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NPD Sales Results for March 2009

kinggroin

Banned
pakkit said:
ITT people that were flaming Wii's output suddenly see poor sales and latch on, urging publishers to port Wii's titles to HD consoles.

It's a sad state of affairs. I find the people suggesting that MadWorld would have sold 500k to be really hilarious, although I guess the ridiculousness is completely warranted given how many times loony Wii fans have played the "HD-title woud have sold 10 times better on Wii."

Also, the people asking for digital downloads of MadWorld are especially funny. The games sold pretty low in its first month on the charts (although, not really all that low) for a 50 dollar price point. And yet you all are suggesting the SEGA spend the money to port it over and remarket it and sell it for between 15 to 10 dollars? It makes no sense. :(

Though you gotta wonder pakkit, would all these fuckers actually buy the game if released on their HD console of choice? Or is it destined to be a bulletpoint for list warz regardless the platform? If the former, I'd love to see Platinum Games get their due $ wise.
*sigh

I know I said it earlier in the thread, but damn, these numbers depress the hell outta me :(
 
Dirtbag said:
Wow at that 1up story on Kz2 sales.
So either Sony intentionally lied about Killzone pre-order numbers for Europe, or that demo destroyed killzone 2 to the sum of 650k+ sales. Shady.

I was wondering about the europe pre-orders numbers story. That was a constant GAF mantra for awhile in every thread that Killzone 2 already had 1 million Euro pre-orders.
 

Barrett2

Member
Dirtbag said:
Wow at that 1up story on Kz2 sales.
So either Sony intentionally lied about Killzone pre-order numbers for Europe, or that demo destroyed killzone 2 to the sum of 650k+ sales. Shady.

Wow... I hadn't considered that possibility, that KZ2 actually did help PS3 hardware this month, and without the game it would be even lower. Damn...

The pre-order thing is weird. I assume it was just lying by Guerrila. I mean, the demo wasn't that disappointing.
 

Averon

Member
Stoney Mason said:
I was wondered about the europe pre-Ooders numbers story. That was a constant GAF mantra for awhile in every thread that Killzone 2 already had 1 million Euro pre-orders.

Wasn't those pre-orders retail orders, not actual consumer order?
 
pakkit said:
I
Also, the people asking for digital downloads of MadWorld are especially funny. The games sold pretty low in its first month on the charts (although, not really all that low) for a 50 dollar price point. And yet you all are suggesting the SEGA spend the money to port it over and remarket it and sell it for between 15 to 10 dollars? It makes no sense. :(

I wouldn't be surprised to see it on store shelves for between 20 dollars at some point. There are 1600 point XBLA games.

Really it would make more sense to have a retail version. It's not unprecidented to see a Wii game upported to 360. Rayman Raving Rabbids was.

Grecco said:
When is the last time a current gen 49.99 dollar title showed up on XBL?

Well, why not?

There are a few XBLA/PSN games that are much bigger/better than some "current gen" retail Wii games. I think most people think DD because they wouldn't expect to pay full price for a Wii game in HD. Personally I'd throw down 60 for the game in retail form @ 1080p.
 
Dirtbag said:
Wow at that 1up story on Kz2 sales.
So either Sony intentionally lied about Killzone pre-order numbers for Europe, or that demo destroyed killzone 2 to the sum of 650k+ sales. Shady.

Could be retail pre-orders. There have been other publishers that have referred to "pre-orders" in a manner not referring to customers that had put money towards a game.
 

Lightning

Banned
Dirtbag said:
Wow at that 1up story on Kz2 sales.
So either Sony intentionally lied about Killzone pre-order numbers for Europe, or that demo destroyed killzone 2 to the sum of 650k+ sales. Shady.
Or they were 1.1 million store orders and not consumer orders. I think they were store orders personally.
 

soldat7

Member
Opiate said:
Fred's argument seems the most concise and reasonable here to me.

The DS has the largest install base of any system this generation. The game received the best reviews of any game ever released on the system. The franchise it is tied to is one of if not the biggest franchise in gaming.

