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NPD Sales Results For December 2010 [Up5: Some Kinect/Move Data]
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Trunchisholm
Member
I'm surprised at the number of people who still think that any turd of a product can sell as long as it appears on Ophra and has a 500 million marketing budget. Apparently, Sony hasn't spent a dime on advertising. Many seem to forget that Kinect has done remarkably well outside America, even without Ophra and with Move having far more advertising presence than Kinect.
Kinect has done so well thanks, obviously, to how well it has been marketed, but what has been truly critical to its success is the uniqueness of the whole Kinect experience and the massive word of mouth marketing first impressions generate.
Kinect has done so well thanks, obviously, to how well it has been marketed, but what has been truly critical to its success is the uniqueness of the whole Kinect experience and the massive word of mouth marketing first impressions generate.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Trunchisholm said:
Well, I don't think anyone has claimed that turds sell, and besides, we may not have Oprah over here but there are others.
I'm by no means convinced that Move has more advertising presence than Kinect. Quite the reverse. I guess it depends which channels you watch.
And I think you're a bit wrong about word of mouth really. The word of mouth/experience here depends more on experience of the product in the home rather than on advertising. The advertising is to get the stuff in enough homes to start with.
Just to clarify a wee bit - the elephant in the room here is the Wii. Pretty well everyone in the target audience for Kinect will have played a Wii (30% household penetration means nearly everyone with any nascent interest in video games will have played one, if they have friends), but it has the differentiating factor of 'no controller' and of course HD - the question is does that make enough difference? It's less clear to me what the target audience for Move is - its big difficulty seems to me to be in differentiating from the Wii except among those who currently have a PS3 and not a Wii, that's about the defensivve versus the offensive stance. The other question is if there is is inteest, will it last? Will it get enough traction?
Jury's out on that one, right now.
CadetMahoney
Member
I think it was Sony who instigated the notion to not release NPD figures to the public. There was a thread on it iirc "one of the big 3". ppl were suggesting it was Microsoft for some odd reason.FINALFANTASYDOG said:
The fact that we get most if not all the top10 numbers eventually is hopefully something that will remain, but that's no guarantee. Pachter has access to the numbers and releases them?
VGnumbers says that the leaked NPD numbers for PSP and PS2 are 429k and 75k respectively. Don't know if those will be confirmed but they match with what jmv said about PS2 being lower in December than November.
Seems like PS2 manufacturing could be halted during this year after 11 years on the market.
Seems a bit stupid considering that the numbers continue to be released through other official sources and even Sony continue to comment on them.
Seems like PS2 manufacturing could be halted during this year after 11 years on the market.
CadetMahoney said:
Seems a bit stupid considering that the numbers continue to be released through other official sources and even Sony continue to comment on them.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
The last three or so pages (Inferior 50 post version) of this thread have been sponsored by Paranoia Fuel
No chance in hell. It'd be almost as bad as KB/M vs. dual analog.Karma said:
Aiming and shooting at this speed is impossible with an analog stick.
Yes, FPS involves both moving and aiming, but when we have this much of an advantage in the aiming part you're pretty much fucked with a dual analog.
Jokeropia said:
Aiming and shooting at that speed is impossible for me no matter what i play with *shrug*
I have a move controller but no navigationchuck, i'll try move controls with Killzone 3 when i rent it ( you're not fooling me again Killzone franchise), but i'm not expected much.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
You'd never get that kind of full-screen aiming in a 3ps/fps, you need a bounding box to turn. Enemies moving quickly along a horizontal plane could have the advantage using Dual Analog.Jokeropia said:
CadetMahoney
Member
poor mans google-fu:TheOddOne said:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=410260&page=11
re-reading that page was quite entertaining if I say so myself. Some saying Nintendo because they were embarrased they got outsold by ms/ Since the numbers get released eventually all it does if fill the first few pages of NPD threads with single sentance "wheres *insert title* LOL" posts.
Actually do we get individual platform numbers for multiplats? No indications of 2:1 software leads?
boiled goose
good with gravy
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Bounding box tiny + turning speed up
faster and more precise than DA in every way.
