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NPD Sales Results for February 2011 [Update 4: PS3 Hardware, TONS Of Games]

lowrider007

Licorice-flavoured booze?
mujun said:
Sure retail exclusives carry more weight but it's a funny trend that most of the people who laud the PS3's exclusives at retail won't admit that XBLA's lineup is clearly superior.

I have in this very thread,

lowrider007 said:
...I love my 360 but God damn is their retail software library looking drab these days, saying that though at least XBLA has been on fire....

I'm a big Playstation/Sony fan but nothing can takeaway how awesome XBLA has been with their software line-up, tbh I'm actually quite surprised how well they've supported it pulling in some great unique titles.
 

Huff

Banned
manueldelalas said:
wall of text
Thank you manueldelalas for trying to be informative while funny, and not just plain condescending. It was possible.

I see I wasn't stating my self very clearly in my original posts, now that I'm rereading them. I was in the last chapter of FF13
and beat it - the last half of the chapter was such a chore
and what I was thinking wasn't really what I typed.

To clarify, I am surprised at the Sony hate (and would be surprised at overall MS hate too if it came up). Sony will never catch up in NA, and really doesn't matter if they take over WW anyway. I think this gen has been a kid in the ass to them, which they needed. Looking forward to the way they improve next gen as well as how MS tries to counter and stay on top (of the two).

Now to what I was saying in the "hardcore" post. I have kinect. I dislike it. I find it boring. My brothers and parents haven't used it since Xmas. My dislike bled into the posts, and it came into the "Sony is hardcore bla" Sony is putting out a lot of games. MS (1st party) is not. I like the direction Sony is going (probably because they basically failed at winning over the casuals). I don't blame MS for shifting its focus but I don't have to like it.

Based on the responses I got early, I felt the need to defend my position. Sorry if this wasn't necessary. Who is/was the other hoffman, btw?
 
BroHuffman said:
Thank you manueldelalas for trying to be informative while funny, and not just plain condescending. It was possible.

I see I wasn't stating my self very clearly in my original posts, now that I'm rereading them. I was in the last chapter of FF13
and beat it - the last half of the chapter was such a chore
and what I was thinking wasn't really what I typed.

To clarify, I am surprised at the Sony hate (and would be surprised at overall MS hate too if it came up). Sony will never catch up in NA, and really doesn't matter if they take over WW anyway. I think this gen has been a kid in the ass to them, which they needed. Looking forward to the way they improve next gen as well as how MS tries to counter and stay on top (of the two).

Now to what I was saying in the "hardcore" post. I have kinect. I dislike it. I find it boring. My brothers and parents haven't used it since Xmas. My dislike bled into the posts, and it came into the "Sony is hardcore bla" Sony is putting out a lot of games. MS (1st party) is not. I like the direction Sony is going (probably because they basically failed at winning over the casuals). I don't blame MS for shifting its focus but I don't have to like it.

Based on the responses I got early, I felt the need to defend my position. Sorry if this wasn't necessary. Who is/was the other hoffman, btw?


I realize this is just a small spelling mistake, but for some reason I can't stop reading that sentence exactly as written over and over and laughing. And I'm not stoned either.

It's like my brain wants to make sense out of it.
 

szaromir

Banned
truly101 said:
Uh, no you took it as such, your fault not mine. I simply stated that a lot of Sony 1st party games tend to sell well over the life of the console and this had been the case for their PS1 games, PS2 games and some of their PS3 games. You can find the data pretty easily if you want, or you can assume whatever you want, whatever makes you feel better I guess.
Nintendo 1st party sales tend to sell a lot better out of the door AND over lifetime (Microsoft provides the data extremely rarely), but what do I make of it?
Since the entire discussion started from Killzone 3 sales, let's go back to it. It's supposed to be a AAA FPS, so it's only reasonable to compare it to other AAA FPS games in the last 13 months and their opening months.

Bioshock 2 - 750k
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - 1.2M
Halo Reach - 3.3M
MOH - 1M
Blops - 8.4M

Either prove that KZ3 has a reasonable shot of surpassing/matching/coming close to lifetime sales of any of these games (for example by comparing trajectories of sales of previous entries of respective series) or we can safely conclude that Killzone 3 is in a league below aforementioned titles and for a AAA FPS its sales are disappointing - the "Sony 1st party sell great over time" argument is just bullshit and is used to hide that fact.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
szaromir said:
Nintendo 1st party sales tend to sell a lot better out of the door AND over lifetime (Microsoft provides the data extremely rarely), but what do I make of it?
Since the entire discussion started from Killzone 3 sales, let's go back to it. It's supposed to be a AAA FPS, so it's only reasonable to compare it to other AAA FPS games in the last 13 months and their opening months.

