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NPD Sales Results for December 2014 [Up2: Nintendo Sales Notes]

Papacheeks

Banned
So tired of that f'ing gif being thrown out in completely dumb ways. It's rampant.

In all honesty was my first time using it on GAF to my knowledge.

And thank's for letting me know the number's on attach rate.

I wasn't sure, since I know number's for Digital are talked about too

I am a little confused on people's info on the attach-rate.

Game Informer along with other sources are saying 4.42 Attach-rate:

Customers brought home 17.8 million games inclusive of retail and digital purchases, bringing the total to 81.8 million. This represents an overall software attach rate of 4.42. A Gamasutra report from 2009 indicates that aligned for time since launch, the PlayStation 4 is outpacing the PlayStation 3’s tie ratio.

GI says one thing GAF NPD another, I just want to know what I'm missing break down wise?
 

RexNovis

Banned
In all honesty was my first time using it on GAF to my knowledge.

And thank's for letting me know the number's on attach rate.

I wasn't sure, since I know number's for Digital are talked about too

I am a little confused on people's info on the attach-rate.

Game Informer along with other sources are saying 4.42 Attach-rate:



GI says one thing GAF NPD another, I just want to know what I'm missing break down wise?

4.42 is worldwide w/ digital included.

NPD numbers ITT are US retail copies only.
 
In all honesty was my first time using it on GAF to my knowledge.

And thank's for letting me know the number's on attach rate.

I wasn't sure, since I know number's for Digital are talked about too

I am a little confused on people's info on the attach-rate.

Game Informer along with other sources are saying 4.42 Attach-rate:



GI says one thing GAF NPD another, I just want to know what I'm missing break down wise?



the ps4 has a usa retail tie ratio of 3.68.

the xbox one has a usa retail tie ratio of 3.88.

the ps4 has a worldwide retail + digital tie ratio of 4.42.



4.42 is worldwide w/ digital included.

NPD numbers are US retail copies only.

be careful with your wording.

the npd numbers *that we are talking about in this thread* are usa retail copies only.

but npd covers more than just the usa.
 

RexNovis

Banned
the ps4 has a usa retail tie ratio of 3.68.

the xbox one has a usa retail tie ratio of 3.88.

the ps4 has a worldwide retail + digital tie ratio of 4.42.





be careful with your wording.

the npd numbers *that we are talking about in this thread* are usa retail copies only.

but npd covers more than just the usa.

Yes but this thread is about US NPD so I thought it was obvious what the specific numbers given in this thread referred to. At the very least its a safe assumption.
 
Yes but this thread is about US NPD so I thought it was obvious what the specific numbers given in this thread referred to. At the very least its a safe assumption.

you'd be surprised how many people are legitimately confused by that.

just wanted to be safe for our resident "i wanna see the receipts.gif" gaffer.
 

RexNovis

Banned
I for one am surprised and think it's encouraging that GTAV sold more on Xbox One than PS4.

LTD its sold more on PS4 by a fairly good margin hasn't it? When you have one console selling more than the other during holiday months, when software sales are traditionally tied heavily with hardware purchases, it makes sense that XB1 would edge it out over PS4 for those same months but it isn't a safe assumption at all to think it reflects the general trends in sales data for the coming year as a whole. Its almost assuredly just a reflection of the holiday bundling and sales MS had going.

you'd be surprised how many people are legitimately confused by that.

just wanted to be safe for our resident "i wanna see the receipts.gif" gaffer.

fair enough i updated my post
 
Xbox 360 vs. PS2.

npd-home-yearly-2014m2f5n.png
This clearly shows something lots of people aren't aware of regarding last gen. The standard narrative--even here on GAF where there's plenty of folks like Road posting good data--is that Microsoft made a huge mistake abandoning their core business for Kinect, during the lead up to this gen.

But the chart shows exactly why they did it: Kinect was an amazing success for them! It gave them an (unprecedented?) late-life bump, which kept them ahead of PS3 (worldwide) for years longer, and eventually drove them over the Wii LTD in the U.S.

