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NPD: Top 3 best-selling Video Game Hardware in the U.S., 1995-2019

Bullet Club

Member
Some more interesting NPD tweets, this time from Mat Piscatella.





Xbox One > Switch

I get the feeling that won't be the case for this decade. Just a wild guess.
 

Tarkus98

Member
So the 360 sold more than the PS3?
Also the 360 moved more units in the U.S. than PS4 or PS1?
Me confused 🤷‍♂️
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
So the 360 sold more than the PS3?
Also the 360 moved more units in the U.S. than PS4 or PS1?
Me confused 🤷‍♂️
Yup. Xbox systems sell great in the US. Pretty sure Canada and UK do decently well too. And I think Brazil too due to weird import fees for Sony systems. But Xbox doesn't do well in most other countries.
 

ethomaz

Banned
So the 360 sold more than the PS3?
Also the 360 moved more units in the U.S. than PS4 or PS1?
Me confused 🤷‍♂️
?

360 sold over 40m in US... perhaps 45m.

The issue with MS is these 45m are 60% of it overall sales while PS3 27-28m was only 30% of it overall sales.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
Yup. Xbox systems sell great in the US. Pretty sure Canada and UK do decently well too. And I think Brazil too due to weird import fees for Sony systems. But Xbox doesn't do well in most other countries.
PlayStation always sold more in Brasil than Xbox.
PS4 sold more even being twice expensive.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
So the 360 sold more than the PS3?
Also the 360 moved more units in the U.S. than PS4 or PS1?
Me confused 🤷‍♂️

Really depends on how much stock you place in the US market versus the whole of the world.

Objectively if you "lose" America but win everywhere else and come out on top as a result, is that a bad thing? Especially given that the global market is likely growing more rapidly year-by-year.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Hmm, even after the Rrod fiasco? I thought there was a substantial loss due to that or are you referring to just the unit sales alone? If so, I guess I could understand that.

Well.....this is revenue dollars, not profit.
 

V4skunk

Banned
Most people who had an x360 also had to buy another one after warranty had run out.
I had two replaced from rrod then had to buy a 3rd one....
 

ethomaz

Banned
PS4s cost double Xbox Ones?

Never knew that.
PS4 R$ 4000
XB1 R$ 2200

Launch prices in Brasil.

DilmaPS4.png


BTW I’m surprised you did not know that.
The Brazilian price was pretty popular in GAF 2013 (15 pages).

 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
PS4 R$ 4000
XB1 R$ 2200

Launch prices in Brasil.

DilmaPS4.png


BTW I’m surprised you did not know that.
The Brazilian price was pretty popular in GAF 2013 (15 pages).

360 outsold PS3 though.

Newzoo_Most_Popular_Consoles_Brazil_Argentina.png
 

ethomaz

Banned
360 outsold PS3 though.

Newzoo_Most_Popular_Consoles_Brazil_Argentina.png
There is something wrong with that graph... PS2 is the best selling console here in Brasil from the big 3.

Edit - I found the issue... research among online population ages...

It is a online poll... not sales lol
 
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Kagey K

Banned
360‘s also have a high failure rate of 40%. I don’t know anyone who didn’t have to buy one twice.
Most people didn’t only the ones who were too impatient to wait for a replacement went out and bought replacements.

And it’s not like they were the only ones with higher then standard failure rates.
 
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Most people didn’t only the ones who were too impatient to wait for a replacement went out and bought replacements.

And it’s not like they were the only ones with higher then standard failure rates.
Or the PS2, those had notorious drive failure issues so let's just ignore it selling 155 million as a ton of repurchases. It's just people trying to disregard sales numbers, fact is no one knows what the failure rate is of any console or how many were repurchased.
 

Kagey K

Banned
Or the PS2, those had notorious drive failure issues so let's just ignore it selling 155 million as a ton of repurchases. It's just people trying to disregard sales numbers, fact is no one knows what the failure rate is of any console or how many were repurchased.
I remember at the end of my original PS1 life I had to flip it upside down to get it to read discs. Then I bought a new one when the PS One came out.
 
I remember at the end of my original PS1 life I had to flip it upside down to get it to read discs. Then I bought a new one when the PS One came out.
That's actually something I have to do with mine, and my PS2 takes forever and a day to recognize a disc. Most times I have to change its vertical/horizontal position for it to initiate a game boot.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Most people didn’t only the ones who were too impatient to wait for a replacement went out and bought replacements.

