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[DarkLordMalik]

BO3 so far was up over AW

AW was up over Ghosts?

But this is good news although not surprising since BO2 is the best selling game in the series after all.

 

[OléGunner]

So. Midnight release wasn't as busy for us as it was in other areas of the country - Then again, for New England, it was 40 degrees F last night. When we opened the doors last night to let the people in, my coworker said, and I quote, "Poor bastards" to the 30 or so folks shivering in line there at our store. However, when I drove home, the local gamestop had 40 or so people still waiting to pick up their copies outside, so they must have been pretty swamped. Perspective, eh?

Well, anyway. We've got fucking pallets of these bundles. Holy hell. And as Mister Megative stated (and I mentioned to him in a PM preceding that), every single one of the limited edition ones we've received were spoken for. And that's not a tiny number, either. They didn't give us some really tiny number of those bundles. Lots of these things picked up today, and lots of the regular bundle picked up today too.

And plenty of the game in general. Star Wars fever is definitely picking up. It's not doing CoD numbers... Maybe I should put it this way. The midnight release for CoD way out performed, and you have the CoD preorders are people talking about specific features and modes, or K/d ratios... The range of people we saw picking up Battlefront is enormous. It's just all over the place. Lots of middle aged dads gleeful as hell to get some star wars in, and the splitscreen for doing stuff with their kids in the game modes that way was apparently a great thing.

So a very, very solid day. I checked a few districts before I left for the night, and it mirrors across the country, solid, solid performance so far. And Sony really is batting 1000 with the advertisement sets for this bundle stuff. It's concentrated nostalgia.

And I know I talked a lot of Sony stuff here - This game did well on the XB1 as well, and one of the people in line for the midnight release was a PC copy grandfather in a Deadpool shirt. He was a riot.

Also updates on other titles: Fallout still doing well, CoD still doing well. Tomb Raider and Halo not so much. I saw Queso's comment about the top 10 for this month, and his speculation on boosted numbers based on the sales seems to be really dead on. We'll have to see how those influence things. Get your GCU ready lads and ladies. It's already better than employee pricing for games *before* sales.

I'm going to go back to Lost Song now (whoever called it, yes, I did get it today via the digital bundle with Hollow Fragment awhile ago, but I snagged my copy of Battlefront last night before I went home)

Thanks for the info Abidel! Seems Sony have gone to Destiny like levels with Star Wars which was the right move. Heavily banking on nostalgia always works too.

Good to see CoD and FO4 going strong too, nearly my entire friends list is dominated by those two games before Star Wars mania. Hope all goes well for you over the coming holidays and you're not too swamped, enjoy LoS too

 

[AniHawk]

Saying that Sony had its best generation ever last generation is true only insofar as last generation was the first generation Sony sold handhelds. It's even more misleading than blithely pretending that home and handheld consoles can be treated as a single undifferentiated market.

i think i was very clear in what i typed and i believe you either misread what i typed or you're misconstruing what i typed.

"And high quality games too" is sort of the rub, isn't it? The home console market views graphics as a proxy for quality - or as a necessary prerequisite for quality. It's glad to buy cheaper hardware if the difference in graphical quality is not too noticeable, but it's not going to buy substantially weaker hardware just because it's cheap.

That might change in the future if we finally reach the point of diminishing returns for graphics, but at the moment that's not happening. Generalist hardware of any sort won't be able to disrupt specialized home consoles so long as home console consumers care more about graphics than they do about price.

the difference isn't graphics but the marketplace. you don't sell $40 games on phones even if they're getting to be pretty powerful or can produce games that look really good. because of this, you can't put as much time or manpower behind one that you might a console or handheld game. i think a lack of control options is a factor too.

generalist hardware is going to slide over the dedicated hardware market more gradually after this generation. the disruption of the dedicated handheld market is one thing, but the success of steam, the year over year growth in digital sales even on dedicated platforms? if you want to talk patterns, here it is.