That's obviously the reason they doubled down with Xbox One's Kinect integration. Unfortunately for them, the market seems to have mostly moved away from that. But I think the many comments berating them for the effort were really misplaced. It was absolutely reasonable of them to emphasize Kinect.
 

legend166

Member
Xbox 360 vs. PS2.

npd-home-yearly-2014m2f5n.png

Just goes to show how much better the Wii could have done in Nintendo hadn't dropped it cold and made more attempts at cultivating a cheap, easily accessible back catalogue. The WIi was basically following the same sales pattern as the PS2 up until year 5. They really did stuff it up.
 

stryke

Member
This clearly shows something lots of people aren't aware of regarding last gen. The standard narrative--even here on GAF where there's plenty of folks like Road posting good data--is that Microsoft made a huge mistake abandoning their core business for Kinect, during the lead up to this gen.

But the chart shows exactly why they did it: Kinect was an amazing success for them! It gave them an (unprecedented?) late-life bump, which kept them ahead of PS3 (worldwide) for years longer, and eventually drove them over the Wii LTD in the U.S.

That's obviously the reason they doubled down with Xbox One's Kinect integration. Unfortunately for them, the market seems to have mostly moved away from that. But I think the many comments berating them for the effort were really misplaced. It was absolutely reasonable of them to emphasize Kinect.

Interesting the gradient of the drop off is similar too.
 
This clearly shows something lots of people aren't aware of regarding last gen. The standard narrative--even here on GAF where there's plenty of folks like Road posting good data--is that Microsoft made a huge mistake abandoning their core business for Kinect, during the lead up to this gen.

But the chart shows exactly why they did it: Kinect was an amazing success for them! It gave them an (unprecedented?) late-life bump, which kept them ahead of PS3 (worldwide) for years longer, and eventually drove them over the Wii LTD in the U.S.

That's obviously the reason they doubled down with Xbox One's Kinect integration. Unfortunately for them, the market seems to have mostly moved away from that. But I think the many comments berating them for the effort were really misplaced. It was absolutely reasonable of them to emphasize Kinect.

Yes, spot on.

What Kinect also did is allow them to believe they could wait one more year to bring out the One.

Had MS instead launched the One in 2012 how interesting the market would be, no?
 

ascii42

Member
exponentially?

wii u software sales are only up +58% from last december...
Mathematically speaking, for something to be exponential growth the percentage increase doesn't matter, just that it's consistent for each time increment. (unlikely to be the case for the WiiU)
 

Cheerilee

Member
For a system that has no backup or buffer of 3rd party in sight, it's doing amazingly and still at $300 too.
man, if you peeps think Wii U is doing " amazingly " I wonder what you think of the PS4?

Wii U is selling worse then the Gamecube. Hell I think at this point the only other system to match its weak sales WW is the Dreamcast.

Wii U is an utter failure coming off a 100,000,000 selling console like the Wii. You couldn't do much worse then what Nintendo is doing with the Wii U.

That said, I bought one back in early 2013 ... huge mistake ... for MH3U. Will be picking it back up later this year for Xenoblade and Zelda U ( hopefully ). Will have a nice backlog to dive into at that point.

It's a matter of perspective. He said Wii U is doing amazing, "for a system that has no 3rd party support." Dreamcast had third party support. GameCube had third party support. PS4 has third party support. You presented a different perspective by comparing it to Wii. Both are valid. To see the other side, you gotta dig into the really unpopular stuff, like the Atari Jaguar, which apparently sold 250k in it's lifetime. That thing had no third party support, and Wii U is selling amazingly compared to it.

Of course, Nintendo has amazing first party support. But then, it's interesting to note that Atari also had amazing first party support, back in the day, until they were split into hardware and software. And like Wii to Wii U, the Jaguar was a very steep decline from the Atari 2600. You say that Nintendo couldn't do much worse than Wii U, but things can always get worse. Even if Nintendo doesn't break up and collapse like Atari did, Wii U would be in an even worse position if they didn't even try to get any third party support (unless that complete rejection of reality caused them to refocus and reinvent themselves in some sort of positive way).
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Wow why didn't you just post this to begin with? Thanks for checking back in and explaining your point!

Edit: Sorry for exponential double :(

I wasn't sure, since I know Digital and Retail number's for these threads are always cagey.

Roboto or whatever his name is, said something that went along with what i was thinking when I made my original comment.

Then looked it up to verify, and someone else said that NPD is mainly retail. So I guess if were going by just what this NPD thread has for data, then I was off.

