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NPD Sales Results for December 2015 [Up1: Super Mario Maker]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
One simple question : do you know in how many units PS2 sold before the launch of 7th gen ( X360 in that case )?
ProfessorMoran
Member
LMAO I think I'm going to pass out.
The Mad Draklor
Member
"I don't have an XB1, so I'm not a fanboy". Now, what fallacy is this? Hmmm, oh I got it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRNmGhdYnU
1. We actually don't know if the PS4 has a lot of those - for example, the price cut schedule, revision schedule or its long potential post-generation tail. Therefore, without knowing those variables, we can say given the information we do have that 150 million is very unlikely, but that 100 million is very close to a sure bet. So with this scenario, it still wouldn't "have what PS2 had", but it's obviously at this point going to dominate Xbox 360's lifetime sales. So it clearly has what 360 had, whatever that "something" is, since you failed to qualify it. Hell, PS3 eclipsed 360's lifetime sales.
2. Well I mean in that case it's possible, but Quantum Break comes out in April. So does Uncharted 4. That ends that game as Microsoft's hopes to surpass PS4 console sales for a month
3. It's an easy assumption to make in the context of your entire argument, which was basically an argument that started by doubting the feasibility of PS4 hitting 90 or 10 million and ended by making excuses for why PS4 sold more than XBO this holiday. So:
This is your quote, and I bolded the two lines which suggest something clear. Which is the console it "won" over last holiday season (1)? PS4. Which is the console it came "relatively close" to this holiday season (2)? PS4.
So I concluded that the next paragraph which you said the XBO has a subjective higher review and preview wise of anticipated games in the first half of the year, I naturally thought you were comparing it to what you've been comparing the XBO to in most of the rest of your post. I'm not even sure why you'd think that was an assumption that is rooted on me being on GAF too much. You need to be more concise with your language.
4. You need to be more concise with your language, that is where the confusion keeps coming from.
Ah the I don't even have an Xbox One guys! You are the real trolls! How original.
You didn't say it has zero games, just that PS4 has zero to keep it selling. Nothing but a price drop could possibly continue to sell PS4s. Also you mentioned the lackluster lineup. So yeah you said pretty much everything except that it has "o games".
I for one am happy to see we can still kick it old school should the need arise.
Aren't we already there? For WW surely. NA has to be pretty close too. ~1.75:1 I'd wager.
Frankly I'd be far more interested in a Bloodborne v Splatoon comparison. Ones a niche genre whereas the other is in a niche (low performing) platform. Seems a more appropriate pairing IMHO. I assume Splatoon is winning in this matchup both NA and WW but I am curious by how much.
AmaterasuOni
Banned
Xbox is not big anywhere else than in USA and UK. They have no markets anywhere else. PlayStation is famous.
nekkid
It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
I'm not a racist. I have a black friend.
The last part is not completely true.
We know that for December,
Halo 5 was not in the top 10 and we don't know how far below FIFA 16 it was in December, but at best Halo 5 is 935,000+365,000+629,000 = 1,929,000 at retail.
So even in the very, very best case scenario it's not at the 2 million retail that Tivor claimed.
slavesnyder
Member
That's beautiful.
So if we go way back to the early phases of the thread, I wanted to weigh in on the AAA industry sustainability debate people were having.
To me, the current revenue is not problematic. If we look at the software for the PS4/XB1, they're generating about the same amount of revenue as the 360/PS3, and that's before we even get to digital revenue.
The actual problem is the process of making the games and how much rides on each one. We have maybe 1/3rd as many AAA games releasing per year as we used to, and they've went from taking 2-3 years to develop to 3-4 years. They're also in increasingly few genres and varieties. Consumers seem okay with the current situation judging by the rate at which they're buying consoles and the games themselves, but let's just keep forecasting this out.
What happens if next generation we have half as many AAA titles a year as we do now and they start taking 4-5 years to develop each? Are consumers still happy? Have they fully embraced some smaller titles and especially digital games? How about publishers? Is it still okay for games to fail? It's important that a game can fail and it not be a total disaster for the publisher, because quite frankly, there are always going to be titles that don't do well, if for no other reason than what was hot when you started making your game 3-4 years ago might not still be hot when it releases. If you made 30 games a year and 5 of them failed, that was fine. If you're making 3 games a year with the same number of staff and one of them fails, that's like 10 did. If two fail, that's like 20 did before. It's a significant scaling issue.
Before deleting his tweets, the head of Avalanche studios was explaining how he was spending more per month on Mad Max than the entire development budget of Just Cause 1. That game didn't exactly light the chats on fire and it took around four years to make. Maybe only 12-24 months of that was at the burn rate he was referring to, but that game probably hurt Warner's otherwise very successful year a fair bit.
Maybe we've hit a plateau and the general costs and timeframe of making games isn't going to go up by a meaningful amount anymore, but to me, while there's plenty of demand for many of these games as they come out, this is the core struggle they face.
