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[quest]

The 360 market is really saturated and I don't think Gears of War 2 is going to make people rush out and buy a 360 when most of those people bought a 360 for the first game. Fable 2 is not a system seller either. A price drop is going to help them, but then you have to look at some of the games Sony has coming out. Resistance 2 will be every bit as big as Gears of War 2.

You had me till the end no way Resistance 2 comes close to selling what gears does in NA this x-mass. The 360 will be stagnet till there is a price cut.

 

[FrankT]

my toys r us had 20 wiis sitting on the shelves... for like 2 weeks. i walked in and grabbed one up because my girl's broke down. demand is slower than i am use to seeing

What happened to it exactly? Because mine bricked as well. Mine would just not turn on at all and I believe the wife left it on all night, but you wouldn't think that would do it. Although my Target had no replacements.

 

[TheGreatDave]

It's kinda sad Boom Blox didn't do better. Top 30 is fine, I guess, but it's the sort of game I think could be really popular with the right push behind it. It just seems like such a universal appeal, I don't understand how anybody could dislike playing it.

 

[Tideas]

Another fugly month for the HD consoles.

And is the PS2 really so limited in choice that actual humans would choose to play Iron Man?

by now I think the ppl that are buying PS2 games are the ones buying the used ones from gamestop

It could account why no PS2 games are showing up on the systems charts anymore even though the console is selling hundreds of thousands

This is the slowest moving NPD thread in the history of NeoGAF...

blame Metal Gear solid 4

 

[Digital-Hero]

Amazing,! Go PS3!

 

[laserbeam]

by now I think the ppl that are buying PS2 games are the ones buying the used ones from gamestop

It could account why no PS2 games are showing up on the systems charts anymore even though the console is selling hundreds of thousands



blame Metal Gear solid 4

Theres not exactly a ton of new PS2 games coming out anymore.
Last Month broke the camels back. For the forseeable future NPD threads will be much smaller.

Was this way when PS2 dominated its generation. Eventually reality set in and it was boredom. NPD will not be exciting for the losing Consoles ever again this generation

 

[Narag]

blame Metal Gear solid 4

More like the 30+ bans from the 360 RPG and PA threads.

 

[pgtl_10]

I guess the thing that always surprises me about the way that people on this board react to sales numbers is that all that seems to matter is quantity sold.

To me, that seems like a pretty narrow lens to view sales numbers through.

I mean, one of the biggest factors for software sales that I can see is that you get a "free" 20 percent boost on the HD console side.

For example:

GTA 360 numbers: 871300

at $60 per unit

gross: 52278000

at $50 per unit

gross: 43565000

$10 seems like a small number, but once you are dealing with this kind of quantity, you're gaining an extra ~8.7 million dollars gross off the aggregate sale for a single region, single format, and single month. This doesn't even take into account the usual suspects like capability of duel-console release, popularity of supplemental inflow from DLC, viability of collectors' edition sets, etc. It's just merely talking about the qualitative results of the established acceptable respective price tags of the system differential.

Pretty regularly, I see people point to the fact that big core-gamer focussed HD games are more expensive to produce than many Wii equivalents, but it seems to me like that cost differential gets offset fairly easily. From what I've heard, budgets in the range of ~20 million dollars are still "high end" for the bulk of the space, while big Wii games are, what.... ~10 million? So it's worth keeping in mind, at least, that by the time you reach 1m in sales or thereabouts, you've already offset the difference in price tag to create the game for "HD," and, of course - any additional sales will raise your profits sharply thereafter.

Hey, I know 1m sounds like a big ticket, but if you take that differential worldwide, across dual formats, you add up to that pretty quickly. 200k per region, per console already gets you there and over, right? It's not exactly unfeasible.

So just to further the example and really drive it home - let's say that you manage to sell 2 million units globally of your $20 million PS3/360 title.

The differential between Wii game sales of $50 and 360 or PS3 sales at $60 is equal to, strangely enough, $20million dollars. In other words, it was "free" to develop the game on the HD console, as opposed to "costing" you $10 million to produce on Wii.

1. The problem with this logic is that game prices supposedly rose to make up for rising game costs. The twenty million dollars extra you claim makes a game free actually only allows the developer to reach the profitably they would have in previous generations.