But we understand why the behavior changed for the handheld part of the industry, and it was for reasons that simply do not apply to the home console market.

i don't think you'll find anyone who'd object to readily available games at extremely affordable prices. that's not something that's exclusive to mobile users. and you're already seeing the affects steam's had on the dedicated market with holiday digital sales, sharp price drops for flash sales, and humble bundles.

 

[serversurfer]

Sorry, missed this one.

digital distribution means you don't need any specialized form factor. it means at that point, it could stream to your rook or download onto steam or play on any iOS device.

What? No, that's not even what we're talking about here. When we say digital distribution, we're still referring to games installed and executed locally. It's just a question of how they get installed. You're talking about streaming, which is something entirely different, and yes, is largely platform agnostic.

my hypothesis for the future is that the first-parties of dedicated hardware today will be struggling to convert their business to a purely digital one in the future. i imagine they will have xbox, playstation, and whatever the hell nx is exist as some sort of service that can be accessed on multiple devices, but run best on their own hardware, which would probably be offered with some sort of special deal, such as a perpetually free membership into their playstation plus/xbl gold/my nintendo program.

Streaming will be a part of the future of gaming to be sure, but I think there will continue to be a lot of arguments for strong local compute, VR not least among them.

the iPhone has many utilities. it plays music, movies, games, can text and send video and go on the internet and do many more things. the needs it fulfills are so much greater than that of your standard video game machine, even these days.

Yeah, that's why it killed handhelds; only little kids carry two toys, and everyone carries an iPhone already, so sorry, GameBoy, you're going in the drawer.

i hope you know that handhelds outside of nintendo existed before sony entered the market.

handhelds are part of what makes the dedicated market the dedicated market. the only distinction is the form factor. people go into a store, find a piece of hardware that is pretty specialized, and then buys games that only play on that specialized hardware. it's supported by the same first-party/third-party model that's been in play for the last thirty years.

what mobile represents isn't just tearing people away from casual console games, but it's a threat to the entire model of a dedicated device playing a game made for that dedicated device. it's a new place for unknown developers and new publishers to grow and reach a wider audience. it's also a place for consumers to have the easiest access to games at the best prices. do you think 'core' gamers are going to scoff at increased variety, low prices, and high quality games too?

I think that like most people, they're going to scoff at anything that doesn't first substitute for their current solution. An iPhone is a fairly effective replacement for a GameBoy, but it's not a very good replacement for a PS4, and I don't think there's much risk of it becoming one. The new Apple TV could be a replacement for the PS4 though, since although "non-dedicated," it at least fits a similar normal-use case. See what I mean?

because it's the behavior that's changing that's going to have an effect on the rest of dedicated gaming. the behavior used to be go into a store, get the thing that only plays certain games, and spend at least $30 on the game. these games are usually the same kinds of experiences you find on consoles (aside from puzzle games, usually something with a clear start and a finish, and more recently, sometimes with dlc). the only thing handhelds have in common with smartphones is the form factor, like how consoles and pcs are both stationary units with a separate input device.

See, I feel the form factor is far more relevant here than "also checks Facebook." Smartphones have only killed devices that have virtually the same form and usage, and little or no effect on the more dissimilar devices. If there was going to be a threat to consoles, it would come from traditional computers, and/or boxes like the Apple TV.

 

[AniHawk]

What? No, that's not even what we're talking about here. When we say digital distribution, we're still referring to games installed and executed locally. It's just a question of how they get installed. You're talking about streaming, which is something entirely different, and yes, is largely platform agnostic.

sorry, i should have clarified that i really meant more services like steam in the future. you'll see that but more widespread. maybe that's how hardware developers can stay in the game - stream the service for a monthly fee, or sell what is basically a hard drive and allows you to download the game through the service on that device. either way, i see hardware becoming a lot less specialized in ten years.