Selling 88k is poor in this context. I really don't think that should be arguable.

Too many (good) games on the DS is definitely a factor here. The month of March saw a ridiculous number of good DS games released so the wealth was most likely spread around, which is possibly why none of them showed up in the Top 10.
 
lawblob said:
Wow... I hadn't considered that possibility, that KZ2 actually did help PS3 hardware this month, and without the game it would be even lower. Damn...

I don't think it moved much if any hardware at all this month which is the problem. The game simply isn't a system seller in that sense of the word.
 

doicare

Member
Lightning said:
Or they were 1.1 million store orders and not consumer orders. I think they were store orders personally.

They were store orders. It's general practice when a developer releases pre order numbers they are sold to retail not sold to consumer because the developer knows for a fact how many copies they've sold to stores where as they could only guess at how many of those have been brought/reserved by a person.
 

ZeoVGM

Banned
Wow @ the difference in sales between the 360 and PS3 versions of RE5.

Pretty much how I imagined Killzone 2 sales to end up.

And to those wondering about SF4 being gone, I think a game like that is going to be very frontloaded in terms of sales.
 

Dirtbag

Member
Valkyr Junkie said:
Could be retail pre-orders. There have been other publishers that have referred to "pre-orders" in a manner not referring to customers that had put money towards a game.

I guess?
I honestly don't know that much about how Europe calculates/reports the whole shipped vs. sold thing.

It does make me reflect on every time I was labeled a troll in regards to my comments on killzone2's aiming and accessibility issues. I still can't help but feel Killzone2 was a few half steps away from being a much larger success than it turned out to be... even initially.
 

Stillmatic

Member
Stoney Mason said:
In retrospect that would be the only thing it could be.

Or it was a misunderstanding and it was 1.1 mil preorders WW. Which could make sense as there's already 1 mil online players on the leaderboard. Not everyone would've played online.
 
Will be interesting to see what happens with the H/W numbers in the next few months. PS2's sales are dying and i'm skeptical whether the price cut will do anything to stem this. PSP also sold very poorly this month, hopefully this is just due to rumors of a new revision. With PSP and PS2 sales being so poor it just makes it even harder for sony to cut the price of the PS3.

Hopefully all the consoles don't continue to drop next month although i'm not sure if there is any big software coming up to prevent this. I guess DSi will provide a big boost not sure about everything else.

Great sales for RE5 hopefully it has some legs next month it certainly deserves to sell well. Capcom have been doing awesome all round this gen, hell they even found huge success on the PSP:lol .

I'm not sure exactly why GTA sold so poorly on the DS but i think the 2D view has a lot to do with it. I don't really know anyone who was interested in the series when it was 2D. Most people really only became fans of the series when it went 3D. Other than that it just mustn't fit in with the audience.
 
Sharp said:
Oh, it definitely wouldn't, Sony is in just as bad shape right now as most other electronics manufacturer. I just didn't realize it was still that expensive.

Yeah, it's basically worst case scenario for them right now
 
Grecco said:
Its never happening. Beats me why people always bring it up though

Really?

51hKvxIftL_SS400_.jpg


cbox5thgrader.jpg
 
doicare said:
They were store orders. It's general practice when a developer releases pre order numbers they are sold to retail not sold to consumer because the developer knows for a fact how many copies they've sold to stores where as they could only guess at how many of those have been brought/reserved by a person.

So European stores bought twice as many copies as they managed to sell? That does sound like a bomb.
 

RSTEIN

Comics, serious business!
When talking about K2's sales, a lot of people bring up Sony's poor marketing job. What about the game itself? The number of online users has dropped quite a bit since launch. Maybe the game is just too hardcore to be a system seller? Maybe for the average gamer (not GAF gamer), it's a lot harder to pick up than the casual friendly CoDs and Halos.
 

VideoMan

30% Failure Rate
Just for the record here's the first month NA sales for the PSP GTAs.

