CosmicQueso
Member
What does "Ratio to Drive Hardware" mean?
Like, when it says under Wii Sports Resort "34% in 27 weeks" how should that be interpreted?
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NPD Sales Results for October 2015 [Up1: Xbox #1]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
What does "Ratio to Drive Hardware" mean?
Like, when it says under Wii Sports Resort "34% in 27 weeks" how should that be interpreted?
LifEndz
Member
Tomb Raider was expected, but still a bummer. How's Halo 5 holding up?
Edit: nvm. Just saw the GS investor call thread.
Welfare
Member
Software sold with the hardware?
Specifically, Nintendo counted a software title as having spurred the hardware purchase if they were both registered under Club Nintendo in the same week. So for Wii Sports Resort, 34% of Wii Sport Resort registrations were done with a new Wii hardware registration during the first 27 weeks of its release.
Edit:
It's explained here by Iwata.
We honestly missed you in this thread. Best of luck and stay strong!
slavesnyder
Member
This damn star wars limited edition bundle. 450$ and selling like mad it seems.
17 on amazon monthly, plus sales from months before.
Plus, just entered the yearly ranking at 98.
To what number did they limit it?
17 on amazon monthly, plus sales from months before.
Plus, just entered the yearly ranking at 98.
To what number did they limit it?
CosmicQueso
Member
Thank you very much Donny. Very helpful info.
spatenfloot
Member
Also be prepared for all of the PSN outage threads about how Sony ruined Christmas.
Every new Office needs a Live Account. Every Windows 10 Useraccount needs a Live Account (and creating offline users is not intuitive from the UI, so most are overlooking that option)
Thats why its growing, thats why I laugh about MAU Growth as an indicator for Xbox health.
They didn't say they're using Microsoft account growth for Xbox though. They specifically said active Live users.
Office doesn't *need* a Live account (unless you subscribe to 365 of course), and by default (unlike Win 8) the interface creates you a local account on Win 10 before you get to joining via Live account.
CosmicQueso
Member
Tracking MAUs is great.
I'm still missing the part where tracking MAUs means no other metric (like hardware sales) is relevant for looking at the industry.
I'm still missing the part where tracking MAUs means no other metric (like hardware sales) is relevant for looking at the industry.
The vader PS4 is sold out on amazon right? Won't be in stock until the 28th.
The $350 bundle is doing well though.
Heads up, Walmart has the special Vader PS4/Infinity bundle for $350.
Solid for people who just want Vader console.
Someone who logs into his office Subscription is an active Live user Somone who uses Windows 10 and 8 with a live account is an Active live user.
EVERY Office Version since 2013 (2013 retroactively) needs a live Account, even Retail FPP Office. You cant activate Office without a Live Account.
Wrong. When you install Windows 10, you must actively click "continue without Microsoft Account".
Even some Features dont work with a local account that have nothing to do with your internet connection, like Device Support for specific 3rdparty hardware. It wont work until you make your local account to a live Account.
Tracking MAUs alone isn't great, because those get created with every new Xbox user. It's better that they're using active Live users.
I'm missing the part where it was explicitly stated that no other metrics are relevant for looking at the industry. Were those words exactly said and do you care to share them via a link?
NoMoreTrolls
Banned
Don't try and act like you haven't been repeatedly claiming that the only reason MS isn't sharing sales is because they don't think sales are important anymore. Which is bullshit.
You're being intentionally dense.
CosmicQueso
Member
I'm referring to the below, your assertion that the installed base of users be recognized by the number of Live users, making hardware sales somewhat irrelevant. I'm not referring to what Microsoft is saying or doing. I still see reports from them that have hardware sales and installed base metrics, so I know for fact this data is important to them, as it is to all its third party publishing partners.
Jawmuncher
Member
Crazy that RB4 made it and not Guitar Hero. Wonder if that changed for the November NPD with the cheap price the game is currently.
It was number 11 btw
I dunno, there's still a lot of competition even with GH Live hitting massive Black Friday sales.
They specifically said why they changed their primary metric. There was never anything said by MS or by me that said sales, revenue, or anything else weren't important at all.
Show me where I said they don't think sales are important any more.
I didn't say they were irrelevant or not important, that's you putting words in my mouth.
They can change their primary metric and still use any other metric they want as additional signals for success.
NoMoreTrolls
Banned
Not worth it. You'll keep ignoring the fact that you're the only person in this thread that buys it. Ignore that every response to your posts has been to refute them.
Have a nice time in your bubble.
CosmicQueso
Member
I don't even know who you're arguing with anymore or what your argument even is right now.
