ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Wait how much did Wario Land sell? I missed that in the official NPD thread.
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September 2008 NPD Article (Gamasutra)
- Thread starter jvm
- Start date
Version 3.0
Member
Spiegel said:
But that's cherry-picking. The truth is, those are not the only games that would be retail games if the download services didn't exist. Some others would certainly still be made, but perhaps be budget retail titles. Others might simply be larger or longer (take Geometry Wars Galaxies, for example). Still others might have been portable games, or PC games. And while the rest might not exist, the teams making them might have made other retail games.
Aside from that, people are spending more money on the 360 and Wii's services. If these didn't exist, that money might have been spent at retail instead, too. So you can't just disregard them and want to count certain PSN titles.
In other words, "might-have-been" is futile. We have to deal with reality. And a few others have pointed out that sales of those few titles are not likely to be statistically relevant in any case.
BishopLamont
Banned
I'm sure when online sales become relevant then NPD would start tracking the data (or do they already for buyers?), like Neil Soundscan did for CD sales.Pristine_Condition said:My point wasn't that one console was "ahead" in this area. Jokeropia hack-edited my post to make it seem like that was my point, but it wasn't.
My whole point was that the old-school tie ratio chart based on only retail sales is outdated, that's all.
We don't really know. We don't have the numbers. So you are speculating here. If Jokeropia was actually being consistent in his anti-speculation crusade here, he would have pointed this out, but I guess his rules only apply when the speculation goes against his philosophy.
I'd expect the market is smaller, certainly, but hardly irrelevant. Otherwise, I doubt we'd see major players in the industry jumping in so early in THIS generation, just to mark their territory for next. iTunes and Steam has shown everyone you can make money NOW, not 5 years from now.
I totally agree. But I think this idea also strengthens my actual, original point that the old-school Tie Ratio chart based only on NPD numbers is quickly becoming more-and-more outdated. It also strengthens my point at the end of my original post in this thread that the 360's outdated, NPD-based tie is an absolute monster.
The only thing I would say about Sony's situation specifically is this: When you start offering titles online (like all three console players are doing) you start shifting some of the consumer's dollars away from retail spaces that are tracked by NPD, ect. When you do what Sony is doing (offering "big" more-expensive titles) in the online marketplace, you take a larger chunk of the individual gamer's budget that may be available for NPD-tracked titles FASTER, and with more impact on that gamer's budget on a month-to-month basis or whatever than you might with multiple, smaller, lower-priced offerings. And when you offer the same titles online that you can get at retail, (like Warhawk, GT5, SOCOM:C, Burnout Paradise,) some of those titles that would be purchased at retail and tracked by NPD don't count. That's all. I really don't see how this simple, factual view raises such a hubbub around here.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
BishopLamont said:
Except when NPD asks Nintendo/Sony/MS for figures, they'll reply "eat a bag of butt". Why would they give out these figures to their competitors?
BishopLamont
Banned
Oh so that's how it works. Well there goes any hope of getting any online sales any time this generation.Stumpokapow said:
Well we always have VGC.
:lol
I was recently working on a piece and had occasion to contact a Sony rep about sales for a particular downloadable game. I was told flatly "we do not give out any figures". The thing I was trying to highlight would have been seen as a positive for Sony, but even when it's a positive aspect of their business, they're not going to give out figures.
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
yoopoo said:
Aww.
Ok, here's the deal on platform-specific software ASPs.
Without going into too much detail, the software ASPs for the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii are closer than I would have expected. I believe Wii Fit is driving up the Wii ASP and budget titles and discounted titles are driving down the ASPs for the other two platforms.
If we could get an ASP that took out (a) Wii Fit (b) Guitar Hero/Rock Band, then I think we could talk about something a bit more realistic. But, then, those titles are also selling so well, that we'd need tie ratios without those games too.
Does that clarify how the situation is kind of difficult?
Without going into too much detail, the software ASPs for the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii are closer than I would have expected. I believe Wii Fit is driving up the Wii ASP and budget titles and discounted titles are driving down the ASPs for the other two platforms.
