translated really well to the 360. the rpg fanbase essentially vanished from consoles and reappeared again on the ds and psp (especially in japan), and currently seems to reside on the 3ds. people who bought it for their kids when it was inexpensive probably got a wii afterwards. unlike some people (not you), i don't think userbases vanish into thin air- the thought is preposterous to me. the only way fanbases completely die off is if no one is appealing to their sensibilities anymore.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
Yes you are right. 770k

Nice. Wait... has 3D World almost outsold DKC:TF with only its 2014 sales? I remember a 570K number for 3D World in around Dec/Jan... interesting.

So for Wii U LTDs....

NSMBU unbundled = > 770K?
3D World = 770K
DKC TF: 258K

Last we heard (last NPD) was this:
LuigiU > 250k > DK > PIKMIN3 > 230K
RAYMAN > SONIC > MHU3 > 100K
TW101: 74K

Is there actually nothing b/w 3D World and the 250K gang in terms of sales on Wii U? Did Lego City Undercover on Wii U hit 300K at least? That was close to 250K last year iirc.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Nice. Wait... has 3D World almost outsold DKC:TF with only its 2014 sales? I remember a 570K number for 3D World in around Dec/Jan... interesting.

So for Wii U LTDs....

NSMBU unbundled = > 770K?
3D World = 770K
DKC TF: 258K

Last we heard (last NPD) was this:
LuigiU > 250k > DK > PIKMIN3 > 230K
RAYMAN > SONIC > MHU3 > 100K
TW101: 74K

Is there actually nothing b/w 3D World and the 250K gang in terms of sales on Wii U? Did Lego City Undercover on Wii U hit 300K at least? That was close to 250K last year iirc.

I don't I have anything in front of me, but I like that. There's really a 250k Gang and a 150k Gang. Only a few outliers really, those are our clusters.

Sucks doesn't it? Haha
 

Mory Dunz

Member
Well it was at 200K bundled (100K without) I think in 1 month or so. I think that's the last update we got?

Didn't it sell way less than 100K in Japan too? How exactly did it get over 1 million sales WW, even with the bundle? I don't remember it charting particularly high in the PAL charts.

EDIT:
Oh, you said in 1 month.
I read it as 1 month ago.
 

AniHawk

Member
I don't I have anything in front of me, but I like that. There's really a 250k Gang and a 150k Gang. Only a few outliers really, those are our clusters.

Sucks doesn't it? Haha

do you have a sort of idea of how the ps4/xb1 versions of rayman legends did? not really numbers per se, but maybe comparisons to other versions?
 

donny2112

Member
Where are your Titanfall numbers coming from? They would indicate that Titanfall on XB1 never sold another copy after March. I doubt that's the case.

It would indicate that it sold ~100K after March. Heavy front-loaded games have been the norm (outside of mainstream/Nintendo stuff) for the last few years.
 

Kelsey

Banned
It would indicate that it sold ~100K after March. Heavy front-loaded games have been the norm (outside of mainstream/Nintendo stuff) for the last few years.

No, it wouldn't indicate that at all. Aquamarine said during the March NPDs Titanfall sold through right around 1 million copies at retail in the US, and that isn't including the bundles or obviously 360. It does include physical PC copies, which won't amount to much. So his lifetime US sales of Titanfall seem way off to me based on Aqua's numbers.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
It would indicate that it sold ~100K after March. Heavy front-loaded games have been the norm (outside of mainstream/Nintendo stuff) for the last few years.

No, it wouldn't indicate that at all. Aquamarine said during the March NPDs Titanfall sold through right around 1 million copies at retail in the US, and that isn't including the bundles or obviously 360. It does include physical PC copies, which won't amount to much. So his lifetime US sales of Titanfall seem way off to me based on Aqua's numbers.

The 1.1m march # was including bundles. I'm sure plenty of folks are buying the TF bundle still. In March the bundle was about 265K of its sales iirc. 865K unbundled approximately iirc. I can only imagine a lot of the XB1 sales since then (and probably most of this month's especially) were for that bundle.
 
Where are your Titanfall numbers coming from? They would indicate that Titanfall on XB1 never sold another copy after March. I doubt that's the case.

Those numbers are unbundled and come from sugar

TF sold quite a lot more in bundles but that wasn't leaked in this thread to my knowledge

No, it wouldn't indicate that at all. Aquamarine said during the March NPDs Titanfall sold through right around 1 million copies at retail in the US, and that isn't including the bundles or obviously 360. It does include physical PC copies, which won't amount to much. So his lifetime US sales of Titanfall seem way off to me based on Aqua's numbers.

TF sold less than 1M on XB1 in March unbundled iirc
 
Where are your Titanfall numbers coming from? They would indicate that Titanfall on XB1 never sold another copy after March. I doubt that's the case.