Now other metrics are important, but not really, because if one wishes to use them they're "clinging" to things, and insecure about "change".
Let MS use whatever primary metric it wants. In the real world of the 2015 market, however, others will use old stodgy, dinosaur metrics like "Sales" and "Inventory".
I was quoting you. Perhaps you misspoke then. Fair enough.
Okay great, so other metrics are cool too. So why are you harping so relentlessly and tirelessly on this issue of the primary metric being Live users? To what end is your argument aiming for?
I legitimately cannot understand what you're arguing for or against.
Is your point that NPD is a terrible way of gauging the health of the industry as a whole? Well sure it is. Of course it is. Packaged and dedicated consoles are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the over industry. No one would argue against that.
Is your point that because of this, Microsoft shouldn't be gauged on its sales as reported by NPD? Of course it shouldn't. Dedicated consoles and packaged HW sales are a much smaller part of its business accordingly.
I doubt any reasonable person would dispute that either.
But I can't tell what exactly it is you are arguing.
slavesnyder
Member
LegendofLex
Member
That wasn't the main software that drove hardware, though. The main software driver was Wii Fit Plus. See Nintendo's stats on that below.
Edit:
This doesn't tell us the share of overall hardware sales driven by particular software titles, it tells us the share of sales for those individual titles that were also hardware sales.
It's 50% of Wii Fit Plus owners who bought the game with their Wii purchase (since launch), not 50% of new Wii owners buying Wii Fit Plus (in December in NA). Moreover, the degree of overlap with people who bought the console for NSMBWii is unknown.
I just re-read the very posts you quoted and nowhere did I say they were unimportant, valueless, or irrelevant. Each of those words came from you, not me, and I refuted each interpretation. You're still claiming I was the one who said them even though those words are not in my posts except to refute them.
My initial response was to a (terrible) analogy that alluded to the metric of Live users being some kind of redirection to obscure weak sales of the hardware and that is was useless. I never argued against the possibility it was to obscure weak hardware sales, it was to consider the merit behind the new primary metric as sign of success since it was closer to their shift in strategy now that Xbox is operationally a sub-set of the Windows pillar.
I got accused of making it up by Rex even though MS said they are focused more on engagement and that's why they're choosing the metric for their earnings statements starting with this past quarter.
They provided a why, which must be at the very least partly true if not entirely representative of their full motivation. We can only hazard a guess (albeit a fairly obvious one) about them wanting to also obscure hardware sales. As Rex so graciously pointed out, correlation does not imply causation, so we can't be absolutely certain that obscuring hardware sales was a reason behind the change. It's a guess, and one I've actually agreed with several times but that seems to be lost on anyone at this point despite repeating myself.
CosmicQueso
Member
So your primary point in all this is that the lack of hardware data coming out of Microsoft may be, but is most likely not, an intentional attempt to hide what some might see to be poor performance? Rather, it's an attempt to align organizational thinking?
Jeez dude, why didn't you just say that. Could have avoided pages of dumb.
If that was your main point, then I apologize. That was not what I was interpreting your posts to be saying.
Yes, that's it. The only thing I'd add is that I would wager MS is also wanting to hide poor hardware sales, but it's not something we can be absolutely certain of and, frankly, it's not that interesting since A) companies do it all the time and B) GAF is going to get the hardware sales one way or the other. The change to service level metrics are interesting to me and make sense, I was just trying (and obviously failing) to get that point across.
No apology needed, it's on me for not being clear enough. I'll try to do better in the future.
Darth Smurf X
Member
I can't believe I'm going to jump into this minefield, but... here goes.
This is why I HATE HATE HATE MS's new metric. They are counting me, twice, and I produce ZERO revenue for them. With my X360, I had a Family Gold account. MS dissolved that service and split my family account into 1 gold and 1 silver (my wife). Then, when I bought a PS4, I let my Gold expire. I only use my X360 when my nephew comes over to entertain him with Minecraft. I have not spent a dime with MS in almost 2 years... yet, they are counting me as 2 MUAs.
And even that is not an accurate number, since my reasons above.
This.
MAUs are deceptive to everyone: stockholders, investors, consumers, everyone. I'm tracked, twice, and I spend NO money with MS and have no plans to do so this entire gen. I'm just padding their stats.
This is why I HATE HATE HATE MS's new metric. They are counting me, twice, and I produce ZERO revenue for them. With my X360, I had a Family Gold account. MS dissolved that service and split my family account into 1 gold and 1 silver (my wife). Then, when I bought a PS4, I let my Gold expire. I only use my X360 when my nephew comes over to entertain him with Minecraft. I have not spent a dime with MS in almost 2 years... yet, they are counting me as 2 MUAs.