The only two issues with pointer controls are:
It takes quite a lot of customizing to get the right for each different setup.
you have to point at the screen, which might affect how you sit a bit.
boiled goose
good with gravy
shintoki said:
500M will increase your sales sure, but how many more units sold per dollar of advertising spent wont be the same for every product, and you will probably get marginal returns at some point.
lets say MS that 1 more kinect would sell for every $20 spent in advertising for the first $500M spent. After the first $500M spent, you need to spend $2000 for an additional sale.
and then lets say that 1 more move would sell for every $50 spent in advertising for the first $100M spent. After the first $100M spent, you need to spend $5000 for an additional sale.
who is more likely to spend $500M?
spending more will mean more sales, but it might simply not be worth it for every product.
Karma said:
not really the perfect experiment either. how do you control for the skill of different players?
only real way would be to take a large random sample of people who have never played FPS or have video game experience before. teach them one of the two schemes for a month and then test performance.
Pointer controls are trying to replicate the same input method as a mouse. point where you want to look or shoot. a mouse has the advantage of being on a fixed surface and having more natural re-centering. the basic input principle is the same though.
DA is completely different. you can pretty much only choose a direction you want to look in and how fast you want the cursor to move in that direction. it is inherently an inferior and less precise input method than any form of pointer (a mouse or the wiimote)
Psychotext
Member
Do they comment on the hardware sales? I didn't see any evidence of that in the last PR.Elios83 said:
Baki
Member
ShockingAlberto said:
Don't mind Karma. He takes these things personally. Although I generally agree with your position. Marketing was instrumental to Kinect's success and this was only because MS was fully committed to the brand. This doesn't mean Kinect isn't a solid product, but you'd be crazy to not think that the $500M investment was not a significant factor in Kinect's success.
Because sometimes solid products don't sell.
Viva Pinata.
Nuts and Bolts.
Uncharted (initially).
ICO
Shadow of the colossus etc...
Baki said:
Save for Uncharted, all of those game products have niche appeal when compared to something like Halo or Call of Duty. It's not as if a large marketing budget would have necessarily made those games more popular and translate into sales. Kinect's marketing budget was effective because the product itself had a lot of appeal to a broad demographic.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
The best way would be to take the best players with each controller and have them play against each other. Problem with this is you would need a game without any aim assist that both contingents had played to the point of complete familiarity.amtentori said:
Of course it was significant and necessary, otherwise they wouldn't spend that much money if they could achieve similar sales without advertising. Kinect launch is equivalent to a new console launch and of course MS are spending a lot of money to inform the public and revitalize the Xbox brand. IIRC Microsoft spent $200-$300M on advertising in Fall 2008 when they slashed the price and reskined the dashboard and called it the "new Xbox experience". Now that they actually have something new it obvious they'll give it as much spotlight as possible.Baki said:
What's annoying is that the $500M figure is brought up in general by the same who claimed that Kinect tech sucked, that it was doomed, that it was EyeToy 1.1 and didn't have much appeal beyond that, that it would have no word of mouth, and finally when MS revealed the marketing budget that it would have very frontloaded sales that would slow down very quickly. Now that it's apparent the device has very strong momentum going forward the sad "$500M" argument is constantly thrown around, completely ignoring the fact that Kinect is appealing and impressive to a very wide range of people.
went over this already (...several times in fact), there is no inherent benefit of dual analog over any type of pointing scheme, aside from a)it's learning curve and b)long time comfort.Sho_Nuff82 said:
Besides, how would you test dual analog vs motion? On console FPS filled with aim assist and slower gameplay speed designed around the limitations of dual analog in mind?
"Long time comfort" is a pretty damn big benefit.Threi said:
:edit: Here's a video of The Conduit online, aiming/turning just looks awkward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qi25M2ySNk
Sorry for going off-topic...
