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NPD Sales Results for March 2014 [Up4: FFX/X-2 HD]

I personally think at this point MS is just going to either drop the console down to $399 or drop the Kinnect and sell it for $349. I honestly think Phil Spencer is the right person in charge of Xbox and if anyone can turn it around, he can. I think it's too early to declare a king, but Sony has defiantly forced MS to do something drastic early.

I have far more confidence in him than any previous Xbox director, but he has his work cut out for him. Tough decisions have to be made now.
 

And this continues the compounding effect.

When your hype fails to deliver you don't just get disappointment, you get neg-hype.

The media get's wind of it and it spreads like wild fire.

Then people who are on the fence see the news and it only drives the point further home.

It's a positive feedback system, and it's going to take something drastic to kill it.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
My favorite part of this is the blatantly obvious fact that fans don't want the Lightning character shoved down their throats.
 
Does it really matter if its a marathon or sprint if you have no legs to stand on ? There is nothing which will close this gap now, and when project Morpheus coming to fruition it will get even worse.

Comparing the Vita to the XB1 isn't exactly apples to apples here but it will survive because of the PS4. MS currently only has one pony at the show and its looking a bit lame. If it isn't healthy by next fall they may need to put it down.

I need to ask when your late show starts so I can get better seats next time.

It might lose some relevance w/ European developers and emerging market devs, the way things seem to be going. If only b/c of the direct competition in PS4.

Sony already had that market over the Xbox last generation and it's likely to grow even more this generation. I still don't see much different happening though as far as major titles coming out for both. What we have been seeing on the Wii U won't be happening on the XBox One for third party support. Microsoft also has the funding and history has also shown they are willing to moneyhat titles to their hardware much more than both Nintendo and Sony.

They have to do two things, one is show value in Kinect, secondly get the price down. Some have suggested the easy fix is to simply remove Kinect. I doubt that will happen. They'd rather take a loss than to remove Kinect.
 

Handy Fake

Member
At this point, I don't even know is equaling the price of the PS4 will help the Xbox. Sony just has to much momentum.

It's a knock-on effect; they'll lose out on exclusives because companies won't want to be tied to an under-performing platform, which in turn will hit sales, which in turn means they'll lose out on exclusives... ad infinitum.

It's quite a statement to proclaim a games system screwed within 5 months of launch, but it's almost as if MS planned this cock-up with military precision.
 
i'm still digesting this.....so sony won....in Titanfall month?

Oh boy.....!

Ha DC, no no your my boy not Oh boy.

Oh-Boy-Reaction-Gif.gif
 
Eh... there are only like 8 instances of a console from the last three gens (current included) selling 371K or more in March.

There are only like 4 instances of a console selling 440K or more, 3 by the Wii and 1 by the PS2. Although I'm missing the breakdown or earlier PS2 data.

I'm not sure where those levels of expectation come from...
 

Toth

Member
Glad to see FFX-FFX-2 doing well. Maybe Square will understand something outta this and Bravely Default's sales.

Probably not.

Understand...what?

Let's look at the last two months and examine the range of physical retail sales of BD, LR, and FFXHD:

160(BD) < 178 (LR) < 208 (FFX)

Let's convert these to dollars based upon their estimated pricing ($40 for BD and FFXHD and $60 for LR)

BD: You get 160k x $40 for $6.4million.
LR: You get ~180 x $60 for $10.8 million.
FFX: You get 208 x $40 for ~$8 million.

From this analysis, LR made more money than the two but I cannot say how profitable this was without knowing LR's budget. Given that title's lack of polish and reuse of more of FFXIII's assets, I strongly suspect the budget was not very large. BD was built from the ground up but whatever budget it had was augmented by the rather ingenious 'for the sequel' campaign. FFX is a successful HD remaster of two huge games but one marred by some lengthy development.