To me, the current revenue is not problematic. If we look at the software for the PS4/XB1, they're generating about the same amount of revenue as the 360/PS3, and that's before we even get to digital revenue.
The actual problem is the process of making the games and how much rides on each one. We have maybe 1/3rd as many AAA games releasing per year as we used to, and they've went from taking 2-3 years to develop to 3-4 years. They're also in increasingly few genres and varieties. Consumers seem okay with the current situation judging by the rate at which they're buying consoles and the games themselves, but let's just keep forecasting this out.
What happens if next generation we have half as many AAA titles a year as we do now and they start taking 4-5 years to develop each? Are consumers still happy? Have they fully embraced some smaller titles and especially digital games? How about publishers? Is it still okay for games to fail? It's important that a game can fail and it not be a total disaster for the publisher, because quite frankly, there are always going to be titles that don't do well, if for no other reason than what was hot when you started making your game 3-4 years ago might not still be hot when it releases. If you made 30 games a year and 5 of them failed, that was fine. If you're making 3 games a year with the same number of staff and one of them fails, that's like 10 did. If two fail, that's like 20 did before. It's a significant scaling issue.
Before deleting his tweets, the head of Avalanche studios was explaining how he was spending more per month on Mad Max than the entire development budget of Just Cause 1. That game didn't exactly light the chats on fire and it took around four years to make. Maybe only 12-24 months of that was at the burn rate he was referring to, but that game probably hurt Warner's otherwise very successful year a fair bit.
Maybe we've hit a plateau and the general costs and timeframe of making games isn't going to go up by a meaningful amount anymore, but to me, while there's plenty of demand for many of these games as they come out, this is the core struggle they face.
Tivor Tontomo
Member
Are you really going to keep lying about what i said really, i mean this isnt funny stop. I never said retail.
CosmicQueso
Member
Nirolak, I wish that your post could be the basis of a new thread of some sort. I would love to see what some of studio heads on GAF would say about the current state of things. I agree with every sentence of your post, and it does indeed make the future very cloudy. I think you summarize the real issues the industry is facing.
There needs to be a first lie in order for me to be able to keep lying. Where was that?
I'm sorry if you didn't mean retail, but you also didn't say anything about digital being included, so in an NPD thread I'm going to assume you're talking about retail.
igordennis
Member
Pretty much why i said the current situation is troubling and may even be viable for a while but ultimately is not a sign of a healthy industry.
Well said.
nekkid
It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
Minecraft am cry.
joecanada
Member
I think we need to start quantifying the numbers by sales per year as well. Selling 100 million sounds good but ps4 is somewhat cheaper and it stands to reason that they could release a new one by the 6 year mark, although it would continue to sell. So the question is does ps4 sell 100 million in like 7 years? Because that would be very impressive indeed. Like how many sales over how many years did ps2 sell?
Because ps3 is going on 10 years now isn't it?
kimifan141
Member
any numbers for rise of the tomb raider ?
Unknown One
Member
Sony is not the type of company that stops production of their previous console right away when they release a new one. Just check out PS1/PS2/PSP. That's more like Nintendo that does.
I think VR has the potential to be a saving grace in some regards. Mainly thanks to the necessity of higher performance targets there will likely be less emphasis on bleeding edge (read incredibly costly and time intensive) graphical tech. When you account for the transformative nature of VR wherein inhabiting the space is inherently more impactful than more traditional means and you can see how graphics may take a backseat to other tech boundaries within VR.
Granted I'm not personally sold on the mass market potential of VE but I do think, if it is indeed adopted by the market at large, it would lead to a monumental shift in the style, breadth, and cost of game development.
Absent that though I have no idea. All signs point to traditional AAA development heading straight for another crash. I do wonder how much more work 4K games would entail than the contemporary variety. Perhaps the leap is not as cost prohibitive as we might think.
Personally I'd be happy with a new era of mid teir/Indy developers taking the reins as there is more creativity, ingenuity, and genius in the indie games I've played the last few years than 99% of the so called AAA experiences available. For example, Banner Saga is well on its way to being one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. So, to be honest, a future without massive AAA budgets and bloated development studios doesn't bother me all too much.
slavesnyder
Member
You are totally right. AAA is horribly time and budget consuming. And failure is no option and I think that studios and publishers are more nervous than ever. Lesser titles per annum give no chance for risc spreading and together with other trends like front-loaded sales and shift to digital this is worrying.
People only see the big success stories, but there are far more failures.
Indies have the same problem, on every undertale there come 10 or more games that don't break even. We mostly even don't hear about them because they start with high hopes on digital storefronts and disappear in a jiffy, having sold 1000 copies or so. After that you only have two options: sales or bundles. Small or smaller rev/unit. Good luck with making your money there, then.
Back to AAA, last thought.
Some people here are touting that the killer move from MS would be to start next gen next year or so, as they can't win (and have fucked up) this gen.
