the packaged market and games at retail is sort of the heart of the dedicated hardware business. if you can just have a game available digital, it's going to make less sense to have hardware exclusively play it.
Eh? My iPhone makes no sense because its software is delivered digitally? Digital distribution means we only need a single platform and form factor? Sorry, I don't follow. =/
All I was discussing is what is happening in the packaged market, not really the whys.
Fair enough, but I'd argue that understanding the Why is just as important as observing the What. Often more so.
And really, by explaining the decline in Packaged sales with a decline in Packaged release count, it shows the opposite of doom and gloom. It provides a valid explanation that sales are down not because people don't want to buy Console games but because there are fewer of them out there to get interested in and buy. I'm not saying it's the only or the best explanation. I'm just throwing out there what the data I have is saying.
Has there been? I know software spending dropped significantly YOY in late 2013, but hardware spending was up significantly, and overall spending was up a bit. To me, that's precisely what you'd expect to see in a generational shift; people are spending their money on new hardware, leaving them less to spend on software. But that wouldn't mean they don't care about games so much these days. It just means their gaming budget is finite. On the contrary, I'd say that dropping a few hundred bucks on new hardware shows a commitment to gaming rather than waning interest. Again, it seems that if we're truly hoping to understand what's happening, we should be looking much further back than the peak of the previous generation for our comparisons.
Also, release count bottomed out in 2013, remained flat in 2014, and looks to again be flat in 2015. The NX, whenever it comes, could theoretically return growth to the release count issue and perhaps Packaged sales growth along with it.
Seems like NX won't be able to increase release counts all that significantly, because presumably most of the software being released for it will be multi-platform, which increases development costs but doesn't actually increase the variety of software available. Nintendo will make exclusives for it, obviously, but that's already the case with the Wii U, so again, probably not much in the way of net gain WRT variety. It seems to me that the best way to increase variety is with smaller titles that can fill niches more effectively, and again, digital makes that much easier on the devs; their game doesn't need to hit some magic number before it even recoups the astronomical distribution costs, because now their distribution costs are zero. That means games are now worthy of development, even if they'll "clearly never sell a million." Now, it just needs to sell enough to feed a few developers, and they can keep that shit up forever. Hence, whole new categories of games that weren't commercially viable suddenly are, because they don't need to be guaranteed to leap that giant manufacturing hurdle before they're even worth discussing.
In any case, maybe the drop is bottoming out because ~200 is a good number for retail releases, given the advent of digital, and retail releases will stabilize there. Or more likely, it will continue to dwindle away and be subsumed completely by digital.
C'est la vie.
It's a fact we have fewer disc based titles, it's a fact that since we have fewer disc based titles that there is less variety being offered, and since Packaged sales and Packaged release count correlate at a .97 r-squared, it is reasonable to assume that some of the change in Packaged spend can be attributed to having fewer Packaged releases.
Sure, it's hard to buy something that doesn't exist. As a consumer, my impression is that the decline in retail titles is more than offset by the increase in digital offerings, but I haven't really checked any numbers to be able to say for sure either way, and obviously I have even less idea how much is actually being spent.
Sure, Digital is a bigger component. The EA CFO gave some great metrics just this morning.
Oh? Hook a brother up?
All I'm saying, and all I've been saying, is that the Packaged market was in decline over the time period I showed the release count data for, and we have fewer disc based games being made today than we did a few years ago. That's it. These are true statements. And yet you keep arguing with me about it with arguments I'm not disputing or points I'm not making lol.
Sorry, I wasn't saying you were wrong or anything. My point was merely that your focus seemed a bit narrow, as it largely ignored past generational transitions, along with the advent of digital publishing.
The EA CFO quoted that DD accounts for 20% of total sales of big games. Of course it impacts the state of the packaged market. But that % isn't yet big enough to support big budget AAA, traditionally Packaged releases on its own. In any case, whatever impact the DD rate is having is being reflected in the Packaged data, which is all I was addressing.
That actually raises another point I wanted to discuss. I've seen the "20% for big titles" tossed around, but do we have any idea what digital attach rates are like for the more niche games? I think I have close to 200 games for my PS4, which I know makes me a weirdo. Of those, I bought six physically because I got them twofer on launch day, basically which makes me weirder still. Also, I buy games like DQH, which makes me a total freak. So my question is, how much overlap is there among that weirdness? lol Seems like it's mostly geeks who buy things like Nobunaga's Ambition, and I'd guess that geeks also tended to skew digital. Perhaps the 20% of users who buy AssCreed digitally are also the ones buying Disgaea at all, which they also buy digitally. Do have any numbers that may support or refute this theory? Am I even making myself clear? lol
Yes, HH is in the total chart. The difference in the Console space is why I added the three Console charts, because the story on Wii U vs Wii is very different than PS4 and Xone. Again, we are in agreement, and my data is supporting the points you're making.
Ah, right on. Sorry for the confusion.
I'm not panicking. I'm not saying ANYTHING about the state of the industry or the health of it as a whole. The industry is FINE and THRIVING. I was ONLY talking about the Packaged market.
Fair enough. It seemed like a few people tried to bring up a potential shift to digital as a possible cause, and it seemed like you were basically dismissing that with, "Well, since we have no way to measure the growth of digital, all we can do is lament the passing of physical." Sorry again if I misread you, but it seemed like you were rather unwilling to discuss digital and its potential effects on the physical market. "Irrelevant," I think you said, so you can maybe understand my confusion.
I'll have to look at this. This doesn't sound right, but I don't know.
Cool. I'd appreciate any information you're able to share.
Actually, most of NPD's post release analysis that comes out contains some metrics on release counts as they do correlate to total market sales. And I don't get the impression NPD wants to hide these things but rather certain publishers do. And why do those publishers want to downplay the NPD Packaged sales data? Because the NPD Packaged sales data does not reflect the overall strength of the titles involved or the industry as a whole.
Okay, that makes sense. Similarly, Nintendo may not appreciate NPD publicizing just how far behind they are, etc.
One of the LAST things we should look at in order to determine the health of the overall industry or publishers is NPD data. But that's all we have.
Much to my chagrin, yes! lol But yeah, I'm all for taking a holistic look at the data. I also understand the urge to focus on the hard data. I guess my point was that ignoring the immeasurable sales
to the point they may as well not exist at all struck me as a bit extreme. ("Irrelevant.") Again, my apologies if that wasn't actually your intention.
Publishers used to have huge meetings to review the NPD data every month. Today? The only reason most publishers know NPD is out is they see some piece on a news feed or some big bullet highlight gets emailed around. NPD really doesn't matter a whole lot, and for good reason.
Really? I would've thought that NPD and their ilk were still the best way for them to track retail sell-through. Is that not the case? Then what purpose do NPD actually serve, and for whom? =/