What SE can take away is that managing budgets carefully and not overspending on non mainline title FFs or DQ, they can make some nice oversea profits. I would be curious why only 210k returned for FFX when it is one of the most successful games in the franchise worldwide and the amount of content added for this new version is staggering.
 

jelly

Member
Xbox One will be $399 without a doubt for E3 but Xbox Live needs a relaunch to go with it. Pay wall for apps gone should be happening right now frankly.

The bomb would be playing online is now free, never going to happen but that would be a game changer which would sucker punch Sony more than anything.
 

TalonJH

Member
Yeah, I'm really surprised by how many people have Vitas on the subway in New York City. Most of them are adults too. Weird.

I actually feel strange that I wish I could ride public transportation again so I would run into other Vita owners. Just doesn't work in my lifestyle currently.

The other part is there is more to do with a cellphone than ever before. Streaming video services along with the other options. I would guess there is even less of a need to have a handheld. Like, it's a tipping point where a handheld gaming option is even less desirable. That 5 minute scratch from Cut the rope is more than enough and other things, especially in HD, are more interesting than bringing another device with you. I wonder how that has been studied.

It's now to the point that anything Nintendo does will be reactionary towards smart phones. We might be in a world of hurt for gaming handhelds that only cater to the gaming market. Is there any going back? Can they address those things? You cut out the casual market for handhelds and there just not enough money to go around, I would guess.

I always just hope that Nintendo's IPs can keep the market alive so others like the Vita can exist as well. It's not like if Nintendo stopped making handhelds, the Vita sales you skyrocket. The handheld market in america would just die.

That being said, while I love Nintendo, they are sometimes completely unaware of how the west lives and I would be surprised it they even try to address cell phones.
 
I personally think at this point MS is just going to either drop the console down to $399 or drop the Kinnect and sell it for $349. I honestly think Phil Spencer is the right person in charge of Xbox and if anyone can turn it around, he can. I think it's too early to declare a king, but Sony has defiantly forced MS to do something drastic early.
so they're gonna sell it for 399 w kinect? not gonna happen.
 
Xbox One will be $399 without a doubt for E3 but Xbox Live needs a relaunch to go with it. Pay wall for apps gone should be happening right now frankly.

The bomb would be playing online is now free, never going to happen but that would be a game changer which would sucker punch Sony more than anything.

Because Sony has no way to match them on that... At this point there are already game you can play online without ps+, the transition would be more painful for MS than Sony.
 

driver116

Member
Elder Scrolls Online is also a notable game that can attract a lot of RPG/MMO players, as well as two nice summer crossgen games from Bethesda - Wolfenstein and Evil Within. These 3 games will not be large system sellers, but it will give everyone something good to play.

Plus CoD (blah) and BF seemed to have found their new home on PS4, but of course this could change.

PS4 could very well become the goto shooter console, depending on how much people prefer having DLC a few months early.
 

VillageBC

Member
I wonder if the WiiU will see a slightly better sales as people settle in on XB1 or PS4 and pick up secondary console. There isn't a lot of reason to own both XB1 and PS4 imo, but plenty of reason I think to pick up a WiiU along side one of those.
 

Coxy

Member
Understand...what?

Let's look at the last two months and examine the range of physical retail sales of BD, LR, and FFXHD:

160(BD) < 178 (LR) < 208 (FFX)

Let's convert these to dollars based upon their estimated pricing ($40 for BD and FFXHD and $60 for LR)

BD: You get 160k x $40 for $6.4million.
LR: You get ~180 x $60 for $10.8 million.
FFX: You get 208 x $40 for ~$8 million.

From this analysis, LR made more money than the two but I cannot say how profitable this was without knowing LR's budget. Given that title's lack of polish and reuse of more of FFXIII's assets, I strongly suspect the budget was not very large. BD was built from the ground up but whatever budget it had was augmented by the rather ingenious 'for the sequel' campaign. FFX is a successful HD remaster of two huge games but one marred by some lengthy development.

What SE can take away is that managing budgets carefully and not overspending on non mainline title FFs or DQ, they can make some nice oversea profits. I would be curious why only 210k returned for FFX when it is one of the most successful games in the franchise worldwide and the amount of content added for this new version is staggering.

