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NPD Sales Results for March 2013 [Up5: BioShock Infinite]

Hey Creamsugar, if you're still browsing this thread, could you possibly share Wii U top-15 / top-20 software rankings like you usually do?

It's always nice to get an expanded range outside of the typical top-10 that Nintendo reports. :)
 

sinseers

Member
That....is really sad. Really, really sad.


#gamers

That poster isn't totally off base. What would you prefer happen to a console maker (Not handheld maker) who really has lost touch with the home console market? having the console fall flat on its face and die out could be just the kick in the pants Nintendo needs to re-focus. Kinda like how Sony is doing from PS3 to PS4, but without the console falling flat on face.
 
Those MH3G 3D numbers are fucking terrible when put next to the Wii U MH numbers considering the huge disparity in userbase. Hopefully the lesson learned will be put online on the portable versions of MH from now on. Doubt it though. This might be the last time we're seeing MH in the west if Nintendo won't be publishing it.

I wonder how SS will do given these numbers.
I guess Deep Down will be Japan exclusive too then? ;)

The numbers are great overall considering the game had zero advertising and is really a 3 year old (upgraded) port. This is purely the lower bound of the fanbase in terms of sales so these numbers are pretty encouraging, I think MH4 is pretty much a sure bet for localization and will probably now get a nice campaign behind it.

For comparison, here's the first NPD for some related titles that had large ad campaigns (including frequent television commercials) behind them:

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) 68k
Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) 121k
Dragon's Dogma (360, PS3) 92k
 
For a 5-week period, this must be a disappointing report for the Vita and Wii-U.

Vita needs a price cut.

Wii U...Man, I don't know if it will ever get its legs. I don't think Nintendo software will go far enough to pull it through. I guess hope for great games though like GCN?

My estimate is they are selling between 30K to 40K Wii U's a week worldwide currently based off the reports from the three regions. That would point to what? Approximately 1 million consoles sold worldwide by next holiday season and the release of the other new consoles? Not good IMHO.
 

Mario007

Member
I guess Deep Down will be Japan exclusive too then? ;)

The numbers are great overall considering the game had zero advertising and is really a 3 year old (upgraded) port. This is purely the lower bound of the fanbase in terms of sales so these numbers are pretty encouraging, I think MH4 is pretty much a sure bet for localization and will probably now get a nice campaign behind it.

For comparison, here's the first NPD for some related titles that had large ad campaigns (including frequent television commercials) behind them:

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) 68k
Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) 121k
Dragon's Dogma (360, PS3) 92k
Well given the numbers you posted it is clear that no one is really buying these games, or rather that the numbers are pretty static. And honestly 3DS numbers are horrible no matter what way you look at them when seen in conjunction with Wii U numbers. I doubt we'll see MH4 is it's not published by Nintendo or it isn't another 2 year delay.

Also please don't confuse Dragons' Dogma with Monster Hunter. The games are fundamentally different.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
IRu4Kjb.jpg


On a weekly basis.

Ah thats much better, was frustrated by the weird January lines touching when thats not the reality with it tracking below at every point.
 

Mario007

Member
When I woke up to see the updated numbers...my god the Vita is on a downward spiral.
It'll stay that way until at least september when I assume Sony is prepping for a price cut to coincide with killzone, tearaway, FIFA, FF X HD and Batman.

Actually maybe you'll see a small bump next month thanks to SS, but there are no bundles for it so I kinda doubt it.
 
For a 5-week period, this must be a disappointing report for the Vita and Wii-U.

Vita needs a price cut.


Wii U...Man, I don't know if it will ever get its legs. I don't think Nintendo software will go far enough to pull it through. I guess hope for great games though like GCN?

My estimate is they are selling between 30K to 40K Wii U's a week worldwide currently based off the reports from the three regions. That would point to what? Approximately 1 million consoles sold worldwide by next holiday season and the release of the other new consoles? Not good IMHO.

With 3DS at 230K and Vita at 33K, that's a disparate difference of 696% in handheld sales.