So my bad.
 

Bgamer90

Banned
This clearly shows something lots of people aren't aware of regarding last gen. The standard narrative--even here on GAF where there's plenty of folks like Road posting good data--is that Microsoft made a huge mistake abandoning their core business for Kinect, during the lead up to this gen.

But the chart shows exactly why they did it: Kinect was an amazing success for them! It gave them an (unprecedented?) late-life bump, which kept them ahead of PS3 (worldwide) for years longer, and eventually drove them over the Wii LTD in the U.S.

That's obviously the reason they doubled down with Xbox One's Kinect integration. Unfortunately for them, the market seems to have mostly moved away from that. But I think the many comments berating them for the effort were really misplaced. It was absolutely reasonable of them to emphasize Kinect.

Yes, spot on.

What Kinect also did is allow them to believe they could wait one more year to bring out the One.

Had MS instead launched the One in 2012 how interesting the market would be, no?

Good points. MS was doing what all video game hardware companies (Sony, Nintendo, Sega, etc.) have pretty much done during the late stages of a gaming gen -- making the console attractive to "casual" users via cheaper remodels and/or "casual" games and accessories. I'm positive Kinect did better than MS thought and they therefore gave the system another year or two of life.

And yeah -- the Xbox One would be in a much better position (at least in the territories that the Xbox brand does well in) if the system launched in 2012 instead of 2013; well, as long as it didn't have the same restrictions/policies that were in place a few months before the system launched.
 

Game Guru

Member
This clearly shows something lots of people aren't aware of regarding last gen. The standard narrative--even here on GAF where there's plenty of folks like Road posting good data--is that Microsoft made a huge mistake abandoning their core business for Kinect, during the lead up to this gen.

But the chart shows exactly why they did it: Kinect was an amazing success for them! It gave them an (unprecedented?) late-life bump, which kept them ahead of PS3 (worldwide) for years longer, and eventually drove them over the Wii LTD in the U.S.

That's obviously the reason they doubled down with Xbox One's Kinect integration. Unfortunately for them, the market seems to have mostly moved away from that. But I think the many comments berating them for the effort were really misplaced. It was absolutely reasonable of them to emphasize Kinect.

I think that was both Nintendo's and MS's issue actually. Both were successful at getting the casual gamer with the Wii and Kinect while Sony never really succeeded in getting them. Thus, Nintendo and MS tries to aim for the casual gamer again who are no longer biting and thus faltered badly, whereas Sony who never won the casual gamer decided to focus on the core market who are still biting and thus succeeded greatly.
 

AniHawk

Member
I think that was both Nintendo's and MS's issue actually. Both were successful at getting the casual gamer with the Wii and Kinect while Sony never really succeeded in getting them. Thus, Nintendo and MS tries to aim for the casual gamer again who are no longer biting and thus faltered badly, whereas Sony who never won the casual gamer decided to focus on the core market who are still biting and thus succeeded greatly.

i think the problem nintendo and microsoft had was timing, messaging, and price. i've gone over nintendo's numerous mistakes plenty of times, but i think microsoft had the ability to position the xbox one as the awesome futuristic device for your home. they made the thing about $200 too expensive than it needed to be though, immediately pricing it out of the market of most people in the industry aside from the super dedicated. i don't recall if there was ever any attempt to show that this was the new cool family console either, or if they positioned the system as the new rad place to get all your sports games and call of duties.
 

Game Guru

Member
i think the problem nintendo and microsoft had was timing, messaging, and price. i've gone over nintendo's numerous mistakes plenty of times, but i think microsoft had the ability to position the xbox one as the awesome futuristic device for your home. they made the thing about $200 too expensive than it needed to be though, immediately pricing it out of the market of most people in the industry aside from the super dedicated. i don't recall if there was ever any attempt to show that this was the new cool family console either, or if they positioned the system as the new rad place to get all your sports games and call of duties.

That is possible, though I do not believe trying to sell the XB1 as a futuristic device would have worked. I think the focus for marketing a console should be the games rather than any other feature. Even the Wii, as casual a system as that was, had a marketing campaign which focused on the games that the system could now play with the Wii Remote.
 