Are you trying to get another paragraph for your tag?
 

KoopaTheCasual

Junior Member
My favorite part of this is the blatantly obvious fact that fans don't want the Lightning character shoved down their throats.
Matsuda already came to that realization when Bravely Default US numbers came in. Now this is just compounding the fact. It was funny to read his statement, like it had just dawned on him and he was being profound of some sorts, when he was just years behind public perception and just now catching up to speed.
 
And this continues the compounding effect.

When your hype fails to deliver you don't just get disappointment, you get neg-hype.

The media get's wind of it and it spreads like wild fire.

Then people who are on the fence see the news and it only drives the point further home.

It's a positive feedback system, and it's going to take something drastic to kill it.

So this is exactly why people were putting so much pressure on MS to deliver in March and why in the grand scheme of things its actually a big deal.
Momentum in the market is a very real thing just like it is anywhere else and right now MS is not only drastically losing momentum but they have
very little in the way of turning it around because the perception among more and more of the market is that:

- They have a weak system
- A weak catalog of games
- Very little on the horizon(heh)
- Will be a inferior place to play the biggest 3rd party games

Now I am not saying all those are real but that is definitely the perception and once the market thinks your a sick and struggling product it takes a lot
for them to come back to you. Its exactly this type of negative momentum that will seal the death of the Wii-U even if that poor thing drops to $150
with the greatest Mario of all time.

I expect the craziest E3 from MS ever. Because if there was ever a time for them to cut checks of ludicrous amounts to secure some desired exclusive
just to get that momentum going again it might be worth it.
 

Talamius

Member
Pay wall for apps gone should be happening right now frankly.

Microsoft charging the Gold tax for apps in 2014 is well beyond the point of insanity. It was bad enough when the Wii and PS3 both had access to apps for free. Now, not only do you have Wii U and PS4, you also have Roku, AppleTV, FireTV, Smart TVs with the apps built in anyway, and a wide selection of "android-on-a-stick" solutions. That's completely ignoring smartphones and tablets.

Pay wall for apps never should have launched with the One.
 
I personally think at this point MS is just going to either drop the console down to $399 or drop the Kinnect and sell it for $349. I honestly think Phil Spencer is the right person in charge of Xbox and if anyone can turn it around, he can. I think it's too early to declare a king, but Sony has defiantly forced MS to do something drastic early.

that would upset the early adopters to no end
 

Fularu

Banned
If I'm not mistaken, the record has already been broken for posts in NPD. If not, it certainly will.

I seem to remember 2007-2008 NPD threads (especially that december Wii did 3.9 million) to be much much bigger than that

But I could be wrong.

Also since Sony raised the PS4's price in Canada, I've been seeing them everywhere (there's only 50$ between a naked PS4 and a Titanfall bundle now here).
 

KoopaTheCasual

Junior Member
Understand...what?

Let's look at the last two months and examine the range of physical retail sales of BD, LR, and FFXHD:

160(BD) < 178 (LR) < 208 (FFX)

Let's convert these to dollars based upon their estimated pricing ($40 for BD and FFXHD and $60 for LR)

BD: You get 160k x $40 for $6.4million.
LR: You get ~180 x $60 for $10.8 million.
FFX: You get 208 x $40 for ~$8 million.

From this analysis, LR made more money than the two but I cannot say how profitable this was without knowing LR's budget. Given that title's lack of polish and reuse of more of FFXIII's assets, I strongly suspect the budget was not very large. BD was built from the ground up but whatever budget it had was augmented by the rather ingenious 'for the sequel' campaign. FFX is a successful HD remaster of two huge games but one marred by some lengthy development.

What SE can take away is that managing budgets carefully and not overspending on non mainline title FFs or DQ, they can make some nice oversea profits. I would be curious why only 210k returned for FFX when it is one of the most successful games in the franchise worldwide and the amount of content added for this new version is staggering.
Your point is moot since we already have a DIRECT quote from the CEO about what the takeaway message is from recent sales. And it's not (primarily) what you're saying.
 
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