which should indicate that i don't think steam streams games?
Oh, sorry, I thought you were giving it as an example of a streaming service. =/
dedicated handheld systems are the most casual play-as-you-go platforms of dedicated gaming hardware just by their very nature of behind portable. what we saw with mobile wasn't that it ate the dedicate market's lunch only, but that it kind of ate into other casual franchises pretty heavily - kids games, family titles, fitness stuff - they all started to decline pretty heavily in 2011 and eventually only a few managed success to a degree on nintendo platforms where nintendo's always been strong. except minecraft. microsoft's got that shit locked down in the us (and japan on vita). this doesn't mean that handhelds and mobile devices are the same. i don't think you would count steam and playstation 4 as the same. they don't even play the same games a lot of the time, and the method of interaction is different, and the market is different for all parties involved.
Well, I wouldn't, no, but I'm a technophile who actually understands how this stuff works, so I'm a bit of a 1%er. That said, I'd bet that if you took an iPhone, a Steam Machine, a Vita, and a PS4, then said, "Group these by similarity," the other 99% of the population would pair the iPhone with the Vita, and the Steam Machine with the PS4 once you'd explained what a Vita and a Steam Machine
were, of course and "Well, similar in what sense, exactly?" would never even occur to them. "One hooks up to the TV, and the other one goes in my pocket, right? Am I missing something here?"
Thanks.
Nope. The lower tier Wii games never sold very well, outside a couple outliers like Carnival Games.
Oh, really? I'd been told there were numerous third-party million-sellers on Wii and that's why it had such a healthy tie ratio but I never really cared enough to follow up on it.
The big spike was driven by the rise of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, helped by the boom of Call of Duty and the big Wii 1st party titles, and a bunch of other things.
Interesting. That's because they cranked out a bunch of releases with different collections of songs, I assume? (As opposed to selling instruments, which I assume get tracked as accessories.) How much of that stuff did they sell? Just how big is that peak, in dollars? (What exactly is the difference between spending in 2006 and spending in 2008?)
So, handhelds weren't a significant part of the spike? I noticed a few interesting landmarks
To me, that looks very much like we're charting the rise and fall of the DS here. So, is there any chance we can see some charts without the handheld data included? You say that if we want to understand what's happening to the forest, we need to go down and examine the trees. Then could we maybe do that, please? Yes, the forest is smaller now, but we have no idea which trees we've even lost. Or rather, we know the handheld trees got choked out by the mobile trees, but there's no way for me to determine how many handheld trees we even started with. So how can we say anything at all about the relative health of the console trees, when we have no baseline to work from?
Oh, that reminds me. NPD said handheld software spending dropped significantly last quarter which implies that console spending was up, given that overall spending was fairly stable. Did you ever have a chance to verify that? I'm really at a loss to explain why we're discussing the health of the console market without actually examining it. =/
The sales curve was bound at some point to regress to the mean, especially when it became clear that Dance/Music was a fad. But now sales have regressed below the mean, based on publishers reducing release counts to below market demand levels. I also think once more titles enter the market, consumer sales will return to the long-term mean.
Sorry, what does that mean? Anyway, it's hard to say with the handheld data mixed in, but it wouldn't surprise me if retail console spending was down. There's been a lot of substitutive spending with smaller games moving to purely digital distribution, and I'm still fairly convinced that the 20% of the full-game console market that's on digital now isn't (almost) purely incremental. I wish I knew why you thought that. =/
I just think it might. Or it might not. I have no idea. It's possible.
Well, fair enough. I suppose just about anything is possible, yes.
At an individual level, sure. However you can only apply this to the total market if you assume that the number of consumers in the market is static. However, the data suggests to me that enough consumers are buying Digital that would not buy New Packaged, or that there are more of these people being added to the pie than the substitute customers remove. The addressable market "pie" is getting bigger with Digital. Digital is not primarily taking away from the Packaged sales pie, it's adding to the total pie of addressable consumers.
Sorry, I'm really trying, but why is that, and/or what do you mean, exactly? I wasn't assuming a static market size. Let's stick with the Star Wars hypothetical. We have 8M physical sales, and 2M digital sales. Now, of those 2M digital sales, you have some portion who'd planned to buy the game physically but opted for digital instead, and the rest who originally had no intention of buying the game simply because it involved leaving the house, but now that it doesn't, they're on board too.
