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NPD Sales Results for June 2009
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
Wii DS combo breakerRyuKanSan said:
professor_t
Member
Karma said:
Worldwide? Yes. In the U.S.? Hells no.
Rush2thestart
Member
My first post on GAF too! :lol
I've always wanted to do the laughing smiley.
Anyway here are my thoughts:
- Prototype on 360 did fantastic
- Nice to see Infamous and Punch Out still going strong
- Wii sales look like they're dropping, it might be time for a price cut
- The Conduit sales are a bit lower than I expected, but I guess it only had 9 days of charting. It's only a matter of time before the media starts spewing out articles about how 3rd parties don't sell on Wii.
- Grand Slam did pretty bad, all things considered. Maybe EA's new strategy on Wii isn't going to work out so well?
I've always wanted to do the laughing smiley.
Anyway here are my thoughts:
- Prototype on 360 did fantastic
- Nice to see Infamous and Punch Out still going strong
- Wii sales look like they're dropping, it might be time for a price cut
- The Conduit sales are a bit lower than I expected, but I guess it only had 9 days of charting. It's only a matter of time before the media starts spewing out articles about how 3rd parties don't sell on Wii.
- Grand Slam did pretty bad, all things considered. Maybe EA's new strategy on Wii isn't going to work out so well?
One thing I just caught from the data was Knights in the Nightmare's performance.
The number's weren't too big, so it's not that big a deal, but to me it did seem as kind of high.
I looked up Riviera and Yggdra Union on Garaph, and among those titles, it was only beaten by Yggdra Union (on both GBA and PSP). Of course they had substantially longer tracking periods, so I expect KitN's US performance to overtake those.
I'm not fully aware how other Sting titles had performed in the US, but given the Japanese performances, this seems like a really good number.
Unless of course previous localized titles did more here.
The number's weren't too big, so it's not that big a deal, but to me it did seem as kind of high.
I looked up Riviera and Yggdra Union on Garaph, and among those titles, it was only beaten by Yggdra Union (on both GBA and PSP). Of course they had substantially longer tracking periods, so I expect KitN's US performance to overtake those.
I'm not fully aware how other Sting titles had performed in the US, but given the Japanese performances, this seems like a really good number.
Unless of course previous localized titles did more here.
markatisu said:
wow, stark contrast, especially in the CoD2 vs. Cod:WaW numbers. it's a good reminder that the 360 fanbase is an aberration among all other consoles it buys games voraciously and the only reason Wii ever outsells the 360 in total software is its greater install base.
theBishop said:
This gen is very jaded and unrealistic when it comes to game sales, we could do a month to month going from 2005 to 2009 and see how unreal sales have gotten. Just like how there are posts talking about the Wii lowballing but yet in context of the last 5 years its some of the highest months in history.
Whats even more funny is GAF paraded around the Wii = 2x GC but yet when a Wii game sells 2x as much as a hit on the GC its a bomba
We all know development costs have increased, but with few exceptions for the first few years of the Wii's life we were getting games barely on PS2 level development. The Conduit itself is a PSP/PS2 based engine retrofitted to take advantage of the Wii
But yet when a Wii game sells in the 300-500k its thought of in terms of 360/HD development costs and games which are given that budget (the EA Actives, the Tiger Woods, the Guitar Heros) which sell supremley well are passed off as "well they would have sold anyway"
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
WTF man, really wtf... really bad first post.Rush2thestart said:
boiled goose
good with gravy
HiResDes said:
wii third party sales > 360 third party sales during certain months last year.
360 gets big boosts on certain months from high profile releases (such as prototype this month single handedly contributing 400k)
wii third party sales are more spread out (there are also more games released)
DGodlessOnessss
Banned
Damn the Wii is falling like a rock. Seems the fad is dead. PS3 doing poor as always. XBOX360 just hanging on there. Bad year so far for everyone.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Danthrax said:
360 owners really just eat certain new releases up. im sure the online community has a positive feedback effect where popoular games get even more boosts.
microsoft does a great job about getting its fanbase excited about new releases.
the dashboard ads, demos, etc all bring a lot of awareness about upcoming games
amtentori said:
Last year, total Wii third-party sales > total 360 third-party sales.