See, I feel the form factor is far more relevant here than "also checks Facebook." Smartphones have only killed devices that have virtually the same form and usage, and little or no effect on the more dissimilar devices. If there was going to be a threat to consoles, it would come from traditional computers, and/or boxes like the Apple TV.

well i agree. but i think that handhelds have more in common with consoles due to their shared history and the way consumers interacted with them for 35+ years.

 

[slavesnyder]

well i agree. but i think that handhelds have more in common with consoles due to their shared history and the way consumers interacted with them for 35+ years.

Handhelds have buttons, Smartphones have not.
But the consumer doesn't care about this difference.

Handhelds will become more and more niche as people don't want to carry around two devices. And if the choice is between phone and handheld, it will be the handheld they leave behind.
Unfortunately.

 

[AniHawk]

Handhelds have buttons, Smartphones have not.
But the consumer doesn't care about this difference.

Handhelds will become more and more niche as people don't want to carry around two devices. And if the choice is between phone and handheld, it will be the handheld they leave behind.
Unfortunately.

i agree that the distinction among the general public or the more casual game-buying audience is this, but in practice, what it means to be a consumer playing a game on a handheld form factor is different.

 

[Conduit]

Heh. I'm okay. Long day though! I worked the midnight release last night, then the day into night shift today.



Haha, yes, last week was Fallout Day, today was Battlefront Day, it's true.



Black Friday now looms as the next horizon. After that, it's just the crazy mess of later and later hours as people shift into panic mode. It's less specific items and more insane individuals.



I still try to keep you guys posted on what's going on, it's just harder to find time to do district searches for more accurate info.



I'm indeed here.

So. Midnight release wasn't as busy for us as it was in other areas of the country - Then again, for New England, it was 40 degrees F last night. When we opened the doors last night to let the people in, my coworker said, and I quote, "Poor bastards" to the 30 or so folks shivering in line there at our store. However, when I drove home, the local gamestop had 40 or so people still waiting to pick up their copies outside, so they must have been pretty swamped. Perspective, eh?

Well, anyway. We've got fucking pallets of these bundles. Holy hell. And as Mister Megative stated (and I mentioned to him in a PM preceding that), every single one of the limited edition ones we've received were spoken for. And that's not a tiny number, either. They didn't give us some really tiny number of those bundles. Lots of these things picked up today, and lots of the regular bundle picked up today too.

And plenty of the game in general. Star Wars fever is definitely picking up. It's not doing CoD numbers... Maybe I should put it this way. The midnight release for CoD way out performed, and you have the CoD preorders are people talking about specific features and modes, or K/d ratios... The range of people we saw picking up Battlefront is enormous. It's just all over the place. Lots of middle aged dads gleeful as hell to get some star wars in, and the splitscreen for doing stuff with their kids in the game modes that way was apparently a great thing.

So a very, very solid day. I checked a few districts before I left for the night, and it mirrors across the country, solid, solid performance so far. And Sony really is batting 1000 with the advertisement sets for this bundle stuff. It's concentrated nostalgia.

And I know I talked a lot of Sony stuff here - This game did well on the XB1 as well, and one of the people in line for the midnight release was a PC copy grandfather in a Deadpool shirt. He was a riot.

Also updates on other titles: Fallout still doing well, CoD still doing well. Tomb Raider and Halo not so much. I saw Queso's comment about the top 10 for this month, and his speculation on boosted numbers based on the sales seems to be really dead on. We'll have to see how those influence things. Get your GCU ready lads and ladies. It's already better than employee pricing for games *before* sales.

I'm going to go back to Lost Song now (whoever called it, yes, I did get it today via the digital bundle with Hollow Fragment awhile ago, but I snagged my copy of Battlefront last night before I went home)

Nice info! I wish you a happy sales!

It was pretty nuts in line at Best Buy. Was about 8 or 10 to 1 ps4 to xb1. They also had more Thanh 10 bundles on the floor that were preordered. Couple people asked for the sw xbox bundle and were disappointed.

