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[MatPiscatella]

I wrote a thing: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: How Microsoft is looking to heat up holiday competition on console

Targeted more at general business people, not so much at core gamers. But maybe there's something interesting here or maybe I got something wrong. Please let me know either way.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

i agree pubg could be huge for xbox

 

[Bitch Pudding]

While I don't think the PUBG deal is some kind of game changer, I agree that PUBG could be a really important deal for MS. If they manage to launch it within the next months, that is. Games like DayZ have shown that the hype those kind of games generate can fade away rather quick.

 

[Welfare]

I wrote a thing: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: How Microsoft is looking to heat up holiday competition on console

Targeted more at general business people, not so much at core gamers. But maybe there's something interesting here or maybe I got something wrong. Please let me know either way.

I still don't know whether PUBG will sell new consoles but it will be interesting to see how exactly Microsoft will market the game.

This could be something that only sells to current Xbox One owners or maybe is something that pushes Xbox One X sales. Maybe the casual buyer really gets into PUBG and buys a One S for it for ease of access instead of PC.

Very smart get for Xbox.

 

[Aeqvitas]

I wrote a thing: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: How Microsoft is looking to heat up holiday competition on console

Targeted more at general business people, not so much at core gamers. But maybe there's something interesting here or maybe I got something wrong. Please let me know either way.

Great article, Matt. I think there are a lot of console only players looking at PUBG with hungry eyes. It's a game that is rare and industry shifting, and having it be strongly associated with the Xbox brand in the console space is without a doubt a plus in a time where xbox has not been garning as much excitement with exclusives as the other players. How far the ripples will go remains to be seen, but I'm sure it will translate into some amount of improved image and sales.

 

[MatPiscatella]

Thanks for the feedback and for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

I still don't know whether PUBG will sell new consoles but it will be interesting to see how exactly Microsoft will market the game.

Aside from knowing how many Switch consoles will be available for purchase in Q4, I think the PUBG/Xone question is the most intriguing story of the holiday.

There are so many fascinating things to look at this holiday: how big can Destiny 2 get, how much better will SWBF2 do than the first, will Call of Duty rebound in a big way, is Switch/Odyssey going to bring back some audience... but I think the PUBG question is the most uncertain and the most fun to think about.

If it comes out this holiday of course!

 

[Rosstimus]

So Mass Effect is the 7th best selling game of the year so far? Why does it have the perception of being a commercial flop, resulting in EA dissolving Bioware Montreal, etc.? Surely it's sold enough copies to justify at least some DLC, if not a sequel?

 

[Man God]

PUBG is the XBONE's big holiday game. If it misses then they'll have a bad time of it even if they do a fire sale.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

PUBG is the XBONE's big holiday game. If it misses then they'll have a bad time of it even if they do a fire sale.

XB1 will do very well during the holidays this year regardless. No "fire sale" needed.

 

[Clear]

I wrote a thing: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: How Microsoft is looking to heat up holiday competition on console

Targeted more at general business people, not so much at core gamers. But maybe there's something interesting here or maybe I got something wrong. Please let me know either way.

I think that PUBG would probably have more impact/uplift if its exclusivity period wasn't in the highly contested holiday season. It strikes me that Destiny, CoD, and SW Battlefront are going to suck a lot of the air out of the room, and give some folks a reason to take a wait-and-see approach.

 

[Dynomutt]

I wrote a thing: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: How Microsoft is looking to heat up holiday competition on console

Targeted more at general business people, not so much at core gamers. But maybe there's something interesting here or maybe I got something wrong. Please let me know either way.

Great article sir!

Your opening line is spot on:

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the most popular and best-selling entertainment property you may have never heard of.

When I have conversations with people they're usually not aware of the game despite it's fan fare. MS has a great opportunity to bring even more mainstream awareness to the title. Nov-Dec will certainly be fun to watch.

 

[Man God]

XB1 will do very well during the holidays this year regardless. No "fire sale" needed.

They drop the price of the thing every November for black Friday. The question really is how low will the XBONE S go/how many games will they bundle with it in order to really push the thing out the door. That's what I mean by fire sale. PUBG is the one thing they have in their back pocket that will actually tempt people on the fence to buy one. It's clearly a game with no small amount of mass market appeal.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

They drop the price of the thing every November for black Friday. The question really is how low will the XBONE S go/how many games will they bundle with it in order to really push the thing out the door. That's what I mean by fire sale. PUBG is the one thing they have in their back pocket that will actually tempt people on the fence to buy one. It's clearly a game with no small amount of mass market appeal.

I wouldn't consider dropping the console $50 during Black Friday a "fire sale", but ok.

Even still, the X will ensure MS has a great holiday season.

 

[Kill3r7]

So Mass Effect is the 7th best selling game of the year so far? Why does it have the perception of being a commercial flop, resulting in EA dissolving Bioware Montreal, etc.? Surely it's sold enough copies to justify at least some DLC, if not a sequel?

Surely not. Lifetime sales will end up below 3. At which point why waste the man power on a game you will be rebooting in a few years anyhow.