"Disappointing" isn't an appropriate adjective for the current state of Vita sales.

With sales trends like this, I expect Vita to become essentially a Sony accessory by FY 2014 (next March). :p
 
Missed the Mirror of Fate number from earlier. I'm glad they at least attempted to move past the stale Igavania formula, but it was hard not to see that coming; hopefully, Konami and MS weren't expecting the 3DS version alone to be profitable.

It is essentially doing sub-Vita numbers, post-Launch.

Weekly sales in post-launch months for PSV and Wii U.
ADusQcJ.png


I didn't include launch month, as averaging is relatively meaningless (they weren't on the market for the whole of their respective months), but for reference purposes:
PSV (Feb) = 225K
WIU (Nov) = 425K

It's probably also worth noting that the PSV's 2nd Month was March, while Wii U's was December.

This is actually the second time, launch aligned, the PSV's weekly sales have been better than Wii U's.
Now do 5 months.

I was thinking more of Vita's current sales, but still... LOL. But I maintain that the titles I mentioned will significantly boost hardware sales until proven otherwise. Probably not significantly enough to save it from GC sales or worse, but still a substantial improvement from how it's selling now.
 

Gartooth

Member
Good god the Wii U is a disaster, and all Nintendo is doing is staying quiet without saying anything. Guess the rumors of a relaunch will probably end up being true.
I await ambassador games round 2.
 

liger05

Member
With 3DS at 230K and Vita at 33K, that's a disparate difference of 696% in handheld sales.

"Disappointing" isn't an appropriate adjective for the current state of Vita sales.

With sales trends like this, I expect Vita to become essentially a Sony accessory by FY 2014 (next March). :p

The difference in expectations between the 3DS and Vita is huge. The 3DS at 230k is seen as good not excellent. The Vita would kill for a 100k month!!

How would the Vita look against the PSP right now over the same period?
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Guys, no one else celebrating the green thunder? 365k at retail and 50k digitally in just two weeks. 415k in 14 days of availability...it's probably the biggest surprise of the month

For comparison:

Super Mario 3D Land - 625k in two weeks, with Black Friday included
NSMB2 - 240k in its first week in August
 
GameCube did launch against the PS2, however, which had already begun its rise to dominance.

Want to see some historical NPD sales?

PS2 in the first three months of 2001 (3 through 5 months after launch) sold a whopping 1,007,000 units.

Meanwhile, Wii U in the first three months of 2013 (2 through 4 months after launch) sold just 189,000 units.

So the PS2 sold 5.3 times as many units the Wii U in essentially the same time period after their North American launch.
 

Mario007

Member
Want to see some historical NPD sales?

PS2 in the first three months of 2001 (3 through 5 months after launch) sold a whopping 1,007,000 units.

Meanwhile, Wii U in the first three months of 2013 (2 through 4 months after launch) sold just 189,000 units.

So the PS2 sold 5.3 times as many units the Wii U in essentially the same time period after their North American launch.
That's a bit of a harsh comparison seeing that pretty much anything that will be compared to PS2 will end up looking bad.
 

Sid

Member
Multiplayer is there to lower the number of trade-ins. It should push sales of new copies post-release month.

In any case I can't see how multiplayer would hurt the game like you're implying. Worst case scenario it makes no difference at all.
First GoW to feature MP and be the worst rated one...coincidence? I think not.Bad of word of mouth would stem from this and go on to affect the sales of the next one.
 
If checkers is comical instead pretend I wrote Sorry, Pictionary, Othello, Scrabble, or some other game. You don't think showing a family playing a board game as a 3 second section of a 30 second TV spot wouldn't help get the versatility of the Gamepad across? in that post I forgot to mention karaoke. It highlights yet another neat way the Gamepad can be used.

im-laughing-way-too-much-at-this-im-dying-here-xd-279044.gif
 
Well given the numbers you posted it is clear that no one is really buying these games, or rather that the numbers are pretty static. And honestly 3DS numbers are horrible no matter what way you look at them when seen in conjunction with Wii U numbers. I doubt we'll see MH4 is it's not published by Nintendo or it isn't another 2 year delay.