Imagine the end results in that ratio for next NPD. LOL.

 

[slavesnyder]

i agree that the distinction among the general public or the more casual game-buying audience is this, but in practice, what it means to be a consumer playing a game on a handheld form factor is different.

Absolutely. I just hope people don't forget, and new people learn this.
Worst thing is the pricepoint, which is the biggest resemblance to consoles. We are getting used to 2,99 to 9,99 max for games you play in the palm of your hand. And that's best case.
So handhelds really have to convince people that their game are worth so much more money or have to adapt to the learned pricepoints.
For a Zelda 40$ might seem alright, but for warioware or elite beat agents or so it gets difficult.
Download shops are the late beginning, but far from being there already. COGs for cartridges plus all distribution chain just don't allow such low prices.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

yep, and i think it's the future of the former dedicated industry (well, not ps now specifically but you get the idea).

Streaming is the future for most entertainment markets .

 

[CosmicQueso]

Streaming is the future for most entertainment markets .

Might be for games too if they can find a way around those pesky laws of physics in the natural world or increase the speed of light somehow. Until then, streaming for gaming is DOA.

 

[Obliterator]

Might be for games too if they can find a way around those pesky laws of physics in the natural world or increase the speed of light somehow. Until then, streaming for gaming is DOA.

Yeah for gaming the streaming future is WAAAAAAAY off. Not with current data caps and Internet infrastructure. We are talking decades until it could work for the vast majority of consumers

Not to mention latency

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Might be for games too if they can find a way around those pesky laws of physics in the natural world or increase the speed of light somehow. Until then, streaming for gaming is DOA.

They will sent up more data centers and then it will be good enough for most people .
Price also going to be a factor .
Of course it won't work good for all types of games but they might just get left behind .

EDIT i don't think streaming happening any time soon but it is the future .

 

[DieH@rd]

Also updates on other titles: Fallout still doing well, CoD still doing well. Tomb Raider and Halo not so much. I saw Queso's comment about the top 10 for this month, and his speculation on boosted numbers based on the sales seems to be really dead on.

Thanks for the impressions. I have one question though.

How well do you think did MS market RotTR in terms of hyping up the exclusivity? By that I mean, did you notice people who wanted to purchase it now for PS4/PC, only to find out in store that those version will come out later?

 

[DieH@rd]

Current US Amazon HOURLY report:


HW
#10 PS4 Battlefront $350
#11 PS4 Battlefront LE $400
#16 PS4 Blops3 LE $430
#23 Xbone 1TB Fallout 4 $400
#28 Xbone Gears Remaster $326
#46 PS4 Uncharted Collection $348
#60 Xbone 1TB Madden $400
#61 Xbone 1TB Holiday bundle $395
#93 Xbone 1TB Halo5 LE $485


SW
#1 Twilight Princes [out of stock]
#2 Battlefront Xbone
#3 F4 PS4
#4 Battlefront Deluxe PS4
#6 Battlefront PS4
#7 Battlefront Deluxe Xbone
#8 Blops3 Xbone
#9 F4 Xbone
#16 Blops3 PS4
#18 Halo5
#21 Mario Maker
#56 Rise of the Tomb Raider Xbone
#317Rise of the Tomb Raider X360

 

[Katana_Strikes]

Nobody giving a shit about TR. Mirroring what we've seen in the UK. That's not going to be Top10 for November at this rate.

 

[AniHawk]

Current US Amazon HOURLY report:

SW
#1 Twilight Princes [out of stock]

march will be interesting

 

[foxbeldin]

Current US Amazon HOURLY report:

Forgive my ignorance but i don't understand how amazon hourly report has any relevance to the big picture for a full month of sales (especially november). An hour of sales on amazon seems like anecdotal evidence to me and i'm much more interested in amazon monthly report because i feel it has much more meaning.
But maybe i'm missing something?