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Here is someone playing CoD:Black Ops. It might still look awkward to you, but it does demonstrate the big difference you can have depending on your settings.JaxJag said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnSlgtqfVg&feature=related
Why should he go for headshots? Anyway, it looks awkward because you are not used to it. Doesn't mean is inferior. Is he slow? Is pointer aiming gimping him compared to dual analog? Is he turning wrong (where he doesn't want to)? Would he be more effective with dual analogs? That are the important questions. Not if it looks awkward... "I'm used to the cursor in the center and anything else looks awkward!".
So, now the pointer is inaccurate? (instead of slow or awkward) And on a single firefight, where he tried to shot from the hip with a gun... Yeah, he should have aimed from the sights and rely on aim-assist like a real CoD player...JaxJag said:
If you want something slower, this is me with a sniper rifle. Note: MW:R suffers of shooting lag, specially bad on my case since I'm not based in the USA.
godisturbed
Member
Goldeneye is my first experience with wii pointer controls and tbh its not quite as amazing as I had imagined (and yes I have done a lot of tweaking) I think pointer would win out against dual analog but not by a big margin. The thing is unlike a mouse your view will keep moving when you aim somewhere until you then bring it back to your deadzone (unlike an analog stick which recenters itself as soon as you let go) And turning is a lot slower, especially ADS.
Lonely1 said:
I'm sorry, but the videos obviously shows the pointer is not good for multiplayer shooters.
I played MoH: Heroes for the Wii online, all the battles would take forever because it's too hard to aim with the pointer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOA0Rgc-VQ
Look at that, another Wii game where the player is just wiggling the curser around in hopes of hitting an enemy.
And If the pointer is so much better for the genre. then why are shooters more popular on the 360/PS3/PC than the Wii?
JaxJag said:
I posted a video of myself on my previous post. And if you played MoH:H2 you should know that the game has no aim-assist whatsoever. And something else than is obvious ("because it looks awkward"). Say a reason. People can use the classic controller in CoD:BO Wii, yet wii players (me included) still prefer the pointer.
Is this a serious question?JaxJag said:
It's also subjective, unlike the realistic benefits a pointer controller poses over dual analog. Some (most) people actually have wrist muscles that render that "benefit" useless. I include it, however, because most defenders of dual analog for FPS (not as a preference but they genuinely feel that it is better than pointer controls) have absolutely no reasoning as to why it is so (again, because its only their preference, yet they try to argue with subjectivity) so I try to "help" them out to at least promote discussion between the different control configurations.JaxJag said:
I'm going to ignore you taking random videos on youtube and trying to pass them off as the final word on whether pointer controls are feasible for FPS...because I have a feeling you aren't trying to engage in an actual debate here (you are free to prove me wrong)JaxJag said:
but i will address this. First of all, why are you including "PC" in this debate? The PC control scheme isn't even close to the PS360 control scheme, don't add it for the sake of adding it. The reason FPSes are popular has nothing to do with the control scheme, but more to do with popularity of the genre itself among the largest demographics that plays those consoles, as opposed to the Wii. This is a ridiculous point to bring up anyways.
Enough with the stupid $500M number. Do you guys even know where that number comes from?
Here (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/microsoft_move_3gVmAyryJuD6px1dV7LeDP?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=):
Do you see the number $500M in there anywhere? No. So where does it come from?
Okay, so Microsoft spent more than $500M launching the Xbox including subsidies. However, let us pretend that they really did spend $500M entirely on advertising to launch the X-box and that they are spending more on advertising to launch the Kinect. What does launch mean in this context? Let us go back to 2000 and find out:
So in short, this entire $500M bullshit comes from the fact that Robbie Bach said in 2000 that he could see them spending half a billion dollars over 18 months to launch the X-box, and someone said recently that the Kinect launch will be bigger than the X-box.
Also, pay no attention to the massive Windows Phone 7 marketing campaign which didn't generate Kinect numbers
Here (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/microsoft_move_3gVmAyryJuD6px1dV7LeDP?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=):
Do you see the number $500M in there anywhere? No. So where does it come from?