And the pie
grows by the size of that latter portion, yes? So if 500k only bought the game because they didn't need to leave home, and the other 1500k simply opted for digital because they found it more attractive than the disc which seems like kind of a fine hair to be splitting in the first place, frankly then we have 500k incremental sales, and 1500k substitutional. So the market isn't static, because we added 500k sales by offering a digital option; the static portion of the market is the portion undergoing substitutional sales, and even it isn't really
static, because markets grow and shrink all the time. (Right?? Am I really still not understanding this? =/)
But you're saying that the number of substitutional sales within that 2M is so small as to be "meaningless"? I'd have guessed it was the people who were too lazy to go out initially that were meaningless, if anyone.
Or, a different way of putting it, think of the number of opportunities to buy. With just Packaged, a person has the opportunity to buy while in a store, or while browsing a retailer website or App. With Digital, the number of opportunities to buy are increased pretty significantly, especially for Core games who spend a lot of time on the box. Additional, incremental, sales result from more opportunities to buy.
Hmm. Do digital sales tend to have a long tail? You say there's lots of opportunity to buy because people spend so much more time in the on-console storefronts I didn't know that was necessarily true either, actually but I thought digital sales tended to be even more front-loaded than physical, with most digital buyers taking advantage of pre-loading, etc. I figured that's why 35% of your sales may be digital on launch day, but already down to 25% by the end of the week. So yeah, it seems like physical is getting a lot more "troll the store and see if there's anything good out"-type sales. Those who buy digitally seem kinda laser-focused, by comparison.* Is that not the case?
*That's actually why I wondered if the core tended to more heavily invested in digital than casuals; seems like where all the truly leet folk are. Fuck Day One;
Minute One, baby.
I don't care if anyone cares about it. NPD tracks Packaged sales. We talk about Packaged sales. The Packaged market is relevant to these conversations. You don't have to care about it if you don't want to.
Well, fair enough. Sorry, I realize this is the NPD thread. I think most just think of it as "the numbers thread," and really care more about the overall health of the industry or at least, the health of their favorite supplier than they do what fraction of games are being sold through GameStop versus sold directly on PSN. Maybe that's just me though. /shrug Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to derail the thread or anything.
Sure, other people buy Packaged exclusively. Variety is the spice, or something.
Doesn't make it any less of a waste.
They really can't. At least not yet.
Err, under no circumstances? Why do you say that? =/
Not when hard data exists that suggests that per title sales aren't dropping.
Well, not to piss you off or anything, but perhaps digital factors in here? I don't really know what numbers you're referring to, but you say they're not dropping. Growth is what's normally expected, right? So if per-title sales are flat, then maybe substitution is happening at roughly the previous rate of growth? Sorry, it's hard for me to be any more specific, since I'm not seeing what you're seeing, so I'm not entirely sure what needs 'splainin here.
Nope. Not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that digital is allowing more customers more opportunities to buy. A customer base is not a zero sum game. You offer people more places to buy, with more convenience, and more promotion, more customers will enter the market and more sales will result.
Okay, so the digital market is 25% the size of the physical market (by unit). That strikes me as a fuckton of additional sales far too many to be merely incremental but you say it's basically purely incremental, and the number of substitutional sales within that 25% is "meaningless within the data." So, you say there's not a meaningful number of "switchers" within that 25%. Is that correct?
That's the conventional wisdom. I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. Plenty of people may disagree (it is the conventional wisdom, after all) but I'm pretty confident in my position.
Oh, so you
don't think we'll be at 40% digital in 3-4 years? Will we ever be? Do you also dispute the 20% digital figure?
Not without showing data I cannot show, unfortunately.
That's too bad. Thanks again for everything you have been able to share, and in advance for anything you can share in the future. Much appreciated. <3
Thinking along these same lines, and not being afraid of making more packaged games, has worked out pretty darn well for some pubs this year.
Well, sure. A physical release still gives your product a lot of additional exposure, so if your game turns out to be a hit, gambling on a physical release at launch can really be a windfall. On the other hand, if like most games, yours only turns out to be a moderate success, the additional costs and lower margins of a physical launch can more easily break you.
A physical release
might be a big win, but it's
guaranteed to be a big risk. If you've got a big budget and an IP known to be popular, then by all means, you should do a physical release. However, the more niche and/or unproven your product is, you may be better off testing the waters with a comparatively low-risk, high-profit digital release, and then plan from there if you should happen to find success.
Is that what you meant by devs not being able to find "more" success by avoiding physical? Because whatever the risks to their business that decision may involve, the
potential payout will always be higher if you add a physical release?
