That graph is total consumer spend on Packaged software. You asked if packaged software spend really declined. Just showing that indeed it did.
Yeah, my bad. I'd also been asking for title counts reaching further back, and when I saw the big chart, I didn't realize you'd "switched" metrics on me. ><
Anyway, it's safe to assume this chart includes handheld spending? Then I'm gonna guess that coupled with the Wii shovelware* caused the weird spike 07-11, and I'd say we've pretty much returned to normalcy, especially when you account for the migration of mid- and low-tier releases to digital that's been occurring over the last five years or so.
*I don't actually think of it as shovelware. I'm just referring to the large amount of "ultra-casual" software that did well on the Wii before drying up as those users realized their new phone had fun games too.
But multiplatform releases in the total release count charts only count as 1 release.
Noted, thanks. Then can I ask what may cause you to think the NX would help increase variety versus the Wii U?
EA does own its own digital distribution platform though, so that helps them.
I haven't listened to the call, but just reading the quotes, it seemed like he was mostly talking about what's happening with Gen8. Were sales through Origin factored in to the double-margins comment?
You're not understanding the terminology. Incremental means, in this case, additive to the pie. Digital provides opportunity for more sales than Packaged alone, and 1 digital sale does not necessarily mean 1 less packaged sale.
Huh. I thought incremental were the people who say, "Oh, I don't need to get off the toilet? In that case, I guess I'll go ahead and buy it." Those sales have no effect on retail sales. Then substitutive were the people who say, "I already got it digitally, and I don't need two copies," and
those digital sales subtract from packaged sales, 1-for-1. Is that not correct? =/
I'm not concerned, so I don't need to be consoled, and I'm not trying to look at everything holistically in one big picture. And the Packaged space is not old and sickly, but underserved. Which is my whole point. If we had more Packaged games releasing, sales of Packaged products in whole would go up.
Sure, but again, so what? Why do we care if packaged sales increase? Packaged sales kinda sound like a huge waste of money to me. If games can actually find more success by avoiding packaged sales, then more power to them, I'd say.
Irrelevant to the math =/= unimportant or meaningless.
Aren't the substitutive sales — whether through people buying AAA digitally or through games skipping retail entirely — pretty relevant when examining drops? =/
I'm saying that the data suggests that substitution is not happening, or at least that there are enough new, incremental, digital purchasers that would not have bought packaged that it makes any shifting meaningless in the data.
The data I look at (both Packaged and Digital) suggests to me that a "shift" from Packaged to Digital is not really happening, but rather that Digital is growing the overall pie.
What data, specifically? EA said 20% digital on Gen8 right now. So if Star Wars is gonna sell 10M copies, that's 8M physical and 2M digital. You're saying that the 2M digital sales are merely bonus sales from the toilet-sitters, and that number contains a negligible/immeasurable number of substitutive sales because people simply don't substitute, so in 3-4 years when digital is 40% of sales, we'll still just have the same 2M toilet-sitters while physical sales dwindle to 3M copies? Because people stopped showing up at the stores entirely, since DQH2 is digital-only, leaving no "variety" on the shelves? I thought no one showing up at the stores cared about DQH in the first place. =/
I assumed the transition from 20% to 40% would be substitutive, meaning they'd still have 10M sales in 2018, but it'd be 6M physical and 4M digital, because an additional 2M buyers said, "Pfft, I really don't need the disc, and I could be playing at midnight instead of merely paying for my purchase before I then brave the November weather and begin the wait for the install." But the data suggests this isn't the case, apparently? Any chance you can you be any more explicit?
So which generation is the Apple TV a part of?
8? 8a?