2. GTA 4 is believed to cost a $100 million.

3. Most Wii franchises don't come close to $10 million. I highly doubt top franchise would cost more than $8 million (There are exceptions of course)

4. Namco said that they need double the sales to break even for a 360/PS3 game than a Wii game.

 

[OldJadedGamer]

The 360 market is really saturated and I don't think Gears of War 2 is going to make people rush out and buy a 360 when most of those people bought a 360 for the first game. Fable 2 is not a system seller either. A price drop is going to help them, but then you have to look at some of the games Sony has coming out. Resistance 2 will be every bit as big as Gears of War 2.

How can you even come to this conclusion considering that since it's release in November 2006 to today, Resistance for the PS3 has barely sold 800k total in the US. On the other hand, Gears of War sold that many units alone in it's first month in the US.

So Gears of War in one month outsold Resistance in 18 months... but Resistance 2 will outsell Gears of War 2?

 

[ShockingAlberto]

The 360 market is really saturated and I don't think Gears of War 2 is going to make people rush out and buy a 360 when most of those people bought a 360 for the first game. Fable 2 is not a system seller either. A price drop is going to help them, but then you have to look at some of the games Sony has coming out. Resistance 2 will be every bit as big as Gears of War 2.

So let me get this straight.

No one will buy a 360 for Gears of War 2 because everyone who wanted it bought one for the original.

But Resistance 2 is going to blow the doors open for the PS3.

 

[schuelma]

Some worldwide install base estimates (remember-we don't get much data from Europe, so I just estimate)

Wii- 25.8M

360- 17M

PS3- 10.9M

 

[Man God]

So let me get this straight.

No one will buy a 360 for Gears of War 2 because everyone who wanted it bought one for the original.

But Resistance 2 is going to blow the doors open for the PS3.

Not only this but R2 has a decent chance of being a better game but selling less than its forerunner. R1 got a ton of its sales by being a launch title.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Now kick it up to the top-franchise "big players" with something like, 5million units globally, you're talking about an extra 50million dollar gross. It would certainly explain why you're still seeing the Final Fantasy and GTAs and Resident Evils of the world sticking with HD, right. Pretty handy.

Just something to keep in mind.

And just as a caveat - I'm not trying to pitch an argument about the Wii failing or not being as amazing of a sales beast as it is or whatever. It's obviously doing extremely well, and has already cemented itself as a textbook case for disruption strategy (I already know about several leading graduate business school environments that are incorporating Wii into their lectures).

It just seems to me that the "sales analysis" of GAF simply isn't factoring in enough raw, simple business logic to really add up to much of anything beyond pissing contests. Quantity sold isn't even a third of the picture. Directly comparing them in an old-fashioned horse-race the way that many do, just simply doesn't work out.

Just my two cents.

I don't think that many have been saying that the big games can't turn enough of a profit on the HD platforms to justify their development. What was part of Nintendo's party line with the Wii from the beginning was the point that yes, "big" games of the kind we have come to expect to be big games, can get produced on the high end market consoles. But only those big games are safe bets. However true it is or not, part of the Wii concept was to keep a platform around that was safe to develop almost anything on, and not be locked out by a forecast that says you're not going to sell enough to justify a fabulous budget.

It's safe for now, for Final Fantasy, et. all, to stay on the HD consoles. But, marketing rhetoric aside, the industry, HD-platform-wise, does seem to have been moving in the direction of "stranglehold" franchises and genres where you have big posh games at the expense of variety and genuine innovation. Even Microsoft jumped onto this tangent with XBLA (at /first/), holding it up as the safe outlet for experiments and unique games.

 

[jibblypop]

The sales really mirror what I see everyday. I have a Wii and a new xbox360. When people came over today I wanted to show off the 360 because I just got it this week so I really want to play the newest thing I have but no one will accept that. "Let's just play the Wii" is what I heard from my friends. It was like they humored me to look at a few 360 games before just losing patience and begging for Mario Kart.
The public has definitely spoken for this console generation and it's loud and clear.

Having said that I think both consoles are equally good but the general appeal of Wii is so obvious.

 

[Speevy]

Some worldwide install base estimates (remember-we don't get much data from Europe, so I just estimate)

Wii- 25.8M

360- 17M

PS3- 10.9M

So pretty much the entire deficit between the Xbox 360 and PS3 is composed of US numbers?

So that means a virtual tie in LTD numbers in Europe?

 

[SapientWolf]

It's kinda sad Boom Blox didn't do better. Top 30 is fine, I guess, but it's the sort of game I think could be really popular with the right push behind it. It just seems like such a universal appeal, I don't understand how anybody could dislike playing it.