 

[slavesnyder]

Forgive my ignorance but i don't understand how amazon hourly report has any relevance to the big picture for a full month of sales (especially november). An hour of sales on amazon seems like anecdotal evidence to me and i'm much more interested in amazon monthly report because i feel it has much more meaning.
But maybe i'm missing something?

Agree.
I find it interesting that Halo is in the top 20 of the yearly amazon charts, 3rd best software title. (Fallout 4 PS4 at 10, Majora's Mask at 15, Halo 5 at 17).
Of cause this game is only on one platform, so all sales are concentrated on this SKU.
Nevertheless, for all this doom and gloom and mediocre numbers this astonishing.

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

Heh. I'm okay. Long day though! I worked the midnight release last night, then the day into night shift today.



Haha, yes, last week was Fallout Day, today was Battlefront Day, it's true.



Black Friday now looms as the next horizon. After that, it's just the crazy mess of later and later hours as people shift into panic mode. It's less specific items and more insane individuals.



I still try to keep you guys posted on what's going on, it's just harder to find time to do district searches for more accurate info.



I'm indeed here.

So. Midnight release wasn't as busy for us as it was in other areas of the country - Then again, for New England, it was 40 degrees F last night. When we opened the doors last night to let the people in, my coworker said, and I quote, "Poor bastards" to the 30 or so folks shivering in line there at our store. However, when I drove home, the local gamestop had 40 or so people still waiting to pick up their copies outside, so they must have been pretty swamped. Perspective, eh?

Well, anyway. We've got fucking pallets of these bundles. Holy hell. And as Mister Megative stated (and I mentioned to him in a PM preceding that), every single one of the limited edition ones we've received were spoken for. And that's not a tiny number, either. They didn't give us some really tiny number of those bundles. Lots of these things picked up today, and lots of the regular bundle picked up today too.

And plenty of the game in general. Star Wars fever is definitely picking up. It's not doing CoD numbers... Maybe I should put it this way. The midnight release for CoD way out performed, and you have the CoD preorders are people talking about specific features and modes, or K/d ratios... The range of people we saw picking up Battlefront is enormous. It's just all over the place. Lots of middle aged dads gleeful as hell to get some star wars in, and the splitscreen for doing stuff with their kids in the game modes that way was apparently a great thing.

So a very, very solid day. I checked a few districts before I left for the night, and it mirrors across the country, solid, solid performance so far. And Sony really is batting 1000 with the advertisement sets for this bundle stuff. It's concentrated nostalgia.

And I know I talked a lot of Sony stuff here - This game did well on the XB1 as well, and one of the people in line for the midnight release was a PC copy grandfather in a Deadpool shirt. He was a riot.

Also updates on other titles: Fallout still doing well, CoD still doing well. Tomb Raider and Halo not so much. I saw Queso's comment about the top 10 for this month, and his speculation on boosted numbers based on the sales seems to be really dead on. We'll have to see how those influence things. Get your GCU ready lads and ladies. It's already better than employee pricing for games *before* sales.

I'm going to go back to Lost Song now (whoever called it, yes, I did get it today via the digital bundle with Hollow Fragment awhile ago, but I snagged my copy of Battlefront last night before I went home)

Would you say the response to the COD and SW bundles has been significantly greater than what you saw to the price drop in October? Many of us believe the flat response in October was because these bundles were looming a month away.

 

[1st Course]

This was a great thread

Thx to everyone who contributed.

 

[Mister Megative]

Yep November NPD is gonna be happy times for the most part. Industry doing gooooood this month.

Sure seems like it, don't it?

 

[StrongBlackVine]

march will be interesting

Zelda vs Drake. He already lost to Yoshi....

 

[JeffZero]

That midnight report is great. Really echoes what I experienced from working it as well. Big wide demographic. Not as numerous as CoD, but very solid.

 

[jbluzb]

the win for sony is the mindshare that the ps4 is the console for casual video game players

if the battlefront makerting campaign is successful

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

the win for sony is the mindshare that the ps4 is the console for casual video game players

if the battlefront makerting campaign is successful

The PS4 hits nearly every check mark. From niche, hardcore, to casual.