We have ~865K / 925K (EA comment on NPD, might include PC or Canadian sales) / 1.1 million with bundles for March

We have (55% * 115K bundle) / 77K XBO unbundled / ~560K for April

We have 969k Titanfall XBO LTD, 559k Titanfall Xbox 360 LTD for May.



Titanfall sold like another 100K this month. The numbers work out depending on how you classify them.
 
do you really want me to answer these questions, or are you placing numbers out of context and facetiously looking for a single answer that would satisfy them all?
I'm always genuinely interested in hearing your points. But I don't know that the PS2 had historically bad tie ratio through it's life, or even in early life. I believe you have access to more data than I, so I'm fine with being shown though. It reached about 6 games per system, after about 20 months, from what I can find. It didn't track particularly poorly against it's contemporaries. The 360 did happen to have a particularly good tie ratio from memory, but even then took about the same amount of time to reach 6 games per system I believe. It's also harder to maintain or increase a tie ratio when the base is expanding faster, for obvious reasons.

So I'm just not in favor of the idea that the system's driver was it's ability to play DVDs, rather than the ability to play games, with the bonus of being a DVD player.
then there must be some confusion, because i'm really only talking about the early part of the ps2's life where the dvd was a novelty and the ps2 was valuable because of it, and not its software library.
I thought we were discussing the validity or not of removing data for the purposes of analysis and whether it created a more or less meaningful picture. I think DVD was a selling point throughout the life of the system. But I also think that gaming software was the primary point of purchase for the majority of its sales, and for much of its 6th gen life-cycle the software that defined the system didn't particularly deviate from the traditional market.

And in saying that I also think the primary point of purchase for the Wii was gaming software, so I hope the above isn't misinterpreted. But it was selling quite different software, by and large, to a quite different audience.
i think the playstation 2 gamers spread out far and wide after the ps3's introduction. the ones really attracted to sony's software bought a ps3. the madden fanbase seemingly translated really well to the 360. the rpg fanbase essentially vanished from consoles and reappeared again on the ds and psp (especially in japan), and currently seems to reside on the 3ds. people who bought it for their kids when it was inexpensive probably got a wii afterwards. unlike some people (not you), i don't think userbases vanish into thin air- the thought is preposterous to me. the only way fanbases completely die off is if no one is appealing to their sensibilities anymore.
I don't know. I don't really look at it as "the JRPG fanbase" but rather the consumers those games were aimed at more generally, which I don't really think deviated hugely from a young male target audience. They were certainly more targeted towards the Japanese market than modern output no doubt, and the significance of different geographies has definitely changed. One could argue they were more accessible to female gamers, I suppose, (without hopefully getting into an argument about gender norms).

I also think it's entirely possible for consumer tastes to change, regardless of if one keeps outputting the same thing, as the individuals who comprise the market segment shift. They grow up in different environments, economies, etc. The 16 year old in 1990 eagerly awaiting the next Super Mario, is 40 now. The 16 year old boy in 2000 eagerly awaiting the next Final Fantasy, is 30 now. The 16 year old now is eagerly awaiting the next Call of Duty. In 20 years time that 16 year old may want something entirely different, on the assumption we have consoles at all. That isn't to say that fanbases necessarily vanish, but I think they can diminish, or move as you note, and that movement can be due to circumstances outside of control (for instance you note the shift to handhelds in Japan).

As aforementioned, I think the primary market of the PS2 was playing different games/franchises/genres, but I don't think the people (demographically) that comprised that market is hugely different to that which drove the PS3 and 360 and that which is driving the XBO/PS4 now and going forward. I think there was certainly a market segment within the PS2's installed base particularly conducive to the types of games the Wii brought, with things like DDR and SingStar, and whether that's still present is a question. But I don't think that was the primary driver of it's success and it came later in the cycle, so it's far too early to me to determine whether they return. I could certainly be wrong.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
I don't I have anything in front of me, but I like that. There's really a 250k Gang and a 150k Gang. Only a few outliers really, those are our clusters.

Sucks doesn't it? Haha

What do you mean by "I like that?" Is that for 3D World?

Out of curiosity, do you mind sharing what are the outliers for the 250K/150K club? Apart from the bombs? Actually did any non-exclusive title hit 100K? JD? A Lego game?

@Aqua - Any idea how far behind 3D World is tracking behind Sunshine? (I assume that's the case).

Sorry for all the questions, but thanks for answering them =).
 
What do you mean by "I like that?" Is that for 3D World?

Out of curiosity, do you mind sharing what are the outliers for the 250K/150K club? Apart from W101 and 3rd party bombs? Actually did any non-exclusive title hit 100K? JD? A Lego game?

Don't remind me how hard TW101 bombed. :-(
 
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