Most people don't browse game forums, so there's no way for them to tell if it's gold or shovelware. Let's be honest, you can't tell from the box alone. Not having a demo for this game (even a cut down version for the PC) was a failed opportunity.

The same thing happened to the stellar Moonbase Commander.

 

[Malleymal]

What happened to it exactly? Because mine bricked as well. Mine would just not turn on at all and I believe the wife left it on all night, but you wouldn't think that would do it. Although my Target had no replacements.

we played mario kart for a little while one night, and then the next day i pick up wii fit from toys r us(the weekend wii fit comes out)..i go to sync the footboard and the disc just wont load, and then mario kart wont load, and neither would wii sport. So i get the disc to load sometimes but not all the time or it dies off during loading.

So i went back to the same toys r us and and got a new one.. havent hooked it up yet.. I am set on fixing the old one...

 

[schuelma]

So pretty much the entire deficit between the Xbox 360 and PS3 is composed of US numbers?

So that means a virtual tie in LTD numbers in Europe?

No- PS3 has about a 1.5M lead in Japan.

 

[Man God]

Some worldwide install base estimates (remember-we don't get much data from Europe, so I just estimate)

Wii- 25.8M

360- 17M

PS3- 10.9M

MS said they had 19M in their NPD press.

 

[schuelma]

MS said they had 19M in their NPD press.

I realize that, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft has usually used shipment numbers when talking about their worldwide sales. If Microsoft is correct, 360 would have like 8.5M sales from PAL regions..which just can't be correct given the data we have gotten.

 

[jedimike]

Time for a healthy price drop on the 360. Ditch the arcade and go to 2 sku's...

20G White for $249

120G Black w/wireless for $349

 

[Liquid]

No- PS3 has about a 1.5M lead in Japan.

ps3 sells like 7k a week now in japan. i dont think anyone but nintendo cares about japan at this point.

 

[harSon]

I realize that, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft has usually used shipment numbers when talking about their worldwide sales. If Microsoft is correct, 360 would have like 8.5M sales from PAL regions..which just can't be correct given the data we have gotten.

You mean the nearly non existent PAL data?

 

[FrankT]

I realize that, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft has usually used shipment numbers when talking about their worldwide sales. If Microsoft is correct, 360 would have like 8.5M sales from PAL regions..which just can't be correct given the data we have gotten.

I don't think so as they reported their shipped numbers/sold retail at the end of March 08 in their quarter end financial report as 19 million. They are talking sold to real people WW as it's been two months and some change since those end of qaurter numbers were released. New shipped/sold to retail numbers should hit by the end of the month when MS reports again or sometime next month can't recall exactley the date they report again.

 

[kame-sennin]

Someone needs to ask them what they are trying to accomplish here with this console.

Why should Microsoft price drop? Why would they dramatically slash their profit margins for a 2-3 month hardware bump, after which point they'll drop down to ~200/250k monthly sales - at decreased revenue, no less.

What they're trying to accomplish with this console is profitability. They're not going to hold a fire sale in order to NOT catch the Wii and gain a marginal amount of mindshare.

 

[schuelma]

You mean the nearly non existent PAL data?

Its not a ton, but we've gotten periodic hardware LTD's from different countries occasionally.

 

[Dragon]

ps3 sells like 7k a week now in japan. i dont think anyone but nintendo cares about japan at this point.

If SCEJ got off its ass and actually released some decent games, maybe that'd change.

 

[laserbeam]

If SCEJ got off its ass and actually released some decent games, maybe that'd change.

theres alot of maybes that Sony could consider.

Maybe if they had focused on the legacy of the PS2 and what made it successful and not made a glorified Blu Ray movie player theyd be number one

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

Why should Microsoft price drop? Why would they dramatically slash their profit margins for a 2-3 month hardware bump, after which point they'll drop down to ~200/250k monthly sales - at decreased revenue, no less.

What they're trying to accomplish with this console is profitability. They're not going to hold a fire sale in order to NOT catch the Wii and gain a marginal amount of mindshare.

They've had a $50 price drop in almost 3 years. If the price drop is substantial, I think they will get more than a 2-3 month bump.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Seriously. Took me a minute just to get them adblocked. That's how laggy Firefox was being.

There's your problem, not the GIFs.

 

[Hunahan]

1. The problem with this logic is that game prices supposedly rose to make up for rising game costs. The twenty million dollars extra you claim makes a game free actually only allows the developer to reach the profitably they would have in previous generations.