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

march will be interesting

Interesting in what way? -_-

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

Interesting in what way? -_-

I guess implying zelda tp hd would have a chance to outsell uncharted 4..at least thats the only take away i can get from that

 

[slavesnyder]

This was a great thread

Thx to everyone who contributed.

We're not done here I hope.

 

[StevieP]

Including handheld sales in a discussion of the health of the home console market is disingenuous and makes no sense.



Because last gen's growth was an eccentric outlier.

No, it wasn't. Forego labels on boxes for just a moment. They're basically irrelevant.

One company's boxes were responsible for growth last gen. Who cares who's boxes they were; they just did what every other successful products have done since we started measuring sales over traditional generations.

This generation's successful box may have difficulty reaching the heights of its previous generation analog (the 2nd place box). It may just pass it. It won't grow a thing. Everything else will be far lower. THAT'S an outlier from the past.

 

[Stanng243]

Current US Amazon HOURLY report:


HW
#10 PS4 Battlefront $350
#11 PS4 Battlefront LE $400
#16 PS4 Blops3 LE $430
#23 Xbone 1TB Fallout 4 $400
#28 Xbone Gears Remaster $326
#46 PS4 Uncharted Collection $348
#60 Xbone 1TB Madden $400
#61 Xbone 1TB Holiday bundle $395
#93 Xbone 1TB Halo5 LE $485


SW
#1 Twilight Princes [out of stock]
#2 Battlefront Xbone
#3 F4 PS4
#4 Battlefront Deluxe PS4
#6 Battlefront PS4
#7 Battlefront Deluxe Xbone
#8 Blops3 Xbone
#9 F4 Xbone
#16 Blops3 PS4
#18 Halo5
#21 Mario Maker
#56 Rise of the Tomb Raider Xbone
#317Rise of the Tomb Raider X360

The monthly is more interesting. You've got 4 PS4 bundles in the top 20, and the first Xbox One bundle is 31.

 

[Banjo-Kazooie]

Nobody giving a shit about TR. Mirroring what we've seen in the UK. That's not going to be Top10 for November at this rate.

It was never going to be top 10 at any rate lol.

It's a game on, for all important purposes, one platform going again heavy hitters in their own right...then you add in Black Friday and there was never any way it was going to be top 10.

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

I guess implying zelda tp hd would have a chance to outsell uncharted 4..at least thats the only take away i can get from that

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

Lmao i could be wrong buy if he was talking about hardware wise than well...thats even more far fetched

 

[slavesnyder]

Lmao i could be wrong buy if he was talking about hardware wise than well...thats even more far fetched

Let's say it will be interesting how zelda will chart. Full stop.

The story for the month will be: can Uncharted top Halo release.
Doable I'd say. Would be for the first time.

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

Let's say it will be interesting how zelda will chart. Full stop.

The story for the month will be: can Uncharted top Halo release.
Doable I'd say. Would be for the first time.

Spoiler

Yes, and

it won't be close.

Isn't this an even bigger story?

It's releasing in March. It won't have to compete vs the big guns in November as Uncharted had to do in 2 and 3. Halo 5 looks like it's going to sell 1/3rd to half of what the main franchise tends to sell. Uncharted 4 is ending so I don't see fatigue. I expect it will be the best selling Uncharted game. I just hope they won't screw up online because it screams of several casual additions.

 

[allan-bh]

I wonder if not doing so well in reviews will affect Battlefront sales after launch, or will be like Destiny.

 

[slavesnyder]

Spoiler

Yes, and

it won't be close.

Isn't this an even bigger story?

 

[slavesnyder]

I wonder if not doing so well in reviews will affect Battlefront sales after launch, or will be like Destiny.

This game has spread out by the millions already. If people like it, word of mouth will be the pusher and review scores can get lost.
Plus: it's star wars.