And it’s not like they were the only ones with higher then standard failure rates.

The failure rate of 360's was abnormal, and massively greater than any other piece of hardware. Trying to imply PS3 fail-rate was anywhere near as pervasive is deeply dishonest.

Bear in mind this was the period when Sony was under siege on all sides, so its obvious that if the issue was of the same magnitude as the one that forced MS to underwrite a billion-dollar unlimited warranty program, something would've happened. Face facts, Sony got class-actioned over the removal of OtherOS, a feature enjoyed by an infinitesimally small number of their userbase!
 

JaffeLion

Banned
The failure rate of 360's was abnormal, and massively greater than any other piece of hardware. Trying to imply PS3 fail-rate was anywhere near as pervasive is deeply dishonest.

doesnt matter though, because microsoft replaced them, those replaced consoles wont count as sold units.
 
Really depends on how much stock you place in the US market versus the whole of the world.

Objectively if you "lose" America but win everywhere else and come out on top as a result, is that a bad thing? Especially given that the global market is likely growing more rapidly year-by-year.

Yeah but in the case of 360 vs PS3, PS3 only (literally) sold a couple or so million more LTD, and due to other factors when building the machine (blu-ray, Cell processor) they lost more money that gen than they made (keep in mind PS3 losses wiped out all their PS1 AND PS2 profits).

Sony won that gen in terms of overall units sold but given the plethora of other markets it was in, the amount wasn't terribly impressive, and it was never enough to recoup on the losses PS3 got them. Versus MS's strategy which was mainly two markets but they did so strongly in that gen that weaker performance in other global markets didn't matter, and they saw much more revenue and profit than Sony that gen even with this factored in.

Honestly speaking neither strategy (hyper-focus on select markets and other markets take backseat, vs. focus on all markets but with resources and attention spread more thin) is inherently bad, but for 7th gen MS's approach worked out better. Sony's approach, however, helped lay the bedrock for 8th gen, and they've also encroached on MS's 7th-gen strongholds which has only helped them. So an approach like MS's only really works when you can maintain your strongholds, since you have more of eggs in one or two baskets, so to speak.

Again, neither approach's inherently bad and I actually think some industries like Hollywood could learn to focus on the former again (that's partly how you get success stories like Joker; versus a film like Rise of Skywalker which tried appealing to everyone but ended up appealing to almost no one, and won't be a very profitable film at all*). But like any technique, there's good and bad ways you can apply them.

* Hopefully people understand what I mean by this analogy. Not saying for Hollywood to make movies only for Americans, but moreso that they should return to making movies with certain sensibilities and tastes that can potentially apply to anybody but due to cultural reasons might appeal to just prevailing tastes in a given location or so. That instead of going into their movies thinking "What elements can we include to placate to all of these different countries/location first, and then write a story and script around that", they should return to writing stories they genuinely want to right and letting their appeals land where they do; the latter always produces better films, every single time.
 

StormCell

Member
I'm a little surprised that the thing being most discussed is hardware sales when we've been given NPD year-by-year top 10 sales charts. I look at 1995-2005 compared with the present and feel sad because we've lost a lot of variety in terms of the different types of games that used to top the sales charts.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I'm a little surprised that the thing being most discussed is hardware sales when we've been given NPD year-by-year top 10 sales charts. I look at 1995-2005 compared with the present and feel sad because we've lost a lot of variety in terms of the different types of games that used to top the sales charts.
We don’t lose variety.

It just that big yearly franchises happened and the others go off the TOP chat but they are there selling well.
 
Somewhat surprised that Xbone outsold PS3 in US, but it makes sense. Just a bit of a shock to realize how many units had to have been sold in other markets for PS3 to sell as many units as it did.
 

Psykodad

Banned
Somewhat surprised that Xbone outsold PS3 in US, but it makes sense. Just a bit of a shock to realize how many units had to have been sold in other markets for PS3 to sell as many units as it did.
Why is that a shock to you?

It's common knowledge that the other markets don't care much for Xbox. Always has been, alway will.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
360 could have avoided the RROD but I remember M$ launching it a year earlier than SONY's PSTrey.
 
Why is that a shock to you?