PSP GTA: LIBERTY CITY STORIES 158,400

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories PSP Rockstar 125,500

*Interesting note:
Vice City Stories was released on October 31, 2006 and didn't make the cutoff for the October NPDs so it first appeared in the November 2006 NPD listings meaning it had a full four weeks of sales to get to 125k.

Chinatown Wars was released on March 17, 2009 and had roughly two weeks of sales to get to 88k.

If you break that down to weekly averages Vice City Stories sold ~32k units per week and Chinatown Wars sold ~44k units per week.

How 'bout them apples?
 
VideoMan said:
Just for the record here's the first month NA sales for the PSP GTAs.



*Interesting note:
Vice City Stories was released on October 31, 2006 and didn't make the cutoff for the October NPDs so it first appeared in the November 2006 NPD listings meaning it had a full four weeks of sales to get to 125k.

Chinatown Wars was released on March 17, 2009 and had roughly two weeks of sales to get to 88k.

If you break that down to weekly averages Vice City Stories sold ~32k units per week and Chinatown Wars sold ~44k units per week.

How 'bout them apples?

Yeah but the sales are front loaded so you can't really compare weekly rates over different time periods.
 

Tron 2.0

Member
grandjedi6 said:
When it was on the GBA.
For some reason I was under the impression that GTA on the Game Boy Advanced sold over a million copies. Worldwide, maybe. I can't remember where I read that, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

MadWorld's sales bode poorly for The Conduit.

I kind of think that Chinatown Wars would have been better off on the Wii.
 

Lightning

Banned
ElyrionX said:
The damage control by the Sony fanboys over the KZ2 sales in this thread is just stupid.

600k in sales is good for most games but this isn't most games we're talking about. This is Killzone 2 which has been hyped even before the PS3 launched and has been in development for such a long period of time. Relative to expectations, KZ2 most definitely did bombed.

Those Halo Wars numbers sure are surprising. I was expecting it to bomb harder than KZ2.
Argh... WTF. Internet hype does not equal general consumer hype. In my opinion MGS4 received more hype then KZ2 anyway.

In regards to expectations, what were KZ2's expectations?
 

Mamesj

Banned
Really, the most shocking part about this is that the KZ2 thread has 3.5 million views, an OP that's 6 pages long, and a staff on hand to Killzonify your avatar. I'm surprised that didn't translate into more sales.
 
RSTEIN said:
When talking about K2's sales, a lot of people bring up Sony's poor marketing job. What about the game itself? The number of online users has dropped quite a bit since launch. Maybe the game is just too hardcore to be a system seller? Maybe for the average gamer (not GAF gamer), it's a lot harder to pick up than the casual friendly CoDs and Halos.

I honestly think its just the marketing and the demographic of the userbase. Killzone 2 is an amazing game. If it came out for the 360 and Microsoft pushed it as hard as their other big games then it would have sold a shit load more. Microsoft is just better at marketing to the hardcore audience.
 
Mamesj said:
Really, the most shocking part about this is that the KZ2 thread has 3.5 million views, an OP that's 6 pages long, and a staff on hand to Killzonify your avatar. I'm surprised that didn't translate into more sales.


That thread is more a twitter thread than an actual real thread. You can't really base anything at all off it other than how obsessive a small cult can be.
 
Mamesj said:
Really, the most shocking part about this is that the KZ2 thread has 3.5 million views, an OP that's 6 pages long, and a staff on hand to Killzonify your avatar. I'm surprised that didn't translate into more sales.
:lol

The rulers of any empire are always willing to cling to hope in the face of the possibility of losing power.

Its power they always want, they always seek it.
 
Mamesj said:
Really, the most shocking part about this is that the KZ2 thread has 3.5 million views, an OP that's 6 pages long, and a staff on hand to Killzonify your avatar. I'm surprised that didn't translate into more sales.

I'm surprised it hasn't turned in to an offically sponsored Sony program.
 