 

[Thebeardofknowledge]

I wonder if not doing so well in reviews will affect Battlefront sales after launch, or will be like Destiny.

it will still sell 10+ million copies

 

[Mister Megative]

Andrew Reiner doesn't think so:

https://twitter.com/andrew_reiner/status/666992708637097984

In other news, Andrew Reiner is smoking peyote.

 

[QaaQer]

good interview with Zelnick

My take away is that Take Two see themselves as an entertainment company, not a data driven gaming company looking to get people hooked like most top grossing mobile concerns. 'Delight the customer, then make money' is very much a Bethesda-like attitude, as is letting the creative folk do what they are passionate about. They aren't looking for those yellow spikes in the middle of the night. I think that is why AAA console gaming will be around for a while yet.

 

[Nirolak]

Andrew Reiner doesn't think so:

https://twitter.com/andrew_reiner/status/666992708637097984

In other news, Andrew Reiner is smoking peyote.

...How many people even own EA Access? 100K?

 

[RexNovis]

Andrew Reiner doesn't think so:

https://twitter.com/andrew_reiner/status/666992708637097984

In other news, Andrew Reiner is smoking peyote.

Who the hell is Andrew Reiner and why should we care what he thinks? More importantly why would an extremely limited early access have any affect on the mass market reception? Especially when impressions seem split.

If anything affects the sales it would be review scores or the presence of the $50 season pass and I'm not even sure those will have much of an impact.

 

[Brashnir]

we're 2 years in, so I'm comparing to the games we had 2 years in last gen. Things are going to keep getting released

We're 3 years in. Compare to three years in last time.

 

[AgentP]

I wonder if not doing so well in reviews will affect Battlefront sales after launch, or will be like Destiny.

Most of the people buying it don't care about reviews or mainstream gaming. I was listening to the DLC podcast for the first time and the guy ragging on Battlefront was so far off the mark. He is so into his hardcore gaming world that he doesn't know who is playing this game. He compared it to Battlefied ... Battlefield. Battlefront is not designed for COD or Halo FPS master ninjas. It is meant for casuals and kids who would play PvZ:GW. It will sell millions of copies because it is Star Wars and it is accessible. Any core gamer sitting back and smugly judging this game based on their COD experience is an idiot and EA will laugh all the way to the bank.

 

[ethomaz]

Who the hell is Andrew Reiner and why should we care what he thinks? More importantly why would an extremely limited early access have any affect on the mass market reception? Especially when impressions seem split.

If anything affects the sales it would be review scores or the presence of the $50 season pass and I'm not even sure those will have much of an impact.

He is a GameInformer's executive editor.

But I disagree... the people that won't buy the game due the trial will be really a small part.

 

[CosmicQueso]

Long story short, if more Packaged games were made total Packaged sales would rise, data suggests to me that Digital Distribution may be more incremental than substitute.

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

Packaged SW has definitely been in decline. I believe that may have bottomed out as I'm predicting slight growth in 2015 (could be wrong). But as this Packaged Spend chart shows (where I've messed with the left axis so the bottom line is not 0), yeah. Definitely a decline.

Seems like NX won't be able to increase release counts all that significantly

Given how little anyone knows about it, making any assumptions on the NX is pure speculation. No one has any idea what's really going to happen with it.

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.

A few incorrect assumptions here:

• Increased variety with smaller titles won't come from packaged
• Even digital games have goals, so "magic numbers" still definitely need to be hit
• Distribution costs are hardly astronomical. They barely register in fact because...
• Once you apply the 30% cut digital first parties take, per unit margin are not as different between packaged and digital as you might assume (unless you own your own distribution platform). You're just shifting the costs around

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.

Maybe.

As a consumer, my impression is that the decline in retail titles is more than offset by the increase in digital offerings

Yep, this point's been made and agreed to a few times. Digital titles and DLC/MTX are more important than ever in terms of total spend.

Oh? Hook a brother up?