It's common knowledge that the other markets don't care much for Xbox. Always has been, alway will.
The surprise isn’t how little other markets care for Xbox, but the amount of the US market that does care to cover the difference, especially when you compare its marketshare against a system that sold near 90m units globally. For a system that rivaled X360 in total sales but was dominated by it in the US market, it is somewhat surprising that the gap in market breakdown is that pronounced.
 

StormCell

Member
We don’t lose variety.

It just that big yearly franchises happened and the others go off the TOP chat but they are there selling well.

Oh, so these other brands of football, baseball, and basketball are still being produced today, and I can just go buy them?
 

StormCell

Member
What other brands specifically?

Specifically, NFL2K, MLB2K, MVP baseball, NBA Live, NCAA Football to name a few. There were definitely a lot more such as Hard Ball, High Heat Baseball, and more.

Frankly, there were just a lot more titles for skateboarding, snowboarding, fishing, jet ski racing, hydro racing, etc. The types of titles that used to sell really well were different back then. By today's standards, a 5 year old GTA is a top selling game while wait for another one...
 
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ethomaz

Banned
Specifically, NFL2K, MLB2K, MVP baseball, NBA Live, NCAA Football to name a few. There were definitely a lot more such as Hard Ball, High Heat Baseball, and more.
NBA live launched less than two years ago.

After 2014, NCAA did not renew the license to EA.

Take 2 has a deal with MLB since 2008 and EA can’t create more MVP baseball games.

MLB2K was canceled because the publisher didn’t renew the license.

EA got the Madden NFL license in 2015 I think... basically killing NFL2k because they can’t release the game without the license.

Nothing changed at all who have the license can release the game... of course more than one player can have the license but if you can’t renew it you can’t release the game.
In any case these a lot of options for these type of games today just like in the old days... it just the licenses moved to other hands.
 
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StormCell

Member
NBA live launched less than two years ago.

After 2014, NCAA did not renew the license to EA.

Take 2 has a deal with MLB since 2008 and EA can’t create more MVP baseball games.

MLB2K was canceled because the publisher didn’t renew the license.

EA got the Madden NFL license in 2015 I think... basically killing NFL2k because they can’t release the game without the license.

Nothing changed at all who have the license can release the game... of course more than one player can have the license but if you can’t renew it you can’t release the game.
In any case these a lot of options for these type of games today just like in the old days... it just the licenses moved to other hands.

I don't think you're understanding my original point. All of or most of the competing sports brands are gone. It doesn't matter why they are gone. They just are. NBA Live is just an exception among a dozen other brands that have gone away.

The point is that we no longer have all these options for sports games. Trust me, ethomaz, they're gone. There are not a lot of options for these types of games anymore. I first noticed it when I was an Xbox 360 owner and I realized, at the time, that crappy MLB2K was my only option. By comparison, the Xbox had a hell of a lot more options for baseball games. The PS2 had even more options. That's when I sold my 360 and bought a PS3 for the only quality MLB game left on the market.

We've lost a lot of brands the past decade.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I don't think you're understanding my original point. All of or most of the competing sports brands are gone. It doesn't matter why they are gone. They just are. NBA Live is just an exception among a dozen other brands that have gone away.

The point is that we no longer have all these options for sports games. Trust me, ethomaz, they're gone. There are not a lot of options for these types of games anymore. I first noticed it when I was an Xbox 360 owner and I realized, at the time, that crappy MLB2K was my only option. By comparison, the Xbox had a hell of a lot more options for baseball games. The PS2 had even more options. That's when I sold my 360 and bought a PS3 for the only quality MLB game left on the market.

We've lost a lot of brands the past decade.
We had never that amount of brands in Sport games... it was at max 2 brands per sport like today.
You are mixing different periods thinking it was more.

We have new brand names today too.

Since 2014 we have two MLB games: MLB The Show and R.B.I. Baseball.... both MLB licensed games. R.B.I. Baseball entered in the place of MLB2K... they already released 6 games.

License play a big role in that market... without license you are dead.
 
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leo-j

Member
Y’all need to understand this is the US market only. That’s at least 75 percent of Microsoft’s current market. Back then it was like 65 percent of their market.

this is like 30 percent of Sony’s market. Europe is like 60 percent and Japan like 10 percent.
 

StormCell

Member
We had never that amount of brands in Sport games... it was at max 2 brands per sport like today.
You are mixing different periods thinking it was more.