This clearly shows something lots of people aren't aware of regarding last gen. The standard narrative--even here on GAF where there's plenty of folks like Road posting good data--is that Microsoft made a huge mistake abandoning their core business for Kinect, during the lead up to this gen.

But the chart shows exactly why they did it: Kinect was an amazing success for them! It gave them an (unprecedented?) late-life bump, which kept them ahead of PS3 (worldwide) for years longer, and eventually drove them over the Wii LTD in the U.S.

That's obviously the reason they doubled down with Xbox One's Kinect integration. Unfortunately for them, the market seems to have mostly moved away from that. But I think the many comments berating them for the effort were really misplaced. It was absolutely reasonable of them to emphasize Kinect.

In the long term view however it could be seen as a move that alienated a lot of hardcore fans who spend a lot more money even if there aren't as many of them.

A lot of people would say that kinect success is largely the reason they are struggling now against Sony instead of running away like they did last gen.

Their base of consumers moved on to pc/ps3 in some ways late last gen and it cost them early this gen.
 
Good points. MS was doing what all video game hardware companies (Sony, Nintendo, Sega, etc.) have pretty much done during the late stages of a gaming gen -- making the console attractive to "casual" users via cheaper remodels and/or "casual" games and accessories. I'm positive Kinect did better than MS thought and they therefore gave the system another year or two of life.
Kinect was way more successful than anyone would have thought. Its effect was unlike previous "casualizations" (unique, as far as I know). Just look at the chart: 360 sales in years 6, 7, and 8 were higher than in any of the previous 5 years. Every other console on the chart--even the blazing Wii and mighty PS2--had a different trajectory. Kinect was gigantic.

A lot of people would say that kinect success is largely the reason they are struggling now against Sony instead of running away like they did last gen.

Their base of consumers moved on to pc/ps3 in some ways late last gen and it cost them early this gen.
But even if it were true that the core moved away from 360, Microsoft's sales were increasing. Look at the chart again, and imagine the Wii curve one step to the right (it launched a year after 360). You'll see--as I'm sure Microsoft did--that even as the Wii audience drained away, Kinect was going strong. It must've seemed like they were successfully siphoning that audience...and no one could've confidently predicted otherwise. So if you worked at Microsoft, how would you have sold a change? "Our new strategy is leading to better sales and bigger profits! So let's reverse it!"
 

donny2112

Member
Interesting the gradient of the drop off is similar too.

PS2's Year 5 is ignorable. That's the transition to PS2Slim, and they had bad shortages that year. Basically wipe that out and draw a line between Years 4 and 6 instead. Wii just had a terrible drop-off due to price kept too high too long and massive lack of industry support. Really unprecedented for a sales-wise market-leading console even despite the power differences. The industry just never really figured out, on the whole, what to do with Wii, and Nintendo didn't do near enough to help them overcome that blinding confusion on their parts.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
So while the Wii U hardware base is growing very slowly, do folks think that the release of Mario Kart & Smash has helped increase the active userbase of the Wii U quite a bit? Seeing some first party titles actually somewhat sell seems like a nice change of pace compared to the software sales pre-Mario Kart 8.
 
Jesus, the X1, even back to the "giving away price" is getting creamed by the PS4 on the Amazon hourly charts. This can only get worse with big hitter exclusives on the way for PS4 and nothing for MS until Halo 5.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Jesus, the X1, even back to the "giving away price" is getting creamed by the PS4 on the Amazon hourly charts. This can only get worse with big hitter exclusives on the way for PS4 and nothing for MS until Halo 5.

this means practically nothing. there's no scale at all using the the amazon daily charts.
it's still early in the product lifestyle, so you're looking at small windows of data points in what is likely the 3rd-4th biggest customer in terms of marketshare for the product

Edit:

I should clarify, by customer I mean Retailer.
And by market share, I mean of the total products sold thru to consumers (in this case, xbox one) the % of them actually sold by that specific retailer
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
this means practically nothing. there's no scale at all using the the amazon daily charts.
it's still early in the product lifestyle, so you're looking at small windows of data points in what is likely the 3rd-4th biggest customer in terms of marketshare for the product

Yup plus Amazon only represents about like 6% of the US video game market?