Here.

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.

My focus was right where I wanted it to be. To go back to your tree analogy, you can't look at a forest, see it's changing, and make broad assumptions without going down and looking at some trees. In order to understand the whole it's best to have deep understanding of the components that make up the whole. I never assumed or said anything regarding the state or health of the industry at large. I was taking a narrow focus on packaged because I wanted to take a narrow focus on packaged to see what is happening.

I think I have close to 200 games for my PS4, which I know makes me a weirdo. Of those, I bought six physically

You are an extreme outlier (many people on GAF are) and the lifeblood of the Core gaming market. The strong majority of the mass consumer audience with a PS4 doesn't even know what Disgaea is. Hell, most people in publishing don't know what Disgaea is.

it 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.

Sorry, should have been more clear. "Irrelevant" in terms that the drivers of baseline demand are incorporated already into a normal demand curve, outside of supply constraints, and that small fluctuations in those factors impacting baseline demand may not be a significant factor when determining drivers of change in that demand curve.

Basically, the advent of Digital Distribution can either be considered a substitute to existing packaged demand (1 sale digitally means 1 less sale packaged) or could provide incremental sales, meaning, the convenience of digital provides more opportunities for sale than packaged alone (1 sale digitally is a more likely a new, incremental sale to the pie).

And because, despite the growth in digital distribution, Packaged SW sales still correlate at a very high level with release count, I'm more of the opinion that Digital Distribution has been more incremental than substitute.

If release count and sales were not correlated, or if that correlation was worsening, I'd probably be leaning more towards "shift" to digital. But, in fact, the data suggests to me it's growth opportunity.

My position is that the decline in Packaged release count is not a problem driven by consumer demand. Rather, it's a problem driven from the supply side. Development costs have grown, raising the risk profile of making big games, we get fewer big packaged games as a result, which then results in lower packaged sales, rinse and repeat. Snake eating the tail. And then we get the misguided "consoles are doomed" rhetoric.

Maybe the worst of the contraction is indeed behind us. If release counts have stabilized, then packaged sales should and, helped by incremental DD and DLC/MTX, we can get back to seeing more games getting made, shedding the "smaller/bigger" mindset and actually getting back to some serious growth.

Similarly, Nintendo may not appreciate NPD publicizing just how far behind they are, etc.

Don't let HW sway you. Those guys are doing really well despite some HW challenges.

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.")

Nope, I wasn't doing that. But I should have been more clear. No worries.

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?

Definitely not the case. Publishers get detailed sell-through information from every retailer on a much more consistent basis. NPD is more of a "how to we stack up against the competition" thing.

Then what purpose do NPD actually serve, and for whom? =/

Well, you still want to see general trends. And the investment community uses it a lot. I mean it's still very important. Just not what it used to be.

 

[Thebeardofknowledge]

We're 3 years in. Compare to three years in last time.

PS4 was released in 2013 bruh

 

[Calm waterfall]

let's be clear here. last gen, sales were amazing for not one company, but everyone. mistakes were made with regards to how much money was made, but the gaming industry has never sold so much hardware, and not one of the three manufacturers had ever done so in a generation either. nor had more software been moved. if you want to talk patterns, then last gen was a tremendous spike that benefited everyone in terms of userbase, but the industry has always grown from generation to generation, and now it's so down that it won't match up to the generation before last. there's going to be one system this gen out of five that will outdo its predecessor. that's not my definition of the industry doing fine.

You say that mistakes are made about how much money the companies made. MS and Sony lost billions, so they were not doing great from a financial stands. You can´t separate that from how the industry was doing. Not only 2 out of 3 console manufacturers were doing bad, but a huge amount of publishers were in the red last gen. Many studios closed down because of much the publishers were losing. You are not looking at the industry as a whole. You are focusing only on one aspect of it. The matter of the fact that publishers way better than the same time last gen, is a testament of the publishers doing very smart investments, instead of just throwing money at what´s popular.