We have new brand names today too.

Since 2014 we have two MLB games: MLB The Show and R.B.I. Baseball.... both MLB licensed games. R.B.I. Baseball entered in the place of MLB2K... they already released 6 games.

License play a big role in that market... without license you are dead.

No, and I'm even beginning to wonder what country you're from because you are flat wrong. In the early 2000's, MLB alone had over 4 annual baseball series each year: 989 Sports MLB Baseball, EA Triple Play/MVP baseball, Acclaim's All-Star Baseball, and 3DO's High Heat Baseball. Additionally, there was also the Tony Larussa's / Hard Ball series on PC/PS2. Annnd I'm not even mentioning the arcade baseball games that were MLB licensed such as MLB Slugfest that also released every year for a while.

The NFL also had FIVE competing football series in the early 2000s: Madden, NFL2K, NFL Quarter Back Club, 989 NFL Gameday, and NFL Fever. There was also NFL Blitz for arcade style football.

To put it respectfully, I feel like you're being intentionally daft by even mentioning RBI Baseball. You don't play baseball games, most likely, and you wouldn't get how that game doesn't even really begin to compare to something like MLB The Show or even any of the older baseball titles that boasted season and career modes with free agency and trade systems and player development from one season to the next. I'm talking about stuff that was present in sports games 18 years ago... RBI Baseball is a very long way from being that type of game. No, there's really only MLB The Show available today... Just like there's only Madden football available today.

You don't get that I just don't care what the reasons are, today, for the lack of options in American football and baseball games. I only ONE option for each sport, and if I don't like Madden's style of play I'm SOL for football games to play. I don't care why that is. Today's video game market actually kinda f'ing sucks.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
No, and I'm even beginning to wonder what country you're from because you are flat wrong. In the early 2000's, MLB alone had over 4 annual baseball series each year: 989 Sports MLB Baseball, EA Triple Play/MVP baseball, Acclaim's All-Star Baseball, and 3DO's High Heat Baseball. Additionally, there was also the Tony Larussa's / Hard Ball series on PC/PS2. Annnd I'm not even mentioning the arcade baseball games that were MLB licensed such as MLB Slugfest that also released every year for a while.

The NFL also had FIVE competing football series in the early 2000s: Madden, NFL2K, NFL Quarter Back Club, 989 NFL Gameday, and NFL Fever. There was also NFL Blitz for arcade style football.

To put it respectfully, I feel like you're being intentionally daft by even mentioning RBI Baseball. It's an underfunded baseball video game with a singular purpose of ripping people off. There is only ONE baseball game on the market today called MLB The Show and for now it has ONLY been available on one platform (Playstation).
EA Tiple Play 1996-2002
MVP Baseballs 2003-2007
MLB 1998-2005 (after Sony changed the name to MLB '06: The Show )
All-Start Baseball 1997-2004
High Heat MLB 1998-2003

2000: High Heat Major League Baseball 2001 (3DO dead), Backyard Baseball 2001 (not annual, Humongous Entertainment dead), All-Star Baseball 2001 (High Voltage Software), MLB 2001 (Sony).

2001: Triple Play Baseball (EA), All-Star Baseball 2002 (Acclaim dead), High Heat Major League Baseball 2002 (3D0 dead), Baseball Mogul 2002 (Sports Mogul), Out of the Park Baseball II (Out of the Park Developments), MLB 2002 (Sony), Season Ticket Baseball (Out of the Park Developments... well same game/engine with updated season hoster)

2014: MLB 14: The Show (Sony), R.B.I. Baseball 14 (MLB Advanced Media), Baseball Mogul 2015 (Sports Mogul), Super Mega Baseball (Metalhead Software)

2015: Tamagotchi Baseball (Bandai), Out of the Park Baseball 16 (Out of the Park Developments), MLB 15: The Show (Sony), R.B.I. Baseball 15 (MLB Advanced Media)

I don't see that much difference... one of two titles because they developer died and some case that the developer lose the license.
I think you are mixing different periods.
 
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StormCell

Member
EA Tiple Play 1996-2002
MVP Baseballs 2003-2007
MLB 1998-2005 (after Sony changed the name to MLB '06: The Show )
All-Start Baseball 1997-2004
High Heat MLB 1998-2003

2000: High Heat Major League Baseball 2001 (3DO dead), Backyard Baseball 2001 (not annual, Humongous Entertainment dead), All-Star Baseball 2001 (High Voltage Software), MLB 2001 (Sony).