If we could get an ASP that took out (a) Wii Fit (b) Guitar Hero/Rock Band, then I think we could talk about something a bit more realistic. But, then, those titles are also selling so well, that we'd need tie ratios without those games too.
Does that clarify how the situation is kind of difficult?
speculawyer
Member
At least it make a showing. NHL 2K9 is probably way down there. :-/_leech_ said:NHL 09 at #17
dammitmattt
Banned
jvm said:
If they were impressive enough wouldn't Sony be touting them?
OldJadedGamer
Banned
dammitmattt said:
Steam has never, ever announced their numbers either.
dammitmattt
Banned
OldJadedGamer said:
That's a completely different situation. Valve doesn't own the entire platform (they just own the service) and more importantly, they don't publish most of the games on Steam.
If Sony's own titles on their own platform were selling well enough, wouldn't they be touting that to sell the service/platform to other prospective developers and publishers?
Sho_Nuff82
Member
I think at the very least, Sony should offer PSN rankings (like MS does for LIVE), so that people can get a sense of what people are buying/playing week in and week out.
The whole 'big budget' vs. 'small budget' is kind of a slippery slope when you have games like Castle Crashers or Penny Arcade that cost $15-$20, which is the same price as some of the PSN library, and yet are still selling over 100,000 copies apiece.
The whole 'big budget' vs. 'small budget' is kind of a slippery slope when you have games like Castle Crashers or Penny Arcade that cost $15-$20, which is the same price as some of the PSN library, and yet are still selling over 100,000 copies apiece.
Pristine_Condition
Member
dammitmattt said:
They are all like Steam as far as the service goes, the platform is more-or-less irrelevant to our discussion here...Sony doesn't publish a lot of games on their service either. In fact, self-published titles by smallish devs are starting to happen more frequently--see SSARPBC.
Services like Steam and PSN and XBLA might very well give some examples of sales to prospective partners...under a non-disclosure agreement.
Doesn't do us much good.
And if some WiiWare or XBLA titles were retail releases instead (even if just budget releases) their tie-ratios would've been higher.Spiegel said:
You'll have to define "big" in a way that explains why only the PSN games you mentioned (and none of the WiiWare/VC/XBLA games) should count despite being downloadable. Budget has got nothing to do with tie-ratio so big budget doesn't suffice. Cost to download could work as a reason to count one expensive game as several cheap ones, but not to disqualify WiiWare/VC/XBLA games altogether.
Edit: Beaten by Leondexter.
I quoted an exact and complete sentence. :lolPristine_Condition said:
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
Thread derailed again...
I think PS3 fans are getting a little touchy here.
Good to know that Wii is not selling just because of Wii Sports... it also sells because of Wii Play, Wii Fit and now Wii music =P.
But it has been a pretty boring NPD month... I hope the October LBP and Wii music numbers put GAF on fire again...
I think PS3 fans are getting a little touchy here.
Good to know that Wii is not selling just because of Wii Sports... it also sells because of Wii Play, Wii Fit and now Wii music =P.
But it has been a pretty boring NPD month... I hope the October LBP and Wii music numbers put GAF on fire again...
JoshuaJSlone
Member
The situation isn't as bad as you think, Gaborn. It is true that different rates of purchase make a difference, but since PS3 hardware is doing significantly better this year than last, it counts as a fast seller relative to its past self. I keep track of the "average ownership" for these consoles, and after the September NPD it comes toGaborn said:
Wii: 45.6 weeks
PS3: 47.0 weeks
X360: 73.7 weeks
So PS3's tie ratio is slightly behind Wii, and its owners have had their systems slightly longer, but both are very close.
Ahaha. Interesting, and apparently unique, turn of phrase.Stumpokapow said:
andthebeatgoeson
Junior Member
And selling because of all the other stuff. Wii is completely in the lead, either via 3rd party or other wise. Now if only Capcom would jump on board with RE5Wii, I would have no use for any other platform.manueldelalas said:
Which would mean that the average owner buys a game every...JoshuaJSlone said:
- 8.29 weeks for Wii
- 8.87 weeks for PS3
- 9.10 weeks for 360
Which would mean that on average that Wii owners have been the most active purchasers of new software, and 360 owners are the least active purchasers of new software.