Profits made last generation are irrelevant. What matters is what their options are for making money right now.

2. GTA 4 is believed to cost a $100 million.

And GTA has already made that 100 million back.

More related to the point, they've already sold ~4.16 million units in the NA region alone.

Estimate the rest of the world by what we've been told and include shipping totals rather than retail, and we're easily looking at $70million gross above what it would have done on the Wii at $50.

Either way, I think everyone here can easily admit that GTA is an exception to the rule when it comes to game budgets, on Wii, HD consoles, or wherever. It's not a great example to use for budget.

I know you're not going to try and argue that Rockstar would have put out GTA:Wii for less than 10 million bucks, right. So I don't really understand the point.

3. Most Wii franchises don't come close to $10 million. I highly doubt top franchise would cost more than $8 million (There are exceptions of course)

All right.

I'll even give you the lowball estimate.

At 4 million sales for the next Resident Evil game, the difference in game-budget could be 40million dollars and it would still break even between the two options.

So you could take this ridiculously low 8 million dollar budgetted Resident Evil Wii game, and compare it directly with a blockbuster 48million budgetted Ps3/360 game and they will generate the same revenue.

That's a damning statement for break-even considering the relative size of userbases right now. Especially since I can tell you right now that in terms of damaging your brand, a cheap-o 8 million dollar RE main series title would seriously hurt their next title.

4. Namco said that they need double the sales to break even for a 360/PS3 game than a Wii game.

"Double" means nothing.

What kind of numbers are they talking about. What kind of games.

250k vs. 500k?
500k vs. 1m?
1m vs. 2m?

Depending on the scale of the game, that "double" is going to be a very different feat of accomplishment.

And, honestly, if all you have to do is sell two times as many copies of Soul Calibur 4 as you did of Soul Calibur Legends, then big deal. They'll do that in their sleep.

Namco has said a lot of things.

They are all too vague to be taken seriously.

What doesn't change is that there is a 20% gross revenue gap between the two options. That's a lot bigger than people give it credit for.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

I'm dead serious. I hate the Wii.

This is an expertly done P.R. Very misleading in parts, but I read it in admiration.

Wow. :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

 

[schuelma]

Wow. :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

The first post was a joke, the second was kind of serious..that P.R was misleading,etc...but to the untrained eye it will be effective, which is all Sony P.R cares about.

 

[Evlar]

What doesn't change is that there is a 20% gross revenue gap between the two options. That's a lot bigger than people give it credit for.

It's a significant reason why Wii software will more and more frequently dominate the charts from here forward. How's that for giving it credit?

 

[DumbNameD]

What happened to it exactly? Because mine bricked as well. Mine would just not turn on at all and I believe the wife left it on all night, but you wouldn't think that would do it. Although my Target had no replacements.

Mine wouldn't turn on this week. No power, no light. I think it may have had to do with power issues from the weather, which, I think, killed the AC adapter and wireless part of my router. I thought at the very least I would have to replace the Wii's AC adapter. However, I followed the steps at the link to reset the AC adapter, and this seemed to have worked.
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/ts/power.jsp

 

[jts]

Time for a healthy price drop on the 360. Ditch the arcade and go to 2 sku's...

20G White for $249

120G Black w/wireless for $349

The Arcade is cool, let it be. A barebones Falcon X360 that comes for cheap, excellent for both an entry level on the current generarion and a nice replacement for those you fear/have been pwnt by the mighty RROD.

It costs currently 204€ in Europe, but for the level of prices you are suggesting for the other SKUs it could cost $189 or something which would do nothing but help MS's sales.

 

[Hunahan]

I don't think that many have been saying that the big games can't turn enough of a profit on the HD platforms to justify their development. What was part of Nintendo's party line with the Wii from the beginning was the point that yes, "big" games of the kind we have come to expect to be big games, can get produced on the high end market consoles. But only those big games are safe bets. However true it is or not, part of the Wii concept was to keep a platform around that was safe to develop almost anything on, and not be locked out by a forecast that says you're not going to sell enough to justify a fabulous budget.

It's safe for now, for Final Fantasy, et. all, to stay on the HD consoles. But, marketing rhetoric aside, the industry, HD-platform-wise, does seem to have been moving in the direction of "stranglehold" franchises and genres where you have big posh games at the expense of variety and genuine innovation. Even Microsoft jumped onto this tangent with XBLA (at /first/), holding it up as the safe outlet for experiments and unique games.