Bioshock 2 - 750k
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - 1.2M
Halo Reach - 3.3M
MOH - 1M
Blops - 8.4M

Either prove that KZ3 has a reasonable shot of surpassing/matching/coming close to lifetime sales of any of these games (for example by comparing trajectories of sales of previous entries of respective series) or we can safely conclude that Killzone 3 is in a league below aforementioned titles and for a AAA FPS its sales are disappointing - the "Sony 1st party sell great over time" argument is just bullshit and is used to hide that fact.

But Killzone has never outsold those titles and I don't know anyone who expected this one to, the current sequel is on a similar trajectory as KZ2. 4 of those are best selling multiplatform titles and the other is MS's flagship franchise. Do you know how many copies KZ2 has sold in NA since its release in 09? If its over 1 million, do you still consider it a bomb? If by this time next year if KZ3 sells over a million copies, does it still fit your definition of a bomb? If so you have a stupid definition of a bomb. Maybe KZ is just an AA title, not AAA. Doesn't matter as long as it sells and makes a profit.
 
truly101 said:
But Killzone has never outsold those titles and I don't know anyone who expected this one to, the current sequel is on a similar trajectory as KZ2. 4 of those are best selling multiplatform titles and the other is MS's flagship franchise. Do you know how many copies KZ2 has sold in NA since its release in 09? If its over 1 million, do you still consider it a bomb? If by this time next year if KZ3 sells over a million copies, does it still fit your definition of a bomb? If so you have a stupid definition of a bomb. Maybe KZ is just an AA title, not AAA. Doesn't matter as long as it sells and makes a profit.


That's just the thing though. It depends on development cost since some games need to cross a barrier of 1 million to even break even, others 500k, others as much as 1.5 million.

If it cost 45 million, then yeah even if it's over 1 million it would be a major bomb. If it only cost 15 million to make, it's already profitable. Whether or not it ever reaches the profit marker depends on how much it cost and no one knows for sure.

And then you would have to define bomb from there. Is a game that just breaks even a bomb? Does it need to make at least a certain amount of money or a percentage of its investment in profit? Does it mean it should at least make double its investment and cross a unit number milestone? Obviously games that don't even make back their money are bombs, but then some games are considered bombs that do cross the profit barrier but fail to make enough compared to their expectations. What is your definition of it?

"Bomb" is a loosely thrown around word. With Killzone I think most people just base it off the fact that it didn't sell enough to be what's typically considered "safely profitable" for a game of this calibur(at least an opening of around 500k in the US). Also it's always been on of Sony's high profile franchises, and was heavily hyped from the inception of the PS3 so when compared to the other manufacturer's high profile first party efforts(GOW, HALO, Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy) it certainly can be considered a bomb.

If Halo 3, Mario Galaxy or GOW 3 only sold 1 million LTD most people would consider that a bomb also. If you want my personal opinion on the game, consider all factors above, how heavily it was hyped from the first game and how often it was used in discussions as one of the premier PS3 titles when talking up exclusives and one of the reasons why PS3 had better games than the 360 I would expected to end up with a LTD user base of at least 2-2.5 million. After all if on a user base of 50 million WW, a flagship title, it can't even reach 2.5% of the owners that's a problem.
 

Zen

Banned
szaromir said:
Nintendo 1st party sales tend to sell a lot better out of the door AND over lifetime (Microsoft provides the data extremely rarely), but what do I make of it?
Since the entire discussion started from Killzone 3 sales, let's go back to it. It's supposed to be a AAA FPS, so it's only reasonable to compare it to other AAA FPS games in the last 13 months and their opening months.

Bioshock 2 - 750k
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - 1.2M
Halo Reach - 3.3M
MOH - 1M
Blops - 8.4M

Either prove that KZ3 has a reasonable shot of surpassing/matching/coming close to lifetime sales of any of these games (for example by comparing trajectories of sales of previous entries of respective series) or we can safely conclude that Killzone 3 is in a league below aforementioned titles and for a AAA FPS its sales are disappointing - the "Sony 1st party sell great over time" argument is just bullshit and is used to hide that fact.