Also please don't confuse Dragons' Dogma with Monster Hunter. The games are fundamentally different.
The 3DS numbers really aren't too bad given it was the inferior version (SD textures, no online, worse control options). Anyone who owned both systems had much more incentive to pick up the U SKU. In context, the platform split makes some sense.

The fact that 3U essentially matched Tri with pretty much no promotion behind it (outside Capcom Unity grasssroots efforts) is incredibly encouraging. And this isn't even factoring digital sales, which seem decent going by the eShop charts. I'm not sure how you see Capcom passing on MH4 based off 3U sales really. 3U shows that Tri's audience expansion efforts largely paid off, the fanbase stuck around. MH4 will be the next push to grow it further.

And really, DD isn't all that far off from MH in a lot of respects. Another good comparison would be Lost Planet 2, but we don't have specific numbers for that (between 145k and 85k).
 

Mario007

Member
The 3DS numbers really aren't too bad given it was the inferior version (SD textures, no online, worse control options). Anyone who owned both systems had much more incentive to pick up the U SKU. In context, the platform split makes some sense.

The fact that 3U essentially matched Tri with pretty much no promotion behind it (outside Capcom Unity grasssroots efforts) is incredibly encouraging. And this isn't even factoring digital sales, which seem decent going by the eShop charts. I'm not sure how you see Capcom passing on MH4 based off 3U sales really. 3U shows that Tri's audience expansion efforts largely paid off, the fanbase stuck around. MH4 will be the next push to grow it further.

And really, DD isn't all that far off from MH in a lot of respects. Another good comparison would be Lost Planet 2, but we don't have specific numbers for that (between 145k and 85k).
There's like what, 1 million Wii U owners in the US? That still leaves 7 million out there so your first point doesn't really stand.

The audience for MH is 100k in the US, it always seems to have been from the numbers given. I don't think that's enough of an audience for future localisations. I'm not sure how you can read this into being a success or even showing that MH4 will make its way over to the US.

DD's only similarity is that there are huge monsters against whom you fight. You could say it is more in line with Skyrim than MH.
 

idlewild_

Member
IRu4Kjb.jpg


On a weekly basis.

What does the labeling on the Y-axis indicate? It looks like it is using 50k for NWU vs 25k for GCN, which is a little misleading...

edit: not even that, I'm not sure what's up with the GCN line, but it doesn't seem to match up with the numbers listed at all.
 

DaBoss

Member
Holy shit at the graph...

Well given the numbers you posted it is clear that no one is really buying these games, or rather that the numbers are pretty static. And honestly 3DS numbers are horrible no matter what way you look at them when seen in conjunction with Wii U numbers. I doubt we'll see MH4 is it's not published by Nintendo or it isn't another 2 year delay.

Also please don't confuse Dragons' Dogma with Monster Hunter. The games are fundamentally different.

What? MH3U did great.

Dragon's Dogma is very similar to MH, but has many different mechanics.
 
What does the labeling on the Y-axis indicate? It looks like it is using 50k for NWU vs 25k for GCN, which is a little misleading...

edit: not even that, I'm not sure what's up with the GCN line, but it doesn't seem to match up with the numbers listed at all.

Good catch, some formatting error in Excel.

Vv5xUPO.jpg


Fixed version.

There's something incredibly wrong with this chart given the numbers on the GameCube line and the bars.

Yeah, there was a weird formatting bug, I just remade the chart.
 

Rocky

Banned
Good god the Wii U is a disaster, and all Nintendo is doing is staying quiet without saying anything. Guess the rumors of a relaunch will probably end up being true.
I await ambassador games round 2.

Wonder if they'll be the same ones the 3DS ambassadors got. They did announce GBA games were coming to the Wii U VC.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Good god the Wii U is a disaster, and all Nintendo is doing is staying quiet without saying anything.