However, as in general, software consumption of a gamer slows down through their ownership of a platform, this would have to consider previous tie-in ratios for 360 to make a fairer comparison. I'm not sure how much 360 follows this as it's tie-in ratio has been increasing at a good rate, which would indicate that Wii's and PS3's will increase to roughly the same level by this time next year (when PS3 and Wii will be on the market for as long as 360 has been by today).
JoshuaJSlone said:
Thank you Josh, that does mostly address it. I guess I just feel that you would expect a console like the PS3 to have a higher tie ratio simply because of the perception it would be a more "hardcore" console (and thus not people interested in a handful of games, but more people like GAF'ers that tend to buy far more games than the "average" console owner). To me it's set up to be that type of console based largely on the price and the type of games that are available on the console. Since the data contradicts that though I accept it's not the case apparently.
milanbaros
Member?
Parl said:
Some very interesting info. This seems to show that there isn't much difference between any of the consoles and that as time goes on they should all end up with fairly equal tie-ratios.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Yeah, since "time owned" to "software owned" don't seem to have a very linear relationship, I'm not sure dividing to get a weeks per game stat makes for a very fair comparison. I used to do it, but it seems the younger console always has the advantage.Parl said:
It might be interesting to make a chart where the X axis is average ownership and the Y axis is tie ratio to see what comes out, but we don't get accurate reports on tie ratio often enough to have many points to fill in.
The time when X360's average ownership measure was most close to Wii and PS3 of today looks to be around July 2007, when it was as 46.2 weeks. After the December rush added in a lot of new buyers it was at 47.2 which also isn't far off. I don't know what the tie ratio was after last July, but after December it was at 6.98 (according to the article this thread is for), which is a nice step ahead of what Wii and PS3 have now.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Is their a fair statistic though? The regular tie ratio inherently favors older consoles, and slow selling consoles. The launch aligned trends in "weeks per game" might be interesting, except Christmas probably screws it up somewhat, and plus it would be a lot of work.JoshuaJSlone said:
Version 3.0
Member
liuelson said:
Nah. Different circumstances can lead to roughly the same results. For example, it could be (and please don't take this seriously) that Wii owners are buying game after game, and incinerating them just as quickly in their vain search for non-shovelware, while Xbox 360 owners are making informed buying decisions, getting the latest hive-mind "game of the month" and living the good life, and PS3 owners aren't buying games at all, it's the Sony fanboy underground buying every copy they can afford to try and get Sony's numbers up.
...but it still all works out to similar buying frequency.
lowlylowlycook
Member
JoshuaJSlone said:
This is a nice bit of analysis. Would it be possible to look up the 360's attach rate when it's "average ownership was close to 45 or 50 weeks?
D'oh. Sorry.felipeko said:
Ok, my big-table-o'-data says a public source can be found. The Xbox 360 tie ratio was 6.1 in July 2007.
Just to add, these are partially data from my article earlier this year about the tie ratios from September through December. Only the three asterisked figures are official:
Code:
Jul 07 6.1*
Aug 07 ---
Sep 07 6.59
Oct 07 6.6*
Nov 07 6.86
Dec 07 6.98*ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Haunted said:
Was it? If their console was much more stable and launched nine months later I think they'd be at just about the same place, probably. That $1 million or billion or whatever must have stung.
Actually, sales increased slightly month-to-month from April to July, right? The market then saw a firesale in July, 60GB became available in August, and then price cuts in September. From the high point in July, PS2 sales have declined. I'm not saying it's a huge effect, but I'd argue that there are borderline consumers who find the Xbox 360 offering attractive and the premium over the PS2 acceptable.JJConrad said:
Gaborn said:
Actually, I suspect that may be a mischaracterization. The idea that casual gamers buy fewer games than hardcore gamers seems reasonable, but the question is, "How many fewer?" One thing to consider here, is that a hardcore gamer is buying games only for themself, whereas a casual gamer is very likely buying games for their entire family, which means at times they may buy two or three games for separate members of the family all at once.