Should we be attempting to sort out the sales of those titles on the PS3 from the posted total? I mean certainly it's no Halo/Blops, but Killzone 2 sold under 619, 000 units in its first month of availability(48 hours 323,000+ next month of sales 296,000). We'd also have to look at when those respective titles were released in their own months but that sort of number would probably put it in the same ballpark as Bad Company 2.

Last I'd heard, Killzone 2 was well over 2 million copies worldwide, so "PS3 games sell great over time" might not exactly be bullshit that's used to cover up the fact that Killzone 3 sales are disappointing.*

Basically that ioi's weekly Killzone 2 number correlate to NPD data and he outright stole and then tweaked them.
 
Zen said:
Should we be attempting to sort out the sales of those titles on the PS3 from the posted total? I mean certainly it's no Halo/Blops, but Killzone 2 sold under 619, 000 units in its first month of availability(48 hours 323,000+ next month of sales 296,000)
. We'd also have to look at when those respective titles were released in their own months.

Last I'd heard, Killzone 2 was well over 2 million copies worldwide, so "PS3 games sell great over time" might not exactly be bullshit that's used to cover up the fact that Killzone 3 sales are disappointing.


Heh, I was actually just wondering that as I had no idea what Killzone 2 did when I made the prediction above. Thanks for posting it. I should give the prediction thread a shot. If we get second month sales in March, we should be able to gauge if K3 is on a similar trajectory.

What I wanna know is if anyone's actually played Killzone 2 in 3D and how they feel about it. I'd be interested to know if 3D adds a level of immersion to a FPS shooter like this. FPS's would seem like ideal games for that.
 

szaromir

Banned
truly101 said:
But Killzone has never outsold those titles and I don't know anyone who expected this one to, the current sequel is on a similar trajectory as KZ2. 4 of those are best selling multiplatform titles and the other is MS's flagship franchise. Do you know how many copies KZ2 has sold in NA since its release in 09? If its over 1 million, do you still consider it a bomb? If by this time next year if KZ3 sells over a million copies, does it still fit your definition of a bomb? If so you have a stupid definition of a bomb. Maybe KZ is just an AA title, not AAA. Doesn't matter as long as it sells and makes a profit.
I would expect it to sell better because Sony tries to position it as a premiere franchise, puts a lot of money into development and advertising. It had public beta, demo and strong marketing push, yet none of those helped KZ3 to have stronger opening sales than KZ2. It might be wiser to invest that money in a different franchise next time around.

KZ2 might have sold 1M eventually, but those are sales that other shooters with strong advertising achieve in one month at full price, not at $20 (although KZ2 in the opening 6 weeks window had 600k sales, so fairly good overall). There is also little evidence that being Sony 1st party has anything to do with strong legs though, in fact shooters that launch stronger also tend to have stronger legs - eg. Blops sold close to 1M in its fourth month, Halo 3 had fantastic launch and much stronger lifetime sales than KZ2 etc. I think the argument that Sony's games sell well over lifetime is moot when competition's not weaker in that regard.
 

duk

Banned
OldJadedGamer said:
But MS has kept the 360 priced way too high for too long. I think it has to be a record for being the longest without a drop for the system. It's pretty stupid. So whatever Sony drops in price, MS will drop as well. The PS3 will for the remainder of this gen be the most expensive hardware. The problem is when people go to the store and see that both systems share 90% of the same games, they are just going to go with the cheaper one. Also the 360 has mindshare now too in the US so people will tend to get the system that their friends have.

true but 360 has added features with every iteration, ps3 on the other hand has taken away features
 
szaromir said:
KZ2 might have sold 1M eventually, but those are sales that other shooters with strong advertising achieve in one month at full price,....
Which other shooters besides COD sell 1 million in their first month on the PS3 in the US?
 
szaromir said:
Irrelevant question as nobody other than Sony makes shooters for PS3 only.

So you don´t have any numbers to back up your claim. Pretty stupid comparing sales numbers of an PS3 exclusive title with sales numbers of multiplatform titles then, don´t you think?
 
Capcom just put this up on the MvC3 facebook page
190576_190458390992673_114724748566038_425976_7698242_n.jpg
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Road said:
Maybe it excludes PC sales, or even handheld sales.

Who knows with the NPD march for disinformation. *shrugs*
The numbers for CoD:BO and MvC3 are very close. Depends on how they viewed it (in particular, which platforms).