And even that is not an accurate number, since my reasons above.
This.
MAUs are deceptive to everyone: stockholders, investors, consumers, everyone. I'm tracked, twice, and I spend NO money with MS and have no plans to do so this entire gen. I'm just padding their stats.
Holy crap that is an amazing deal. They were sold out of the bundle yesterday. Wonder if they were just holding stock for this deal.
Yes, you're reading the chart correctly, then.
If they registered the Wii, Wii Fit Plus, and NSMBWii in the same week, it would show up under both Wii Fit Plus and NSMBWii's %s.
My repeated opinion is that the 3.8m in Dec-2009 was primarily driven by availability. The $50 price cut and extra $50 Wal-Mart GC certainly helped, but the major driver, in my opinion, is that this was the first December in the U.S. where you could easily find Wiis on shelves. Many buyers only consider buying hardware at holidays, so when the most sought after system from the last three Decembers was finally available at the same time they were looking to buy it (and could be gotten at effectively $100 off the previous asking price), it exploded.
So like apple, goog, etc, but without a hardware requirement? They are a little late to the party, but that isn't SN's fault.
That's not locking in, that is competing for customers.
I'm having trouble seeing how they create a walled garden on pc, with customers forced to use their ecosystem, like with xbox. If that is not their endgame, then I don't understand why Xbox is supposed become part of windows. Why jeopardize the Xbox ecosystem, where they get a cut of everything that goes through it (movies, software, music, ad revenue, etc.). I guess it might make sense if they are going to exit the console hardware business and they want to do it in the most profitable way they can. But I haven't seen anything to suggest that they are exiting.
yurinka
Member
If I remember well, when checking the cumulative operating income of the Xbox division since it started, they are still losing a lot of money with Xbox and won't recover soon. I assume that's the reason of why they want to quit and still slowly shifting to PC, because they still can continue getting profits from games in Windows 10 without needing to invest for hardware.
slavesnyder
Member
We have no idea if they want to quit console gaming. It's not as if they cared much about PC gaming until now. But it seems they want to set a new focus here. So, Xbox might become a W10-box or even disappear in physical form completely.
It's possible that they see the biggest value of 3 gens of Xbox in having created a brand and now think it will make a nice icon on the desktop and that's it.
Problem is that noone knows if the unified gaming service vision really plays out so nicely for them. They were Lttp for consoles, now they are Lttp for multi device gaming. They could not beat Sony, now they are entering the arena of Google, Apple, Steam, Amazon and Facebook.
No idea if it will get any easier from here on...
I don't think Xbox is important to Nadella on its own or that he ever considered allowing it to continue operating as its own business. Who could blame him when the division pales in comparison to its money makers and has often been highlighted as a likely source of loss.
He has repeated in his keynotes that he wants "people to go from using Windows, to choosing Windows, to loving Windows." He's also highlighted that, in the mobile world (read: which he defines as experiences going with you across screens), gaming is the largest category of time spent and revenue, and that he believes Xbox offers a unique opportunity to capitalize on it.
He hasn't explicitly connected the dots, but I think it's a short hop to go from A) his acknowledgment of gaming as large part of a consumer's life and money spent to B) his action of rolling Xbox in the Windows group to C) making user engagement a primary metric for the division to D) assuming he wants/needs a competitive offering in the Windows ecosystem. I think he believes (because of reason A) that it will gain consumer favorability and have them spend more time with Windows and more money in the Windows Store. Having powerful gaming IP only available in the Windows Store could help gain more Windows Store traffic, revenue, and should attract more developers for all manner of apps.
I do strongly believe that they are done with the Xbox team being enabled to focus on any single device, but I can't imagine them exiting the gaming industry when Apple and Google, among others, are building all-inclusive ecosystems that are gaining traction in terms of users and revenue in both productivity and entertainment categories.
I also think they'll continue making gaming-optimized hardware for brand enthusiast, especially when they're making more hardware these days, not less. The fact that they have less than 3% of the mobile phone market and they are still creating new phones to serve as "prime examples of what you can do with Windows" means they'll be wherever they believe they can obtain and develop valuable Microsoft accounts.
They've got a lot of work to do.
Given the report here on BBs Battlefront performance, I wonder if GameStop's expectations were just super over the top (and perhaps this was quantified somewhere as I've not been following it too closely), or if the sample here is unrepresentative of the larger market. There was also the weaker than expected (at least compared to F4) on EA's server tracking.
I'm wondering about that myself. Their share of the market is so big, I'm wondering what their internal expectations were. We saw solid turn out, great pick up rates for preorders, bundles etc.