Okay, so it is 'bigger' than the launch of the Xbox. How does that turn into $500M? The NYPost gets that figure from:
Okay, so Microsoft spent more than $500M launching the Xbox including subsidies. However, let us pretend that they really did spend $500M entirely on advertising to launch the X-box and that they are spending more on advertising to launch the Kinect. What does launch mean in this context? Let us go back to 2000 and find out:
http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-to-spend-500-million-on-Xbox-launch/2100-1040_3-243763.html
So in short, this entire $500M bullshit comes from the fact that Robbie Bach said in 2000 that he could see them spending half a billion dollars over 18 months to launch the X-box, and someone said recently that the Kinect launch will be bigger than the X-box.
Also, pay no attention to the massive Windows Phone 7 marketing campaign which didn't generate Kinect numbers
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
JaxJag said:
1) Because KBM is better than the pointer, so why include PC there?
2) Because given the ton of auto-aim on all PS360 online shooters, it's fair to say that input quality or precision is a secondary concern to other stuff.
3) The PS360 are much better at literally everything that isn't input related than the Wii.
Metalmurphy
Member
sangreal said:
No Bieber.
Shin Johnpv
Member
Karma said:
I remember during E3 one of the Killzone 3 devs I believe it was said they did competitions with DA vs Move players and everytime the Move players dominated the DA folks.
godisturbed said:
Goldeneye is one of the worst examples of how it should be done. The pointer controls on that are not very good. Play some Conduit, or Metroid Prime Trilogy, or shit forget which MoH is supposed to have awesome controls one of them on it. There's quite a big difference.
Pointer controls are the future for TPS/FPS.
Rush2thestart
Member
Shin Johnpv said:
I hear people say Goldeneye has bad controls in relation to other FPS's all the time, but never any back up. It has all the important customization options of the COD games which work very well. Only thing that sucks is that it has a "Look" option that makes it feel disorienting... and the presets are probably the worst in any Wii FPS.
The framerate in goldeneye MP isn't that great, and pretty unstable. That affects the precision of a pointer more than it would an analog stick.Rush2thestart said:
Also, the resolution in MP is equivalent to the resolution in splitscreen multiplayer. There isn't enough pixel density to actually make the benefit of a pointer controller apparent.
theignoramus
Member
And Forza's NPD numbers boded well for its own enchanting approach?chespace said:
Shin Johnpv
Member
Rush2thestart said:
I'm not a programmer so I could be off base here. I've seen data streams of the info the wiimote sends and its a crazy amount of data, from what I understand some companies run it through I guess a smoothing sort of thing first. It felt like Goldeneye doesn't do that, felt a bit more jittery. Also yeah the presets are awful, I think I finally used one set suggested here on GAF and it improved things a lot. Still not as good as MPT or Conduit though.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Stumpokapow said:
fps and other 'core' genres are usually showcases of graphical fidelity, online MP is popular, etc so #3 is probably the most important.
4) I might add that while some ppl that hate DA say that they find the pointer more intuitive, pointer controls are not easy to get right. They can feel perfect or they can feel terrible. gamers comfortable with DA might not feel the desire to learn a new control method that feels like crap unless properly configured.
godisturbed said:
To solve your problems: make deadzone smaller so that the camera always follows the cursor. the lack of automatic re centering is an issue that has yet to be dealt with in a very elegant way, but then again, u should rarely need re centering since u can aim anywhere so quickly.
Turning: increase turning speed and decrease the max turning speed zone.
It should never ever feel slow. If anything, turning everything to max should make it impossible to control because it is so sensitive. Just work your way downwards haha.
Cheech said:
waggle is not the same as the pointer.
Karma said:
Be ready for games to feel extra difficult if games start being designed with the pointer in mind.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
amtentori said:
I won't rise to the bait on your earlier point - sure others will do that.
But this one is important. There's no single 'pointer controls' to be better or worse than any thing else, and it is as much and more to do with how the developers tune the system as it is to players playing it.
Whatever the potential accuracy and feedback and speed of movement some developer somewhere will fuck it up and someone else will get closer to it (but probably with worse graphics - way the world works). It'll all get sorted eventually.