Edit: Just looked at the footnote again. The phrase "all platforms" is slippery.
 

Dabanton

Member
Haunted said:
His run in the retail musings threads won't be forgotten.

Along with the Snah affair.

Haha i remember that.

What happened to the retail musings thread? i'm going to guess too many fanboys were using it to further their console bias.
 

Opiate

Member
Attack You said:
"Anecdote" became a dirty word.

It had always been a dirty word, but the thread did have a modicum of value and we tolerated it. Things went downhill when there were less actual Gamestop/Target/Wal Mart employees providing more substantive information, and started including a lot more people who tend to prefer one console reporting that they just went to the store and it just so happens that their preferred console was selling like hotcakes and the other two had plenty in stock.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Kung Fu Grip said:
Anyone know the LTD's of all 3? I think i read 360 at 26 million?
My own data:

PS3 = 15.95 million
Xbox 360 = 26.34 million
Wii = 34.98 million

On the other hand, Nintendo says they've broken 35 million (which is certainly true now, two weeks into March) and I've seen one legitimate source stating NPD has the Xbox 360 at 27 million (after rounding to the nearest million).

For completeness:

PSP = 18.64 million
NDS = 48.02 million

Again, these are just my own data points collected from public releases, etc. They are not official from NPD.
 

kswiston

Member
jvm said:
My own data:

PS3 = 15.95 million
Xbox 360 = 26.34 million
Wii = 34.98 million

On the other hand, Nintendo says they've broken 35 million (which is certainly true now, two weeks into March) and I've seen one legitimate source stating NPD has the Xbox 360 at 27 million (after rounding to the nearest million).

For completeness:

PSP = 18.64 million
NDS = 48.02 million

Again, these are just my own data points collected from public releases, etc. They are not official from NPD.

It's crazy how much the videogame industry has grown in the last 15 years. Even the PS3, which is in a distant third place in the US, will eventually surpass the US LTD of the SNES.
 

Zen

Banned
So I've gone through and found all the information I could about the titles sales on the PS3 as well as their days of availability during the reporting period (feel free to correct me when it comes to days on sale).

Bioshock 2 - 190.5k
Released: February 9, 2010
Days on sale:
18


Killzone 3: 279.9K
Released: February 22, 2011
Days on sale:
5


Killzone 2: 323,000
Released: February 27, 2009
Days on sale:
2


Battlefield Bad Company 2 - 451.2K
Released: March 2, 2010
Days on sale:
25


Medal of Honor - 1 million (No data on PS3 version so this is total sales)
Released: October 12, 2010
Days on sale:
14


Blops - 3.1 million
Released: November 9, 2010
Days on Sale:
20


If we look at it based on taking the total divided through number of days, that would put Killzone 2 and 3 above Bioshock, and Bad Company 2, and probably Medal of Honor, but below Black Ops obviously.
 

Atomski

Member
Amir0x said:
I would argue that the sales of Kinect were largely driven by a flush in casuals. If the hardcore was doing it, Microsoft 360 would have been #1 for a long time.

Now, with the Kinect-oriented 360 future, the system holds virtually no appeal for a self-respecting hardcore member in the current announced lineup. The lineup is abysmal. Gears of War 3 and maybe Forza.

You don't want a single xbla exclusive? Year over year just seems to get better and better with exclusives.
 

Atomski

Member
kswiston said:
It's crazy how much the videogame industry has grown in the last 15 years. Even the PS3, which is in a distant third place in the US, will eventually surpass the US LTD of the SNES.
Well back in the day when you bought a snes it lasted forever.. you did not need to rebuy a system every couple years cause your warranty ran out and the system overheated/drive died.
 

Huff

Banned
Atomski said:
Well back in the day when you bought a snes it lasted forever.. you did not need to rebuy a system every couple years cause your warranty ran out and the system overheated/drive died.

Yeah, I have two NES that still work. Usually.
 

Gravijah

Member
Atomski said:
Well back in the day when you bought a snes it lasted forever.. you did not need to rebuy a system every couple years cause your warranty ran out and the system overheated/drive died.

And what about software growth?
 

V_Arnold

Member
Zen said:
So I've gone through and found all the information I could about the titles sales on the PS3 as well as their days of availability during the reporting period (feel free to correct me when it comes to days on sale).