What are they going to say? Our system's selling like crap worldwide and we didn't plan on having any games ready for the extended launch window and beyond?
 
So the honest question from these sales and recent announcements is: Does Nintendo have the resources to support two consoles without 3rd party support?

With all those recently announced 3DS titles, it seems for the past year or more A LOT of Nintendo resources have been pegged to the 3DS.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
First GoW to feature MP and be the worst rated one...coincidence? I think not.Bad of word of mouth would stem from this and go on to affect the sales of the next one.

I rented Ascension, and it didn't seem bad at all from what I played of it. The problem all future GoW titles will have is that the bar has been raised so much, that unless there's several epic moments in the game where Kratos is the size of an ant battling an enemy too big for the screen, it's going to be frowned upon.
We're at the point where GoW needs to be one release per generation.
 
There's like what, 1 million Wii U owners in the US? That still leaves 7 million out there so your first point doesn't really stand.

The audience for MH is 100k in the US, it always seems to have been from the numbers given. I don't think that's enough of an audience for future localisations. I'm not sure how you can read this into being a success or even showing that MH4 will make its way over to the US.

DD's only similarity is that there are huge monsters against whom you fight. You could say it is more in line with Skyrim than MH.
MH has a pretty small and extremely dedicated fanbase. With that sort of audience having a massmarket intalled base matters less, it's why some games can actually move decents numbers on tiny userbases. The notion that sales scale proptionately to userbase is really the one with no merit.

The audience is a little north of 100k post-Tri (over 400k ltd btw), previously the series did much worse on PS2/PSP (Unite's 68k debut being the highpoint). 3G shows that audience has been maintained upfront with little real effort on Capcom's part. That's encoraging, there's a sustained larger fanbase to build off now. This really isn't a bad result at all, and has no negative bearing on MH4, which is obviously coming over anyway. And it'll probably outsell Deep Down too. ;)
 

ascii42

Member
I rented Ascension, and it didn't seem bad at all from what I played of it. The problem all future GoW titles will have is that the bar has been raised so much, that unless there's several epic moments in the game where Kratos is the size of an ant battling an enemy too big for the screen, it's going to be frowned upon.
We're at the point where GoW needs to be one release per generation.

Which wouldn't be surprising. There have only been 2 GoW games per system, it just seems like there have been a lot due to the first one coming out so late in the PS2 generation, and the second one coming out after the PS3's launch. I doubt there will be more than one Vita GoW game, if there ever is one.
 
With 3DS at 230K and Vita at 33K, that's a disparate difference of 696% in handheld sales.

"Disappointing" isn't an appropriate adjective for the current state of Vita sales.

With sales trends like this, I expect Vita to become essentially a Sony accessory by FY 2014 (next March). :p

With sales in Japan going back to sub 10K soonish, I believe Sony has 3 options with the vita.

- Strip it down and make it essentially an expensive, $99, PS4 accessory. This option would not do well IMO
- Kill it by March 2014. I.e. ship whatever they are gonna ship this FY and by May 2014, when they give out their FY report, state that the vita project is no more
- Relaunch it with 16/32GB embedded internal memory, hdmi out, tablet, phone SKUs, redesigned store along with app, ebook, mp3 stores, price drop by at least $50, MC price drop by ~50% while introducing 64 and 128GB MCs, and a whole bunch of new games. They would also need to relaunch PSM at the same time as well

If I were Kaz Hirai I would go with the 2nd option to be honest.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
I'm very curious about how Luigi will impact 3DS hardware during April. It had a big debut, with 415k sold in two weeks between retail and digital. It's certainly a much bigger hit than Kid Icarus Uprising last year (140k in its debut week, then 80k in the following four weeks). Heck, it certainly sold more in two weeks than what KI:U sold LTD :lol Last year 3DS did 125k, after a 262k February and a 225k March. This time, we have 190k in February and 230k in March, so a much better trend in the end, no?

Ah, yeah: with just two months counted, Fire Emblem: Awakening already topped Shadow Dragon, 250k LTD.
 
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