I guess no one cares about my thoughts on whether the games after MK8 kind of reenergized/grew the active userbase of the Wii U despite sluggish hardware sales (like got folks who already own a Wii U but weren't playing it to buy games and start using it again).
 
lol it's been long established now that Amazon's best sellers list is an excellent barometer for who wins NPD. If it isn't against the rules, I'd be willing to bet PS4 wins January NPD easily.

Anyway, that isn't the point. The point is, during the holidays, the X1 battered the competition because that $50 + free game clearly was a huge incentive to buyers, yet post-holidays it isn't doing a thing to stop PS4 being back in top selling position.
 
I'm just asking because I don't know, and this thread has over a thousand posts -

do we typically nowadays only get the order of sales with NPDs from vets but not the individual number of units sold per month?

I looked at the OP and saw that Ps4 & xbone combined sold 2.33 million units.
 

Mory Dunz

Member
So while the Wii U hardware base is growing very slowly, do folks think that the release of Mario Kart & Smash has helped increase the active userbase of the Wii U quite a bit? Seeing some first party titles actually somewhat sell seems like a nice change of pace compared to the software sales pre-Mario Kart 8.

Yeah, the active userbase is probably their best bet right now for garnering sales.
The performance of stuff like Toad, Kirby, and Splatoon will be telling. (And Hyrule).

Kirby will probably be a little lower simply because of the control style. Heck, GAF threads have already shown this sentiment.

And who says they don't take risks with their IPs? ;)
 

GamerJM

Banned
Kinect was way more successful than anyone would have thought. Its effect was unlike previous "casualizations" (unique, as far as I know). Just look at the chart: 360 sales in years 6, 7, and 8 were higher than in any of the previous 5 years. Every other console on the chart--even the blazing Wii and mighty PS2--had a different trajectory. Kinect was gigantic.


But even if it were true that the core moved away from 360, Microsoft's sales were increasing. Look at the chart again, and imagine the Wii curve one step to the right (it launched a year after 360). You'll see--as I'm sure Microsoft did--that even as the Wii audience drained away, Kinect was going strong. It must've seemed like they were successfully siphoning that audience...and no one could've confidently predicted otherwise. So if you worked at Microsoft, how would you have sold a change? "Our new strategy is leading to better sales and bigger profits! So let's reverse it!"

To be fair I feel as though the 360's trajectory is unusual partially due to things like Minecraft 360 and the continued popularity of Call of Duty, though I'm certain the Kinect also played a very significant part.
 
So while the Wii U hardware base is growing very slowly, do folks think that the release of Mario Kart & Smash has helped increase the active userbase of the Wii U quite a bit? Seeing some first party titles actually somewhat sell seems like a nice change of pace compared to the software sales pre-Mario Kart 8.
Is it a re-energized more active userbase... or is it just the software that the userbase bought the system for, i.e. Nintendo software, releasing and thus, giving them something to be active about.
 

AniHawk

Member
Is it a re-energized more active userbase... or is it just the software that the userbase bought the system for, i.e. Nintendo software, releasing and thus, giving them something to be active about.

well a year ago, the ceiling for a non-major title seemed to be about 250k in the us. pikmin 3, the budget release of new super luigi u, and lego city undercover didn't clear that hurdle in 2013. in 2014, the ceiling seems to be higher - dkc tf did 440k, hyrule warriors did 370k, and captain toad did 250k in just five weeks. about the only comparable thing that didn't do better year over year was the sonic game. but considering the 3ds version sold worse than last year's effort too, that might be chalked up more to word of mouth more than anything.

i doubt hardware sales do anything better than stay steady year over year, but i wouldn't be surprised if a more regular release schedule keeps these people buying games month after month. i think one of the biggest issues software on the wii u had in 2013 and through most of 2014 was the stop and go nature of the release schedule.
 
PS4 definitely has this month. The gap has grown between it and the X1 on the hourly charts over the past couple of days.

This would be par the course for last year but this is the $349 ACU bundle, and it's getting creamed.
 

RBK

Banned
PS4 definitely has this month. The gap has grown between it and the X1 on the hourly charts over the past couple of days.

This would be par the course for last year but this is the $349 ACU bundle, and it's getting creamed.

The gap has been the same all month, let's be serious now.
 

arevin01

Member
Well the Wii U was doing so badly that the only place it could go was up. Even though the XB1 is far behind PS4 in global sales, it is still a successful console this early in age.
 
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