Might I ask where this figure comes from?
Look for Creamsugar's posts. Also Eurogamer's KI @ 83K thing.
I believe the > 50K thing was a guesstimate, though we'd hope it wasn't below that kind of level.
Might I ask where this figure comes from?
PSP < ? < Vita < Wii < ? < 3DS < 150k < PS3 < 200k < 360
I believe you guys could figure out what is '?' stand for.
Nice attempt at eliciting an avatar quote. I'm not falling for your ruse!
Not a good sign for the industry, but by the time we see how bad May is, E3 will be in full blast so no worries!
Doesn't sound like this "crash" has hit XBLA (and to a smaller degree, PSN). XBLA games have broken sales records two months in a row.
Uh, no... the assertion that new hardware often brings "new IP" risks in their launch period is quite accurate.
As long as games cost as much as they do to develop, with publishers struggling financially, the 'safe' bet (such as sequels) are the ones that will be greenlit. The risk aversion will grow as the costs rise.
>50K comes from here:
This is an NPD thread. NPD doesn't count bundles and who knows how and why sales numbers are inflated when they come from a first party. I was only asking for a link to an unbiased third party to show the sales of a game in NPD in a NPD thread. While UC1 sold well, I don't see it at all pushing 3 million in the US.
It tracks them as hardware and the software sales bundled are not added to the respective software total.Oh I agree, it probably sold around 4 million WW. Also I was under the impression that NPD does count bundles?
You guys keep asking about Xenoblade's sales in the USA. Xenoblade is a traditional JRPG, not named "Final Fantasy", on a system which has had very, very few non-casual non-Nintendo IP games sell in any number worth mentioning.
Sony either bites the bullet and cuts the Vita's price aggressively or they let it die a slow death. If they don't announce a pricedrop by E3 it's over for this little handheld.
Oh I agree, it probably sold around 4 million WW. Also I was under the impression that NPD does count bundles?
So is it actually confirmed that the NPD didn't track Xenoblade, or was Eurogamer talking out of their ass? Maybe creamsugar could give us some insight?
This is a Nintendo IP, though. And I don't think you can really narrow the definition very much without getting into some circuitous definition mess where you say "The only games that sell are the games that sell" in a roundabout sort of way.
Wow, quite a few folks are saying that the low numbers aren't surprising, but as a small business video game store owner, I'm blown away! We had a killer month of April.
This is a Nintendo IP, though. And I don't think you can really narrow the definition very much without getting into some circuitous definition mess where you say "The only games that sell are the games that sell" in a roundabout sort of way.
The industry is not healthy, for sure. Especially the handheld gaming is collapsing. Damned these smartphones.
The industry is not healthy, for sure. Especially the handheld gaming is collapsing. Damned these smartphones.
The industry is not healthy, for sure. Especially the handheld gaming is collapsing. Damned these smartphones.
I know you have a strong point when you blame smartphones for the Fall of handheld gaming but I really think the blame has to be put on 3DS and Vita, iOS only came to exacerbate things but the 3DS and Vita are quite frankly very poor products.
the DS and PSP blew tha GBA, the only other handhled worth looking at at that point in time, out of the water. You really had to own a DS and PSP because it was several leagues ahead of their time, specially PSP.
what are 3DS and Vita doing? Nothing, they are costly, boring extensions of their predecesors, that's not how you keep the industry healthy.
I thought someone said a few pages ago that Xenoblade sold just north of 200k, outselling both its European and Japanese counterparts?
Somebody earlier in this thread mentioned that because it was retailer-exclusive, NPD won't release the data (i.e. they can't give a private firm's confidential numbers out, and because Xenoblade was Gamestop only it would violate the terms of their data collection).
Or something along those lines. Can't remember who
Isn't 3DS is tracking ahead of DS though, in both hardware and software?
Isn't 3DS is tracking ahead of DS/PSP though, in both hardware and software?
Well, right now 3DS is 1 million ahead of DS's first 14 months. And DS had 2 Holiday seasons ( both November and December ) in its first 14 months. So, that's not bad at all, but it needs to improve in the next months. Fortunately, there are big games coming, especially NSMB2, which comes out soon. And US is always slow in adopting new hardwares, that's a known fact.
I used poor phrasing. It's technically Nintendo IP, but from a marketplace standpoint, it's irrelevant. How many famous Nintendo characters are in Xenoblade?