July wasn't the high point. PS2 weekly sales drastically plummeted from March to April and slowly increased until July. When it dropped in August, so did the 360. Even from July, PS2 weekly sales are only down 4000 units or 10.5%. It is such a weak correlation.jvm said:
There are so many reasons could have caused the 'erosion,' there's no way you can credit any on over another.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
So this was already taken care of, but if anyone wants to match anything else up here's a quickie export of my spreadsheet. Ugly, but the data is there.jvm said:
Monthly data comes from news reports, so most of it is rounded. Close enough for these purposes. The LTD columns sum these up. The growing weeks total uses the assumption that each buyer has had their system since the middle of the month they purchased it. Close enough. The average weeks ownership then divides that total number of weeks owned by the LTD. The growth % columns show how much the userbase increased in a single month, and the avg date columns subtract the average time owned from the time the data goes to to give another way of looking at how long the average owner has had their system.
Gaborn said:
U.S. had the highest GameCube hardware sales and, more importantly, software sales last generation of the three major territories. Most of those owners stayed with the GameCube through to the Wii as evidenced by Zelda's 1:1 performance at launch. They're buying software along with the expanded audience ...
JJConrad said:
I credited it to the Wii myself. From February to March PS2 sales absolutely plunged, from 88,000 weekly down to 43,000 weekly, directly in line with when Wii sales went from big (100,000+ weekly) to ridiculous (140,000+ weekly). Next month PS2 sales trended down further to their current levels of 30-40,000 per week, from which they haven't budged now since April. There are slight fluctuations, but they're in single-digit thousands per week, which are slight enough for me to chalk them up to statistical noise. There really hasn't been any meaningful rise or falls in PS2 sales since April. I'm hard-pressed to correlate that with anything besides the enormous increase in Wii hardware supplies starting with the release of Smash Bros. Brawl in March.
Chris FOM said:
Target sold the PS2 @ $99 for a week in February. Neither Target nor any other company has sold it for $99 since. Thus, PS2 had a sales spike in February and has been down and then mostly flat since. YOY declines are due to fact it came out 8 years ago this month.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
the thing with tie ratios is that they will always go UP as time goes on. Each month, there will always be more software that sells than hardware. It might not go up as fast as other tie ratios for other consoles, but it isn't a very good measurement taken by itself. it has to be supplemented with other data along with it to make any use of it.
davepoobond said:
No. GameCube had a sizable drop with the $99 price drop. I don't believe that Wii's tie ratio has been consistently increasing this year. Most tie ratios drop a few months after launch, as well, but that's more expected until software flow can be established.
In short, what Anita Frazier said.
DayShallCome
Member
davepoobond said:
Eh, that's not necessarily true. Price drops have been shown to cause a decrease in tie ratio, albeit on a short term basis (Cube comes to mind).
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
donny2112 said:
right...because the software wasnt moving anymore.
at that point the GameCube was already finished.
so software is selling less than 500-600k each month? probably believable, but that just means that less people are buying new software for it, which is a problem unique to the Wii.
davepoobond said:
Wrong. GameCube stayed fairly consistent yoy in software in the years leading up to the Wii's launch.
davepoobond said:
Wrong (again). The Wii is by far the biggest software mover between it, 360, and PS3 month-to-month. It is also by far the biggest mover of hardware of those three, as well.
I thought you were more knowledgeable of how these things worked than this. Hmmm.
DarkJC said:
No. Sheesh.
Tie Ratio Behavior 101:
In a typical system's life cycle, the hardware will sputter out long before the software. Therefore, the only likely source of a decreasing tie ratio outside of the first year of a system's life is when it has an unusually strong surge of hardware sales not driven by a software release.
Example 1:
GameCube had a huge hardware increase from its baseline with the $99 price drop in October 2003. This caused its LTD tie ratio to go down as this wasn't accompanied by a likewise dramatic increase in software sales.
Example 2:
jvm estimates that the tie ratio for Wii after June 2008 to be ~5.5. My estimates agree with that number. The tie ratio at the end of September 2008 for the Wii is 5.5. The most likely path the tie ratio took in July and August to get to the September number is that it went up a little those two months (at least August) and then dropped some with the September Wii just had.
Weekly Wii U.S. Averages:
June - 133K
July - 139K
August - 113K <- Lower hardware sales mean that it's easier for the tie ratio to go up.
September - 137K