DGodlessOnessss said:
The Wii is stable month-on-month (although considerably down year-on-year). To call the fastest selling console of all time a fad, after two-and-a-half years, doesn't make much sense.
Afaic, the Xbox 360's price cut is working insomuch as it is convincing more people who would buy the console to buy it now, but it doesn't seem to be convincing a lot more people to consider buying one (ie. it doesn't seem to be increasing its potential audience).
Rush2thestart
Member
gerg said:
Let me expand on my statement:
Well as someone else stated, the game had the benefits of having a pretty full month, supporting Wii MotionPlus, having recieved favorable reviews, and being an exclusive.
I personally would say that it should have also benefitted from the fact it is a cartoony game and a sports game, which do pretty well on Wii.
Considering Grand Slam had a new artstyle and Tiger didn't, I think EA could be a little worried about how their upcoming games with the Grand Slam style will fair (Madden and Fifa). Though, maybe these sales could be considered good compared to other Tennis titles' sales. I haven't kept up with others.
amtentori said:
That alos leads to the issue that Anihawk bought up in the % breakdown (where Junes sales were made up by like 4 big games), the 360 can sell certain games REALLY well but the rest that are released have to fend for themselves.
On the Wii you have a similar situation where Nintendo releases sell REALLY well, but the spread is greater and more varied. You end up with less monster hits and more games that do "well enough"
Neither is a great place to be in
boiled goose
good with gravy
Rush2thestart said:
EASA being in top 10 two months in a row and TW10 being the highest debuting TW ever certainly is not promising.
GST did ok. around 50k or so.
it will do ok in the long run and is selling well in europe since it is the bundled game with m+ there
Rush2thestart said:
Exactly. Yes, it didn't sell a million copies on day one, like a new Halo would. But I would argue that your expectations are mighty unrealistic if you thought it could.
It's a new IP tennis game, of which we only know one month's worth of sales. I'd say we wait at least until the end of the year to judge its performance.
Rush2thestart
Member
Wow, I guess I should've been more clear. A lot of you seemed to misinterpret my statement. My bad. :lol
Grand Slam's major numbers will definitely be coming from Europe.Rush2thestart said:
It's bundled with Motion Plus there, and the sport is also more popular there.
It's debuted pretty strong in numerous countries. We don't have the actual numbers, but its chart position has been very good.
I imagine Tiger Woods will be the bigger seller overall, but I don't think Grand Slam should be ruled out yet.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Rush2thestart said:
I do think the all play branding was a mistake on EAs part. I believe madden 09 sold less than 08 on wii???
the art style for GST is ok I believe and fits the arcadey gameplay, the problem with madden is that there is no standard, realistic football game available.
seeing how tiger has sold, the realistic (motion +, graphics)approach could do better than the approachable one.
donny2112 said:
I wouldn't count on it -- reasonably, it should only get worse. As I'm sure you're aware, these cycles have a tendency of feeding themselves. The developers of such games will have even less incentive to make these games for Wii, which will mean less investment, which will further starve the audience, which will drive the audience to go elsewhere for subsistence, which will give developers even less incentive, and so forth.
I suspect the market was there at some point, at least to an extent, based on early sales of games like RE4 and Red Steel. However, I think most of them are gone now, and will continue to trickle away as support continues to remain poor. Which it almost assuredly will.
gerg said:
Not so certain about that. I tracked those numbers through September (360 was on top to that point) and I had thought Wii had taken October as well, but come to find out it didn't. November and December that was the case. I remember a PR at the start the year where MS had mentioned 3rd party sales, but lack the details. I do know Nintendo said nothing about taking 3rd party sales overall for the year in their year end PR, but simply said this;
I think they would have mentioned that fact if it was indeed the case for the full year. Regardless it was pretty darn close I'm thinking.
Danthrax said:
Not entirely made up on base alone. When the Wii sees hundred(s) of more titles for a calendar year those sales do matter even though some will argue otherwise here.
Wii software outsold 360 software in December 07 despite having a smaller installed base back then. 360 does have a better than average attach rate, but it's not some sort of monstrous abberation. (It's about 1 game better than PS3 and Wii at the same point in their lives.)Danthrax said:
They did in their financial results briefing:Jtyettis said:
Opiate said:
I'm not so sure. I mean, I doubt the audience will exactly go away. I don't think we're going to see a mass auctioning of Wiis by their frustrated 18-35 male owners. I think the worst thing that might happen is that these owners may buy another console to satisfy their tastes, but even then I'd imagine that they would stop playing and buying games for their Wiis entirely.