Truespeed

Member
Silly people. Killzone 2 has legs and a long tail. Expect those same numbers each and every month until GG announces a supply chain shortage.
 

soldat7

Member
RSTEIN said:
When talking about K2's sales, a lot of people bring up Sony's poor marketing job. What about the game itself? The number of online users has dropped quite a bit since launch. Maybe the game is just too hardcore to be a system seller? Maybe for the average gamer (not GAF gamer), it's a lot harder to pick up than the casual friendly CoDs and Halos.

When it comes to online multiplayer games, people tend to buy and play the ones that their friends are playing. For better or worse, everyone seems to be playing the living daylights out of both COD games. I'm sure it's tough to get these folks to drop what they're doing (and loving) and invest $60 into a new experience.
 

grandjedi6

Master of the Google Search
Mamesj said:
Really, the most shocking part about this is that the KZ2 thread has 3.5 million views, an OP that's 6 pages long, and a staff on hand to Killzonify your avatar. I'm surprised that didn't translate into more sales.
Yes, because gaf is so representative of game sales. In other news, Persona 4 has just passed 1 million units sold while Madden is a complete bomb!
 
Mamesj said:
Really, the most shocking part about this is that the KZ2 thread has 3.5 million views, an OP that's 6 pages long, and a staff on hand to Killzonify your avatar. I'm surprised that didn't translate into more sales.
The saga of Killzone has bred lovers and haters alike.
 

Opiate

Member
I think the reason why Killzone did not sell as well as might be expected is fairly obvious, but perhaps I have a different sense of what is obvious than others do.

I have a strong belief in "genre kings," games that straddle their genre and stifle competition, particularly competition that relies heavily on mimesis. Final Fantasy is an excellent example of this. So is Mario (as in the platformer). So is Gran Turismo. Games of similar quality can be released in the same genre and sell a small fraction of those franchises.

FPS are a younger genre on consoles, but I think they are rapidly reaching maturity. For First Person Shooters, those king games are Call of Duty, Halo, and perhaps Half Life (it certainly was at one point, but I can't tell if it is any longer because PC sales are hard to come by). From what I understand, Killzone is fairly light on gameplay expirementation: it sticks to the axioms of the genre, but does so in a very polished way.

I would argue that the window of opportunity to create a new "genre king" has essentially closed -- particularly for a platform exclusive. No amount of money, no amount of polish can break through at this point.
 

ghst

thanks for the laugh
Stoney Mason said:
That thread is more a twitter thread than an actual real thread. You can't really base anything at all off it other than how obsessive a small cult can be.

i like to think of it as 'ozymandias: the thread'.
 

Zen

Banned
RE Killzone 2 two months of sales.

Well it's not actually 2 months, it's more like 1 Month and 2 days of sales. I mean it only counted for 2 days worth of sales in April.
 
RSTEIN said:
When talking about K2's sales, a lot of people bring up Sony's poor marketing job. What about the game itself? The number of online users has dropped quite a bit since launch. Maybe the game is just too hardcore to be a system seller? Maybe for the average gamer (not GAF gamer), it's a lot harder to pick up than the casual friendly CoDs and Halos.

I think the average players are gravitating back to both World at War and Modern Warfare where there are still large stable player bases.

I also think the lack of a plain vanilla deathmatch/team deathmatch mode is hurting it as well. Not everybody wants to play objective based games all the time, and some people just flat out refuse to play anything that isn't just killing the other team.
 

starmud

Member
Rated-Rsuperstar said:
DS has an install base of 100 million.

its all comparable though, last i read there were 35-40m (?) units sold in america. take out the owner groups who wouldn't be interested in a game like GTA (kids/women and other expanded audiences) and you would be left with the core audience.

its surprising to me that the ds dose have a considerable following among core gamers and yet many didn't show up for the launch of GTA on the platform. i thought sales would be higher just based off GTA fans who have a ds picking up the title. as some have said though, most games on the ds are slow burners as it is, it wasn't going to have a huge opening, i just predicted more of a launch (200k at least).
 
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