 

[Man God]

I wouldn't consider dropping the console $50 during Black Friday a "fire sale", but ok.

Even still, the X will ensure MS has a great holiday season.

This is in the case of PUBG not being ready for the holidays and to really move the system they end up making a larger than normal bundle or a larger than usual price cut, or both. Hence a fire sale. This is not what I'm expecting to happen.

A fire sale in this case is a 75 dollar price cut, or two newish games with two controllers. Stuff of real value.

 

[hanspampel]

As Microsoft is publishing the Xbox One Version i'm more intersted to know if they'll do a physical release, too and put some heavy marketing out there

 

[Fafalada]

Please let me know either way.

Personally I'm not convinced success in one market(platform, whatever) at all dictates the same thing in another, especially in terms of "system-selling" type of success (admittedly I don't have a statistical analysis for this - but especially in online space I can only think of 1-2 examples of that happening and plenty where it decidedly didn't).

But either way - wouldn't the more important question be how many 1X MS actually ships this season?

 

[OrbitalBeard]

This is in the case of PUBG not being ready for the holidays and to really move the system they end up making a larger than normal bundle or a larger than usual price cut, or both. Hence a fire sale. This is not what I'm expecting to happen.

A fire sale in this case is a 75 dollar price cut, or two newish games with two controllers. Stuff of real value.

I don't think the S will go below $199. It'll probably be that price + one or two games. But we'll see.

 

[MatPiscatella]

As Microsoft is publishing the Xbox One Version i'm more intersted to know if they'll do a physical release, too and put some heavy marketing out there

I'm wondering the same things! If I was a retail buyer I'd be on the horn with them every day to make sure I got a packaged release.

I think that PUBG would probably have more impact/uplift if its exclusivity period wasn't in the highly contested holiday season. It strikes me that Destiny, CoD, and SW Battlefront are going to suck a lot of the air out of the room, and give some folks a reason to take a wait-and-see approach.

Could very well be the case. Another reason why it'll be fascinating to watch.

Personally I'm not convinced success in one market(platform, whatever) at all dictates the same thing in another, especially in terms of "system-selling" type of success (admittedly I don't have a statistical analysis for this - but especially in online space I can only think of 1-2 examples of that happening and plenty where it decidedly didn't).

But either way - wouldn't the more important question be how many 1X MS actually ships this season?

Success on one platform does not guarantee success on another. In this case, it's not quite all-or-nothing, but it's close.

And the ship question is absolutely an issue, if what they ship can't meet demand. But sure, available supply does cap potential sales, but at some point more supply will not equate to more sales.

 

[Fafalada]

And the ship question is absolutely an issue, if what they ship can't meet demand. But sure, available supply does cap potential sales, but at some point more supply will not equate to more sales.

Of course - but the 2-3 holiday months seemed likely. Pro performed largely supply constrained during those (even longer in other parts of the world). And 1X design strikes me like it'll only take longer to ramp up production quantities.

 

[noobie]

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me.

So I dug into this a bit.

There's no way to prove out that discounting prior releases in a franchise boosts sales of the new game. Given all of the factors that impact launch sales, many of them unquantifiable, the math simply doesn't let us to get to any confidence one way or the other on this question.

However, sales of the old games are, naturally, boosted by promotional activity in the months leading to a new release in the franchise. These sales lifts can be quite noticeable.

The promotional activity also seems to have at least some positive impact on social, streaming and awareness metrics of the franchise. Then it takes a tiny leap of faith that those metrics rising will positively impact sales of the new game. In any case, those metrics improving certainly shouldn't hurt sales of the new game.

As with almost everything in the games business, the data is a bit inconclusive.

Thank you for your insight. But one question which just popped into my mind after seeing the UK chart for this week is that

if the success of the next installment always guarantees a resurgence of last installment sales? Like in latest UK chart Uncharted 4 has reappeared in the top 40 charts (although the amount of sales required to come in UK chart is quite low). Even though there was no massive promotional activity for the next game/chapter/download of latest Uncharted.

How often do you see such phenomena in NPD charts where the older installment resurged AFTER the release of the newest installment.

 

[michaelius]

I still don't know whether PUBG will sell new consoles but it will be interesting to see how exactly Microsoft will market the game.

This could be something that only sells to current Xbox One owners or maybe is something that pushes Xbox One X sales. Maybe the casual buyer really gets into PUBG and buys a One S for it for ease of access instead of PC.

Very smart get for Xbox.

I think this is similar situation to World of Tanks

WOT was first on xbox360 and didn't move any serious amount of consoles despite having tens of millions of accounts on pc.

 

[jryi]

I think this is similar situation to World of Tanks

WOT was first on xbox360 and didn't move any serious amount of consoles despite having tens of millions of accounts on pc.

On the other hand, WoT was always a free-to-play game, PUBG already has eight million paying customers. So there's proven demand with willingness to pay.

But on the third hand, PUBG has its player base already on PC; is there any value for this audience to transition to Xbox? So much so, that they would buy the console? How much untapped market is there, and how likely is it that this market is finally reached with an early access game that has been available elsewhere for half a year?