I don't think The Conduit's poor sales are an example of a diminishing audience, but simply of the same limited one that has always existed on the Wii. Because of its small nature, I think you're going to see less variance in tastes, and people will stick mainly to what they know. The Conduit was simply a new, untested IP (apparently) with low advertising on TV - I'm afraid I can't remember who brought it up, but as another post wrote in this thread, it's not the big games that have problems selling, but the smaller ones instead.
It just seems like simple statistics - if one in ten FPS lovers would want to buy The Conduit, if the Wii only has one million of them only 100,000 will buy the game. Alternatively, if the 360 has ten million FPS lovers, one million people will buy the game.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
I always wish someone other than evilore would post these NPD threads so that the OP would be updated with the data that we get from other sites. That way, I wouldn't have to go hunting around to see if conduit sales have been posted, for example. 
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Accident said:
Haha. I love how similar those are to the "total weeks ownership" thing my spreadsheet calculates based on NPD numbers. People on each platform really don't seem so different; everyone seems to average a new game every 10 weeks.
X360:
1.37 x 10^9 weeks ownership
1.33 x 10^8 games sold
PS3:
0.53 x 10^9 weeks ownership
0.54 x 10^8 games sold
Wii:
1.27 x 10^9 weeks ownership
1.31 x 10^8 games sold
I realize PS3's isn't exactly scientific notation, buuuut I thought it best to keep things consistent.
gerg said:
That's what I'm suggesting. Or people will simply stop playing their Wiis, not buy another system, and generally stop playing games on consoles. This would explain the statistics that show that the average Wii recieves significantly less playtime per week than the 360 or PS3.
Maybe, although Red Steel did manage to sell 1M+ on a much smaller user base, it's possible it was simply a launch title advantage. It's impossible to know.
Whatever the case, the distinction is largely irrelevant. Even if the Wii shooter audience has simply stagnated rather than shrunk, as you propose, this is in comparison to the 360 and PS3, systems on which the shooter base has grown exponentially and continues to thrive. In comparison to that, having approximately the same sized audience as you did in 2006 is absolutely untennable.
Wasn't those the fishy statistics that also suggested that the average Wii owner was like 7 years old? (Which has been disproven by Nintendo themselves.) Regardless, it doesn't explain why Wii owners still buy software at pretty much the same rate as everyone else. (See Joshua's post above.)Opiate said:
For a more recent example, CoD: WaW sold also 1M+.Opiate said:
Opiate said:
I would put that down simply to having an audience that consists largely of a different demographic - casual gamer parents rather than casual gamer teenagers. I don't want to make generalised statements about people - especially since I bought recently Professor Layton for a woman who's perfectly happy with the original Super Mario Bros., only to have her up until one in the morning playing it - but I imagine that older casual gamers would play games slightly less than younger casual gamers.
18-35 males may have been buying the Wii from the start.
I'm not saying that the Wii's FPS market is exactly thriving or healthy, but that it's still possible to have million+ selling FPS games on it. Whether or not one can make money on such sales I wouldn't claim to know, but some proportion of the audience is there.
markatisu said:
Woah that is simply crazy, and it only took three years :lol
But looking at that brings up another point about PS3 software sales. The xbox version of a new game release would outsell the ps2 version at first but eventually the ps2 version would come out higher because of the larger install base. None of the ps3 games have ever done this, except for a tight handful like fighting games, sega genesis collection and etc. I see this happen when some of the GH and RB games were released they would sell high at first on 360 than drop as the Wii versions continues to stay steady and then overpass in the 360 LTD.
I know it cannot be the install base thing, I am pretty sure the ps2 was double the xbox at the time but correct me if I am wrong though. Any thoughts on why it is like this? Blu-ray? Third place console position?
Jokeropia said:
It's falling behind pretty distinctly in recent months. It was ahead of the PS3 by .2 attach rate just a year ago, and now is behind .4. That's a significant swing. At that rate, the PS3 would have 2+ more games attached within three years.
Jokeropia said:
That is not just a example, Joker, it is the example. The only one. In the last 2 years. Which was outsold four fold by its 360 counterpart.