Obliterator
Member
Sony. Dem Battlefront bundles. Pls
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NPD Sales Results for November 2015 [Up3: Combined Hardware For PS4 + XB1 + Wii U]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Please send more? Please send less? Please stop throwing them off cliffs in New Zealand? Please what?
I assume he's implying their still pushing a ton of consoles. The movie is still going strong.
DriftingSpirit
Member
Too many? It is overwhelming? Sony pls staph?
Well, obviously if they are throwing them off cliffs in New Zealand, they are moving consoles.
Wow Xbox One versions of all the games on the first page outsold their PS4 counterparts.
Silver lining I guess. Man though TR Rise is pretty far down list for a recent exclusive. Game really has been hexed with negative connotations. Thought it would be higher than that.
serversurfer
Member
/nod It seems PS4 actually has too many games.
tattooed_dwarf
Member
Time for renewal of that old meme.
You have loost your mind if you think you are right.
damn ipad, trying to autocorrect my correct spelling.
Dash_Riprock
Member
I keep seeing references to New Zealand. Where is this from?
Trust me. I'm a PhD
Member
A long time ago
in a galaxy far away
tattooed_dwarf
Member
There was this guy at start of Gen saying Xbones flying off the shelves in NZ and PS4s sitting on backrooms or something like that. I don't think he's with us anymore.
So he's taking a pair of numbers as a data point (releaseCount_x, swSales_x), and plots all of them out onto a graph. He then tries to find the line that minimizes the distance between all data points and the line (the so called line of best fit) using some math.
So for example, if the data points formed a circle on the graph, you could find an infinite number of lines that could equally fit the data, so the data set would have zero linear correlation.
What Queso is finding is that the best fit line is almost exactly fitting the data he has. So released software count is almost exactly linearly related total software sales.
Now this doesn't mean that this is a causal relationship (you can't just throw software out willy nilly and expect the linear trend to continue), but it does perhaps point to the 8th gen being underserved.
EventHorizon
Member
That is strange. With the larger install base I would assume that the PS4 versions would sell better. My total guess as to what is going on is that it has to do with the hardware bundles.
The PS4 leads with Star Wars at #1 on the charts and Uncharted at #31. Star Wars is a new hot game and would be a great starter game for a new console owner. Uncharted is a remaster but because many 360 owners are jumping ship to the PS4 there is a good chance that the 3 games are new to them. Once again it'd make a good starter for a new console owner.
On the other side, the Xbox bundles are anchored by Gears of War. Combine that with the fact that most XB1 owners are simply upgrading within the Xbox family, the bundled Gears game is more likely an upgrade to a game they have already played. Therefore they'd want a to buy a new game to play on their next gen console.
- 1. PlayStation 4 500GB Console - Star Wars Battlefront Bundle
- 13. Xbox One 500GB Console - Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Bundle
- 31. PlayStation 4 500GB Console - Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection Bundle (Physical Disc)
- 53. Xbox One 1TB Console - 3 Games Holiday Bundle (Gears of War: Ultimate Edition + Rare Replay + Ori and the Blind Forest)
Thanks for that stats for dummies breakdown. I already have a headache and the discussion was making my eyes gloss over. Now I feel like I can rejoin the class.
Solid reasoning.
Sounds very likely to me. The PS4 just had an amazing November, almost double of last November in the US, and December looks to be great for the PS4 as well. 37 million shipped should be easily within reach by the end of 2015.
The 8-Bit Raider
Member
I'm glad to hear that.
KillerMan91
Member
Could be closer to 9 million (or even over) if the yoy boost in EU is anywhere near the US. In Japan PS4 is also decenly ahead last years holiday numbers (something like 150k). Well at least 8 million should be pretty safe assumption.
serversurfer
Member
Sorry, but I'm still not sure how this is even laid out. (I'm not very good at visualizing.) So do we plot the releases and the sales on the same y axis, then basically look to see if our lines ever get closer together, or drift further apart?
Isn't that's what's happening here? The lines converge and diverge sorta randomly? An increase in releases certainly doesn't seem to have create a linear increase in sales. Do these numbers represent a fairly linear correlation, in the opinion of statisticians? Are we even looking at the right numbers? Do we need to use actual software sales instead of tie ratios? Seems like the tie ratios would actually be better, wouldn't they?