I don't know. It is one thing to buy a game for a platform that you already own, it's quite another to buy a platform so you can play a game. I haven't tried PUBG myself, but I continuously see the Steam notifications when my friends launch it. I'm tempted.

But definitely not tempted enough to buy a new console.

 

[MatPiscatella]

How often do you see such phenomena in NPD charts where the older installment resurged AFTER the release of the newest installment.

All the time, really. Classic halo effect. New game announced and promoted causes related games to get sales boosts.

It's the power of franchises. New games get boosts from ingrained awareness and affinity. Old games get boosts from new game announcements and marketing/promotion.

I think this is similar situation to World of Tanks

WOT was first on xbox360 and didn't move any serious amount of consoles despite having tens of millions of accounts on pc.

What do you consider a "serious" amount of consoles?

It's true that the impact of any one game on sales of hardware is, in the vast majority of cases, impossible to know for certain or prove. There are outliers of course. Halo on the Xbox, Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360.

But this downplaying of big titles not moving consoles argument always tends to ring a bit hollow to me. A library of content is only the aggregation of a number of single games and services.

Is the combination of One X, and the graphical improvements it promises, combined with the launch of PUBG, back compat, game pass, EA access, etc etc enough to sway an incremental few hundred thousand to a half million people or so to pick up an Xbox in the US market this holiday that otherwise wouldn't have? I certainly think it's possible.

Having the new box and a big hit game like PUBG is certainly better for the ecosystem than not having them.

Same arguments can be made for the PS4 and Switch as well. Having revised/refreshed/repackaged hardware and big new games tends to help drive incremental volume of hardware. That's somewhat self evident.

 

[Birgitte2004]

You think PS4 is going to sell 4 million during one of the holiday months this year?

I don't think you actually realize how big Wii was at its peak in North America.

I'd be more inclined to believe if they can manufacture them the Switch would have a better chance to do it than the PS4.

Even then I'd rate the chances as near zero. The Wii was nuts.

 

[redfox088]

See that Square? See that FF12:TZA doing well? Good, now, start working on that Balthier & Fran spin-off now!

No thanks.....knowing square it will be a terrible third person shooter that sours my adoration for the character *cough* Fucking *cough*

 

[Welfare]

I think this is similar situation to World of Tanks

WOT was first on xbox360 and didn't move any serious amount of consoles despite having tens of millions of accounts on pc.

But WoT is F2P and was available on PC back in 2010. PUBG is a paid product that isn't even half a year old yet, and will be on Xbox by the end of the year PUBG launched in (hopefully). Being this early could have an effect on console sales if Microsoft markets this to the casual consumer for the holiday.

 

[Elandyll]

But WoT is F2P and was available on PC back in 2010. PUBG is a paid product that isn't even half a year old yet, and will be on Xbox by the end of the year PUBG launched in (hopefully). Being this early could have an effect on console sales if Microsoft markets this to the casual consumer for the holiday.

And PUBG and its creator also has a baked in audience on PC coming from the days of DayZ and various mods I believe... It could thus very well have tapped and evolved in its own ecosystem based on PC with Kb/ mouse combo.

I have no doubt PUBG will sell well on XB1 though, if only from wom and the push MS is/ will give it marketing wise.

It will be an interesting situation to observe I think.

 

[michaelius]

What do you consider a "serious" amount of consoles?

It's true that the impact of any one game on sales of hardware is, in the vast majority of cases, impossible to know for certain or prove. There are outliers of course. Halo on the Xbox, Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360.

But this downplaying of big titles not moving consoles argument always tends to ring a bit hollow to me. A library of content is only the aggregation of a number of single games and services.

Is the combination of One X, and the graphical improvements it promises, combined with the launch of PUBG, back compat, game pass, EA access, etc etc enough to sway an incremental few hundred thousand to a half million people or so to pick up an Xbox in the US market this holiday that otherwise wouldn't have? I certainly think it's possible.

Having the new box and a big hit game like PUBG is certainly better for the ecosystem than not having them.

Same arguments can be made for the PS4 and Switch as well. Having revised/refreshed/repackaged hardware and big new games tends to help drive incremental volume of hardware. That's somewhat self evident.

Serious as in something noticeable in monthly sales when it releases at least like Horizon effect- it'll probably be impossible to judge in last quarter anyway due to multiple other factors so we will probably never know.

Also I'm not downplaying big games hardware selling power since we seen it plenty of times and if it was completely new game releasing with full marketing I'd expect it to move some hardware - but this is late port which makes it less likely to be sudden hit.

 

[MatPiscatella]

Serious as in something noticeable in monthly sales when it releases at least like Horizon effect- it'll probably be impossible to judge in last quarter anyway due to multiple other factors so we will probably never know.

Yes, it will be very difficult and most likely impossible to judge this given the problems with only having monthly data in such a busy period.

Also I'm not downplaying big games hardware selling power since we seen it plenty of times and if it was completely new game releasing with full marketing I'd expect it to move some hardware - but this is late port which makes it less likely to be sudden hit.

You could very well be right. It could also take time for the game to move from the core to mass market crowd, much like the time it has taken PUBG to expand on the PC side.