Yep. I totally agree with everything you said.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

The biggest news of this month is FAMILY FUCKING WE SKI sitting at NUMBER FUCKING TWELVE. That means it sold at LEAST 90 000 units... and that means it has ALREADY SOLD to over 1/7 of WiiFits "tiny" userbase.

That is insane. I had it pegged to absolutely bomb at under 10k for debut.


The "tide" is indeed turning, but it isn't exactly the way some were hoping.

I was checking out Target, Walmart, etc. flyers the week Wii Fit released and they all had it heavily advertised with a big "COMPATABLE WITH THE WII BALANCE BOARD" sticker thingy on it.

Awesome news that it and Boom Blox did well. <3

 

[Hunahan]

It's a significant reason why Wii software will more and more frequently dominate the charts from here forward. How's that for giving it credit?

Well....

I can give you credit for not making any sense whatsoever.

Nicely done.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

The Arcade is cool, let it be. A barebones Falcon X360 that comes for cheap, excellent for both an entry level on the current generarion and a nice replacement for those you fear/have been pwnt by the mighty RROD.

NO. NO MORE FUCKING SKUs.

Two is more than enough, goddamnit.

 

[Cipherr]

What doesn't change is that there is a 20% gross revenue gap between the two options. That's a lot bigger than people give it credit for.

Theres also a bigger gap in the development costs of a Wii game vs a HD game. A much bigger gap than you seem to be willing to acknowledge. You are arguing figures that you really cant back up, in fact noone can really, because unless someone comes out and gives them to us your just pulling them out of your rear, as are the people opposing you. Not to mention that it would skew differently depending on whether or not the game was multi platform or exclusive and whether or not the game sold at a 1:1 ratio on both consoles or if the Wii version sold MORE than the HD version (and it has happened with multiplats many times this gen).

The whole 10$ extra (which isnt all just going into their pockets any damn way) vs the development costs debate isnt anywhere NEAR as easy to lay out as your acting like it is. We need a lot of information to make conclusions on that, and even then it would be a waste of time, because each game would need to be taken on a case by case basis depending on the variables.

 

[FrankT]

Mine wouldn't turn on this week. No power, no light. I think it may have had to do with power issues from the weather, which, I think, killed the AC adapter and wireless part of my router. I thought at the very least I would have to replace the Wii's AC adapter. However, I followed the steps at the link to reset the AC adapter, and this seemed to have worked.
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/ts/power.jsp

Weird I wish I had tried that because we have had some pretty bad storms and my other thought was maybe it got zapped, but nothing else on the power strip was out. That is what I had as well, no power and no light. I just didn't see a way of resetting it, but I should have looked online. Even weirder though my router on another power strip did get zapped and I had to replace it last week as well.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

That sums it up pretty well.

Though its not as profound as last month, from Nintendo's perspective, it still is....

(no Trek this time - spot the obscure reference though if you can...)

Amazing.

 

[acevans2]

How many units did Haze sell?

haha

 

[careful]

Would've been a bigger shock if not for the "GTA4 didn't move consoles in May" analysts warnings.
Should spoiler tag NPD spoilers next time.. :lol

June should be interesting for MGS4 + 80gb bundle.
Rest of summer could also be interesting if MS announces a price cut at E3.

 

[Avrum]

How many units did Haze sell?

haha

*shakes magic 8 ball*

 

[Tmac]

wow, those 360 numbers keep surpising me (negatively of course)

 

[titiklabingapat]

my toys r us had 20 wiis sitting on the shelves... for like 2 weeks. i walked in and grabbed one up because my girl's broke down. demand is slower than i am use to seeing

That's an easy $500 just sitting on the shelves. Prices are rising on ebay, btw.

 

[Vilix]

That sums it up pretty well.

Someone needs to replace the heads of the first and second goons with a 360 and PS3 respectively. ^_^

 

[mugwhump]

Pretty regularly, I see people point to the fact that big core-gamer focussed HD games are more expensive to produce than many Wii equivalents, but it seems to me like that cost differential gets offset fairly easily. From what I've heard, budgets in the range of ~20 million dollars are still "high end" for the bulk of the space, while big Wii games are, what.... ~10 million? So it's worth keeping in mind, at least, that by the time you reach 1m in sales or thereabouts, you've already offset the difference in price tag to create the game for "HD," and, of course - any additional sales will raise your profits sharply thereafter.

I think you're slightly underestimating the cost difference. From what developers have said, HD games are more like 2-4 times more expensive.