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Somehow Sony is managing to sell consoles all year so it is definitely possible.
Sony has a console that is perceived as the best on the market, so is much more easy for them.
Dash_Riprock
Member
The biggest flaw with MS' "Holiday win at all costs" strat is that it only works when they clearly have the best price/deals compared to the PS4. Once Sony started matching MS, it was all over.
hodayathink
Member
Don't they have a weekly chart if we really wanted to look at that, though?
CosmicQueso
Member
Yeah. I'll update once NPD has released the total 2015 spend number, but this is a simple version of the 2009-2014 chart, including the linear trend with a 96% coefficient of determination.
All r-squared really does is explain how much of a change in X can be explained through changes in Y. In this case, the data suggest that 96% of the change in Physical SW Spend can be explained by changes in Physical Title Count.
Lines? One line. And no, it's not random. If it was random the data points would look more like buckshot and the r-squared value would approach .00
The data suggest that across the 2009-2014 time period that this was certainly possible, if not likely.
The above graph is a linear trend. So, yes.
In order to use tie ratios appropriately for this math, you would need to measure only that portion of the installed base that was active. However, the active installed base for any platform over any time period is impossible to know. For example, in 2015, a vast majority of software sales are being done on PS4 and Xbox One, yet a majority of the installed base is still PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Looking at tie ratios, one would have to include the entire PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii installed base since the active portion of that installed base is unknown. I trust you see why this would be problematic. So no, tie ratios are not the right metric to use. Software consumer spend is as it already takes into account active portions of the installed base, price, etc. and does represent, ultimately, demand.
Not a very specific request but I'll oblige:
*thumbs up*
...aaaand Cosmic Queso has made a graph
Obliterator
Member
Whoa, does anyone know why Ryng_Tolu got banned?
Primethius
Banned
If I have the details correctly, it's a 1 week ban for saying "cool story bro."
Welfare
Member
Obliterator
Member
Ah thats good, I was worried they got perma'd and was bummed out. Never like to see a fellow Sales Gaffer leave us
EventHorizon
Member
Yeah. I'll update once NPD has released the total 2015 spend number, but this is a simple version of the 2009-2014 chart, including the linear trend with a 96% coefficient of determination.
All r-squared really does is explain how much of a change in X can be explained through changes in Y. In this case, the data suggest that 96% of the change in Physical SW Spend can be explained by changes in Physical Title Count.
Just for the sake of discussion, wouldn't the whole "Correlation does not imply causation" nugget of wisdom apply. Couldn't you also view the data as showing that as the amount of money spent on software declined, publishers made fewer software titles.
Welfare
Member
And he did it when Splatoon gets over 1 million in Japan.
Such a bad time for a ban, he can't post all that Splatoon praise now
Jarod McChicken
Member
Monthly and weekly are way to slow to update unfortunately. Again, I woulnd't have post that hourly chart if it wasn't a solid picture of the last few days trend, I've checked that quite often.
New Zealand has gone full Spartan. Weak PS4s are euthanized as soon as they come out of the box. Only the strongest PS4s are trained in the art of console war.
PanicFreak
Member
Yeah. I'll update once NPD has released the total 2015 spend number, but this is a simple version of the 2009-2014 chart, including the linear trend with a 96% coefficient of determination.
All r-squared really does is explain how much of a change in X can be explained through changes in Y. In this case, the data suggest that 96% of the change in Physical SW Spend can be explained by changes in Physical Title Count.
Lines? One line. And no, it's not random. If it was random the data points would look more like buckshot and the r-squared value would approach .00
The data suggest that across the 2009-2014 time period that this was certainly possible, if not likely.
The above graph is a linear trend. So, yes.
In order to use tie ratios appropriately for this math, you would need to measure only that portion of the installed base that was active. However, the active installed base for any platform over any time period is impossible to know. For example, in 2015, a vast majority of software sales are being done on PS4 and Xbox One, yet a majority of the installed base is still PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Looking at tie ratios, one would have to include the entire PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii installed base since the active portion of that installed base is unknown. I trust you see why this would be problematic. So no, tie ratios are not the right metric to use. Software consumer spend is as it already takes into account active portions of the installed base, price, etc. and does represent, ultimately, demand.