But gamestop are monsters by comparison. I can only imagine what they were forecasting. Any feedback from Wal-Mart?
I have no doubts the game is going to sell incredibly well. I think lifetimes sales end up somewhere around 10million+. The game charted very well in its first week on the UK charts. Again don't know how much of a drop off it'll have in its 2nd week but it is a bundled game so that could potentially help keep it charted on the PAL charts.
I am wondering if EA and Gamestop had some lofty expectations. EA expects 13 million by march. That's a big target. But you'd expect GS to make their estimates based on preorders. So I do wonder what their expectations were.
Again we'll have a better idea once NPD comes around again.
ZSaberLink
Media Create Maven
You're really forgetting that Microsoft has multiple businesses that are absolutely gigantic compared to what Xbox would ever be (Windows, Office, and their Servers divisions)... along with growth in a bunch of other markets. When Bing could exist and lose money all the time until recently, Xbox has given far greater returns in terms of brand name and marketshare in the video game space and easily "could be afforded".
Also isn't Valve trying to break into hardware kind of a counterpoint to all of this talk lol? Seems like hardware still has huge value over just being a software front, even when you're the dominant market leader like Steam.
The whole combination of Windows 10 on desktop, mobile, and eventually Xbox is to get the whole company on the same base platform in my mind. The fact that you keep having to maintain so many different OS teams is a huge drain on resources. If you simply have base platform that everyone works on (Win10), it ideally increases productivity, and requires less manpower. Why write two different storefronts when you can just have one. It's like what Microsoft did with the Microsoft Account/ID a couple of years back. Implementing the same thing in many different ways (just like most Microsoft OSes were just branches of Windows), just doesn't make much sense anymore.
CosmicQueso
Member
Nevermind.
Doesn't BB have a Battlefront deal? Or have I misread something somewhere? In the case where this is true, then the explanation is as simple as sampling bias since the deal would skew performances into unrepresentative forms. The smaller the sampling size of potential buyers, the more a bias can skew data to be unrepresentative of the whole (but of course, this presupposes that Battlefront were doing catastrophically badly).
Of course, if there is no sale/deal then everything I supposed would be wrong.
I don't doubt it will do well. I don't doubt it has done well. I am just trying to marry the data I have on hand.
ZSaberLink
Media Create Maven
I always enjoy these, so thanks again! Btw, were you Terry Travis before?
Also did the original Xbox get a price cut on October of 2004? Or was this just pre-Halo 2 hype or something?
Imru’ al-Qays;186462137 said:
the key was dedicated hardware. no one is making a big push for new dedicated hardware anymore. you don't introduce a 'game-only player' (even if it's just in the marketing sense like sony did with ps4) in the modern age unless you're one of the three companies that have been doing it for over a decade.
from my understanding, steam machines weren't really generalized non-specific hardware that you could use for multiple utilities. it's there to run steam first and foremost. i would think if you've heard of steam, you probably already have a machine that plays steam, hence the reasoning that a steam machine is for super fans of valve who need more variety in how they play.
Hockeymac18
Member
We don't have those numbers. Xbox's revenue/profit numbers, as a division, have pretty much always been bundled with something else when reported. Making it pretty hard to know how much they have made.
SEGAvangelist
Member
Your store seems to do better with PS4 sales, though. Your reports seem to show greater numbers than what we get with NPD each month.
I cross reference multiple districts across the country with wider spectrum data wherever possible, to try and widen the reference information. I check the largest districts in California, Texas, Florida, and across the midwest/northwest sections to cross reference the Northern MA/NH district I'm personally a part of.
Generally, when I look at the numbers after the monthly close and the spectrum of cream's numbers for charts and such, it sometimes is variable one way or the one depending on special offers we've done, or other stores have done more drastically, but it's not usually a massive variance.
Edit: But in general, there's waves where each system does really well. Our store sold plenty of Halo 5 SW, just not much in the way of the hardware, and the Tomb Raider bundle is really bad, but we're still selling other XB1 bundles. It's just that they are advertising their black friday offers, and EVERYTHING gets discounted system wise. With the PS4 bundles, right now the only one that's getting discounted is the Uncharted bundle, so for people looking into the SW bundle, they might as well get it now anyway, or if they still want the ugly COD bundle (Which isn't really any better value than Tomb Raider, at all, but it's got better perception and is the much more popular game, obviously).
So, perception, I guess. Hope that clears things up. I feel like we're going to sell a lot of XB1s over this weekend that people have held off on for the last week or so, because those offers have been out there for people to see.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Is Black Friday big enough to trump the results for entirety of the rest of November?