I would just love the thoughts of EA, Activision & Co. about this.
I really hate that dialogue. No doubt in my kind those sane people complaining would LOVE one of the countless gems that have released in the indie sphere. It's so ridiculous to me that people just dismiss games simply because they don't think their budget was big enough. Name one AAA game that is one bit as ambitious as No Man's Sky. Small independent developers are doing truly unbelievable things these days so if that's where the future is headed I'd say it's bright indeed.
For sure. Bayonetta 2 sold 7+ million, which is why we are getting bayonetta 3 on nx!
joecanada
Member
I know of my 10 friends, 11 bought digital so you are in fact correct.
In real life we have gotten numbers of about 20 percent and for now there's no reason to expect some random game somehow doubled this number. Halo 28 percent makes sense as a lot of people would want this day 1 and would want to download it and play with friends. A sp game is more likely friends would buy physical and share like I used to before sharing accounts
Obliterator
Member
Its a good assessment but I think the answer is that dev cycles will start to slowly creep back down to reality for a few reasons. The biggest being middleware scalable engines. Look at Japan the past year and the total adoption of UE4. Look at what EA is doing with Frostbite being a Universal engine across their games.
I suspect 2016 will be the first year in a long time we see packaged titles up YOY
That was expected. The NX is a game changer. All Japanese third parties are bound to develop everything for it. And Nintendo is already porting every WiiU game to it.
nah, indies give variety for those that want variety.
Wow, that's amazing! Do you have any numbers for S.T.E.A.M? Can be over 10 million with digital?
Obliterator
Member
One other thing to consider is that Publisher's scaled back green lighting new projects BIG TIME in 2012 / 2013 for fear of adoption rate of the PS4 / Xbone. Give a game a 3 year cycle and that also is part of the decline.
At least 12 million.
slavesnyder
Member
SnowFlakeCake
Member
It's going to be fun seeing what the exclusives sell this year, as someone mentioned earlier as well exclusive games can be considered a niche quantity at this point. That's been the case forever really, only Nintendo bucked that trend with Wii, where it was getting to a point that selling 10M copies was worst case scenario.
I think Quantum Break will do Blooborne numbers in the US, SF5 will do a few hundred thousand at best and Uncharted 4 will probably manage 700k or so. First month for all, when you see games like Fallout 4 manage 1 million on a single console first month, it really does show that the exclusive games mean fuck all in the long term.
I guess Sony and Microsoft see exclusives games as a way to complement the 3rd party line up, with the possibility of making a game that really catches fire and gets going, TLOU comes to mind. I can't think of any exclusive announced from either company which I think would push a lot of consoles save GT Sport and even then, GT6 was a fuck up so who knows and the push would happen in EU.
The exclusives are obviously selling enough to justify more being made so that's all I care about. Would be nice if they fucking released more first party titles in a timely manner but that's another story.
I think Quantum Break will do Blooborne numbers in the US, SF5 will do a few hundred thousand at best and Uncharted 4 will probably manage 700k or so. First month for all, when you see games like Fallout 4 manage 1 million on a single console first month, it really does show that the exclusive games mean fuck all in the long term.
I guess Sony and Microsoft see exclusives games as a way to complement the 3rd party line up, with the possibility of making a game that really catches fire and gets going, TLOU comes to mind. I can't think of any exclusive announced from either company which I think would push a lot of consoles save GT Sport and even then, GT6 was a fuck up so who knows and the push would happen in EU.
The exclusives are obviously selling enough to justify more being made so that's all I care about. Would be nice if they fucking released more first party titles in a timely manner but that's another story.
Really? These are Knack numbers!
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Much rice. Many shapes. Thoz Smellz. Omnomnom. Porridge.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Just a question I'm not sure about. Are linear games cheaper to make than open world?
Knack numbers withouth bundle, including it we are looking at >20 million.
That is why Cerny got the green light to make crash bandicoot 9
slavesnyder
Member
Conflicts of this century are always rooted in the pityless fight for ressources.
Oil, water, rice.
Obliterator
Member
Here's a nice glimpse into how much trepidation there was from Publisher's leading into current gen and the fears of the business model. Amazing how he even references 2015 as being a somewhat drought year for software. This interview was basically prophetic and reflects what I've been talking about in sales threads for a while. Dan Vavra the creative lead on Kingdom Come Deliverance back in January 2014
This is a giant factor in current package games. I dont think people are aware how worried pubs were coming into this generation. It was a HUGE factor
Incredible how SPOT ON he was.
This is a giant factor in current package games. I dont think people are aware how worried pubs were coming into this generation. It was a HUGE factor
Incredible how SPOT ON he was.
slavesnyder
Member
Interesting. No wonder they all come out of their holes at the same time this year. Crazy times full or triumphs and drama ahead.
If this is accurate, late gen should be really good. 2014-15 really proved that the market has remained for AAA games, so from 2017 onward releases should pick up a bit.