If we look at it based on taking the total divided through number of days, that would put Killzone 2 and 3 above Bioshock, and Bad Company 2, and probably Medal of Honor, but below Black Ops obviously.

This data you put together is nice, but you just cant divide it like that by days available. Games ARE mostly front loaded, no matter what legs they might or might not have afterwards. In the first month, the majority of the sales will come from the first shipment's first few days.

Therefore, BF is stronger than KZ3 launch or KZ2 launch, even if it had more days available.
 

Atomski

Member
Gravijah said:
And what about software growth?
Ever bump you 360 with a disk spinning? :p

I'm not saying that sales haven't increased. Gaming is a lot bigger now fore sure. But you have to admit system sales these days have to be seeing an increase due to revisions and systems breaking.
 

Glix

Member
Atomski said:
Well back in the day when you bought a snes it lasted forever.. you did not need to rebuy a system every couple years cause your warranty ran out and the system overheated/drive died.

I'm so fucking tired of this myth.

I had THREE NES's as a kid, as they would stop reading the carts, and the spring that controlled the cartridge thingy would stop working properly.

TWO Genesis, TWO SNES.

Only Game Boy was an indestructible system. The home consoles would not fail 2 months out of the box like the current-gen trash, but lets not pretend they were invincible systems that would never break.

Gamecube also. Gamecube and Game Boy. They are the only invincible systems.
 
I simply do not see the 360 making it to next holiday season.

Kinect has NOTHING going for it right now other than the novelty, NO GAMES AT ALL.

At least when the Wii was selling record numbers with casual crap there were always at least a COUPLE hardcore games being released every once in a while, and THOSE games are what made the Wii continue to sell until 2010.

Kinect, as far as I can see, doesn't have any of that. It doesn't have a Twilight Princess, a Mario Galaxy, a Metroid Prime, a No More Heroes, a Medal of Honor, or Donky Kong, nothing. I realize I'm naming a lot of first party stuff here, but the fact stands that the Wii had hardcore games to sustain between casual buying periods.

Kinect doesn't.
 

Atomski

Member
Glix said:
I'm so fucking tired of this myth.

I had THREE NES's as a kid, as they would stop reading the carts, and the spring that controlled the cartridge thingy would stop working properly.

TWO Genesis, TWO SNES.

Only Game Boy was an indestructible system. The home consoles would not fail 2 months out of the box like the current-gen trash, but lets not pretend they were invincible systems that would never break.

Gamecube also. Gamecube and Game Boy. They are the only invincible systems.

Wtf were you doin to your consoles? My snes and n64 still work and they went through tons of wear and tear from my teen years.

Edit: you can find atari systems at garage sales that still work..
 
Meijimasha said:
I simply do not see the 360 making it to next holiday season.

Kinect has NOTHING going for it right now other than the novelty, NO GAMES AT ALL.

At least when the Wii was selling record numbers with casual crap there were always at least a COUPLE hardcore games being released every once in a while, and THOSE games are what made the Wii continue to sell until 2010.

Kinect, as far as I can see, doesn't have any of that. It doesn't have a Twilight Princess, a Mario Galaxy, a Metroid Prime, a No More Heroes, a Medal of Honor, or Donky Kong, nothing. I realize I'm naming a lot of first party stuff here, but the fact stands that the Wii had hardcore games to sustain between casual buying periods.

Kinect doesn't.

Welcome, junior, have a nice stay.
 

Dabanton

Member
Meijimasha said:
I simply do not see the 360 making it to next holiday season.

Kinect has NOTHING going for it right now other than the novelty, NO GAMES AT ALL.

At least when the Wii was selling record numbers with casual crap there were always at least a COUPLE hardcore games being released every once in a while, and THOSE games are what made the Wii continue to sell until 2010.

Kinect, as far as I can see, doesn't have any of that. It doesn't have a Twilight Princess, a Mario Galaxy, a Metroid Prime, a No More Heroes, a Medal of Honor, or Donky Kong, nothing. I realize I'm naming a lot of first party stuff here, but the fact stands that the Wii had hardcore games to sustain between casual buying periods.

Kinect doesn't.

My my you're angry.

Dance Central,Kinect Sports,Kinectimals,Your Fitness and too a lesser extent Joyride.

And if you want Zumba Fitness even though that's not my kind of game it's selling well.

What you want to class those games as is up to you. My guess is you want to dismiss them so i guess 'novelty'.
 
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