Nintendo is in a spot where Disney has been for decades. Their characters have been locked in since the 80s, so if they want games that blow the doors off, they have to feature those characters. Of course there are exceptions, but not many. Young and old kids want Donkey Kong, they want Mario, they want Zelda. Nobody is asking for Xenoblade.
That's why Sony is in a tough spot. Microsoft's brilliance was paying the money to acquire and market their Master Chief and Marcus Fenix. They wanted that hardcore gamer market, guys who wanted something with a harder edge than Mario, so they successfully created mascots for that market. Now how viable that market still is is up for debate, but there it is.
Sony is sunk because the PS3, and now Vita have no "signature" games. They have to attempt, yet again, to come up with games and characters that differentiate their systems from the competition. The PS3 this gen has become a third party console, with the first party games almost entirely marginalized, and that is not a great place to exist in the market. The fact that Uncharted is Sony's best, to the point where that was their big title they used to launch Vita and it still landed with a thud, has to be disheartening for them.
PSP < ? < Vita < Wii < ? < 3DS < 150k < PS3 < 200k < 360
I believe you guys could figure out what is '?' stand for.
Sorry, DS seems better than Vita.
Kid is the best sold handheld game this month, and better than Vita HW.
The new 3DS horror game < 6.5k.
A morsel of additional data for those who follow the US NPD charts - Kid Icarus: Uprising sold 83,000 units in April - http://t.co/4QkgIpHq
NOA has enough announced-but-undated titles on the way (Animal Crossing, LM2, Paper Mario, Layton 5, DQM3D, likely Fire Emblem and MH3G) that I'm reasonably confident that they'll be able to sustain a steadier flow of 3DS software beginning in the latter half of the year, with KH3D in July followed by NSMB2 a few weeks later.
May and especially June are probably going to be pretty rough, though.
Given that they usually denote exact dates (last month's NPD covered 2/26 - 3/31), are these numbers just for April (4/1 - 4/30), or do they extend all the way until 5/5?
Granted, nothing really hit last week (Sniper Elite v2?), but I'm still curious about the number of days attributed to this report.
Anyone know?
April NPD was April 1-28 (4 weeks).
NOA has enough announced-but-undated titles on the way (Animal Crossing, LM2, Paper Mario, Layton 5, DQM3D, likely Fire Emblem and MH3G) that I'm reasonably confident that they'll be able to sustain a steadier flow of 3DS software beginning in the latter half of the year, with KH3D in July followed by NSMB2 a few weeks later.
May and especially June are probably going to be pretty rough, though.
NOA has enough announced-but-undated titles on the way (Animal Crossing, LM2, Paper Mario, Layton 5, DQM3D, likely Fire Emblem and MH3G) that I'm reasonably confident that they'll be able to sustain a steadier flow of 3DS software beginning in the latter half of the year, with KH3D in July followed by NSMB2 a few weeks later.
May and especially June are probably going to be pretty rough, though.
I thought NSMB2 would be released around the holiday months or year-end. Is the new?
It's not, think about it for a minute. Retailers only agree to share their sales data as long as what is released is totaled with every other retailer. They want to protect the sensitive data of how many copies they actually sold relative to their competitors.That's what Eurogamer said, but it sounds like bullshit to me.
NSMB2 comes out in AUGUST.
Yeah, I know, you're probably surprised XD
I don't know if it's been discussed yet, but here is what's probably going on with the NPD/GameStop/Xenoblade situation...
Short version: Retailer-specific information is verboten. It was excluded from the public release. It is almost certainly included in data that subscribers get.
Longer version: One thing that the NPD Group tries to avoid is giving out any retailer-specific information. I believe that this may be part of their agreement with the retailers with which they have data-sharing deals. This protects retailers from knowing too much about each other, if I understand correctly.
I've been told that this is why Wal-mart was always a sore spot. They are 25% of the market, so they felt that the NPD Group's reports were giving away information about their business. (Not sure how that's going to be different now. They still aren't integrating any data from their agreement with Wal-mart yet.)
Since Xenoblade was a retailer exclusive, its sales would give away information about a specific retailer, so it can't be included in the public report. It is almost certainly in the subscriber data.
To update my earlier post.
So it's
PSP < 50K? < Vita < DS < Wii < 100K? < 3DS < 150k < PS3 < 200k < 360
So Kid Icarus probably sold under 100K, but no less than the Vita which is somewhere above 50K.
Kid Icarus at 83K means Vita is between 50-83K