2001: Triple Play Baseball (EA), All-Star Baseball 2002 (Acclaim dead), High Heat Major League Baseball 2002 (3D0 dead), Baseball Mogul 2002 (Sports Mogul), Out of the Park Baseball II (Out of the Park Developments), MLB 2002 (Sony), Season Ticket Baseball (Out of the Park Developments... well same game/engine with updated season hoster)

2014: MLB 14: The Show (Sony), R.B.I. Baseball 14 (MLB Advanced Media), Baseball Mogul 2015 (Sports Mogul), Super Mega Baseball (Metalhead Software)

2015: Tamagotchi Baseball (Bandai), Out of the Park Baseball 16 (Out of the Park Developments), MLB 15: The Show (Sony), R.B.I. Baseball 15 (MLB Advanced Media)

I don't see that much difference... one of two titles because they developer died and some case that the developer lose the license.
I think you are mixing different periods.

And I think you're grasping at straws, but I still appreciate you for the discussion! Man, I know what baseball games I was playing back then. You even listed 4 MLB baseball series that were all out annually during the same stretch. From 1998-2002, we had Triple Play, 989 MLB baseball, All-star baseball, AND High Heat baseball. You didn't even touch the NFL stuff.

For some reason, ethomaz, you don't recognize that the 4 games you presented from 2015 aren't even really comparable to the four I mentioned above. ie. Is Tamagotchi baseball even available in North America? Google didn't return any baseball video game results searching for "Tamagotchi Baseball" AND OOTP Baseball isn't technically even a video game as it's a baseball simulator where you click a play button and the sport plays itself. That leaves good ol' RBI Baseball (lol) and MLB The Show. I just can't bring myself to qualify RBI Baseball as a real baseball video game because I've never even encountered a positive opinion about the games from anyone who plays baseball video games. Where's Musky_Cheese Musky_Cheese for this debate as I'm sure he would back me up on this!
 

Aion002

Member
The surprise isn’t how little other markets care for Xbox, but the amount of the US market that does care to cover the difference, especially when you compare its marketshare against a system that sold near 90m units globally. For a system that rivaled X360 in total sales but was dominated by it in the US market, it is somewhat surprising that the gap in market breakdown is that pronounced.
Well... MS always prioritize the US. Remember the Xbox One reveal? It was like the One was going to be released only on US...

She also spend a lot more on US marketing than Sony and everybody else does...

 

MoreJRPG

Suffers from extreme PDS
Well... MS always prioritize the US. Remember the Xbox One reveal? It was like the One was going to be released only on US...

She also spend a lot more on US marketing than Sony and everybody else does...


It’s not a bad tactic, hold your own in the territories with higher economic power and you’ll make up for losing console sales to other countries.
 

StormCell

Member
StormCell StormCell what are we talking about?

ethomaz ethomaz claims that today's video game market for sports titles is no different than it has ever been. Specifically, they claim that there has mostly only ever been 2 titles for each major sport (ie. NFL2K vs Madden, MLB2K vs The Show vs today The Show vs RBI Baseball). I've cited examples from 1998-2004 where there were as many as 4 or 5 annual series for each of MLB and NFL, but they still assert that today is no different.
 
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ethomaz ethomaz claims that today's video game market for sports titles is no different than it has ever been. Specifically, they claim that there has mostly only ever been 2 titles for each major sport (ie. NFL2K vs Madden, MLB2K vs The Show vs today The Show vs RBI Baseball). I've cited examples from 1998-2004 where there were as many as 4 or 5 annual series for each of MLB and NFL, but they still assert that today is no different.
Yeah here in the US we had multiple options for each sport. Going back to the Genesis/SNES you had multiple football, some with the NFL license some without. Madden and Joe Montana didn’t have the licenses. I remember Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders both had their own games.

Hell I played the shit out of Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball lol.
 

StormCell

Member
Yeah here in the US we had multiple options for each sport. Going back to the Genesis/SNES you had multiple football, some with the NFL license some without. Madden and Joe Montana didn’t have the licenses. I remember Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders both had their own games.

Hell I played the shit out of Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball lol.

Me too. I also loved Ken Griffey Jr. baseball.
 
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