When you do update the data could you tell us the p-value?
CosmicQueso
Member
"Correlation is not causation" is the most overused "nugget" out there. The whole point of correlation is to determine if there's a possibility that a resonable relationship between two data points exist.
When you look at something like Nate Silver's example of Super Bowl winners and the stock market, starting at 7:46, this is a case where correlation is not causation is completely appropriate. Two unrelated variables correlate, but it is unreasonable to assume that any real relationship exists. There is no real connection between the stock market and the winner of the Super Bowl.
However, in this case, there is a direct and reasonable relationship between the number of products made available for sale, and the sales of those items.
Take Soda. There are hundreds of flavors of soda out there. Why? Because soda companies know that if they increase the variety of sodas available, overall sales will increase. It's why brand and line extensions exist.
Same story with games. If the number of products are limited, then sales will also be limited. There is no zero sum game here. There isn't a pool of $10B that will be spent on games every year, spread across the games available. Rather, individual games generate sales, which then aggregate to total demand.
Calculating correlation is a very useful and meaningful exercise, and for some reason correlation =/= causation has taken hold of people where the correlations are rejected out of hand, even when perfectly reasonable relationships exist.
All you can really see here is that 96% of the change in Physical SW spend can be explained by changes in Physical Title Count.
I'll also list the raw values.
EventHorizon
Member
Ok, I started off just throwing my argument out there as a devil's advocate, but now that I hear it your counterpoint, it isn't very compelling. It is not assured that all good titles will succeed. If publishers thought the software market was contracting, or that software was a winner-take-all situation where only the big titles succeeded, they absolutly would create fewer games. In fact that second scenario is widely cited on NeoGaf as a major reason why RotTR tanked. It was a good game that got lost in a crowded field.
Another possibility reason for reduced sales could be that the publishers expected fewer game sales do to the end of an unusually long 7th console generation and the start of the 8th. It'd be natural to assume that a certain level of boredom would have set in for the capabilities of 7th generation games and the install base for the 8th generation would take a while to be large enough to be worth trying to sell a large number of games. As a result publishers would have held back development of new games.
This is obviously a complicated situation. You can't expect to win a debate by simply stating that you are right. On closer inspection it can't be as simple as you describe or else publishers would just make more games. There isn't any explanatory value in your thesis. It doesn't give any reason why publishers made fewer games.
One thing I'd like to see is the number of games made per year. If there is no discernible pattern over time then I'd be more inclined accept your point because that would show that no intent was behind the number of games sold. Some years would be up and others would be down. On the other hand, if there was a steady rise or fall to the number of games made per year, that would imply intent. Games take multiple years to make. They are a large investment and are obviously not done at random. A steady trend one way or another would show what the publishers expected they could sell years ahead of time and planned accordingly.
inpHilltr8r
Member
Do you think it's possible that an increased spend on games by the public, leads to developers making more games?
gundamkyoukai
Member
There are less AAA games being made because last gen pub lost so much money making everything AAA then seeing what sticks .
This gen they figure it's better to make to less games but put more behind them .
This gen they figure it's better to make to less games but put more behind them .
Late congrats on the birthday and many more to come!
CosmicQueso
Member
I'm not debating anything. My statement on the only thing one can take from the data is that 96% of the change in physical sw sales from 2009-2014 can be explained by change in release count is the math.
I'm STILL not making any arguments about why things are happening the way they are or about digital or about substitution. Make up your own mind, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.
My own hypothesis, which I feel like I've posted a number of times, is that rising console development costs along with the emergence of new, less risky digital console and mobile markets have led to fewer publishers making fewer disc based games which has led to lower packaged sw sales. Not a consumer shift to mobile, not that people don't want to buy discs anymore, but because the supply of product has decreased, leading to a decrease in sales.
But if you don't agree that's fine too.
So take or leave what I post. The data is just data, the hypothesis is just a hypothesis, none of this nonsense really matters.
No Cosmic. MAUs matter. Recant your blasphemy.
seriously though thanks for the data. Always appreciated
Oh and MERRY CHRISTMAS YA FILTHY ANIMALS!
Also publishers would rather have ALL the money than just SOME of it.
Case in point: poorly executed DLC and microtransaction mania in nearly everything.