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August 2008 NPD Results

Zzoram

Member
Private Hoffman said:
And you'd be wrong about that.

RE5 will clear 400-500k on the PS3 in its first month NPD.

DMC4 did ~250k in its first month on the PS3, and that's a much lesser franchise than RE....not to mention it released before the PS3 really started picking up its momentum in the US.

RE5 should also do great 360 numbers, considering it's exactly the kind of look that 360's base seems to love.
 
Zzoram said:
RE5 should also do great 360 numbers, considering it's exactly the kind of look that 360's base seems to love.

The new emphasis on online co-op and Gears of War style action will certainly play to its favor on both platforms.

This game has been hyped for a while, it's a beloved franchise, and it's releasing pretty much in a month without competition. Expect it to do well. Less than 400-500k for the PS3 and 800+k for the 360 would be shortchanging it, IMHO.
 

donny2112

Member
Private Hoffman said:
And you'd be wrong about that.

So you believe that a multi-platform RE5 will, in a Spring month, sell in the same stratum as MGS4 (one of the longest anticipated exclusive games of the PS3 along with FFXIII, before it went multi-platform), GTAIV ("game of the generation"), and two huge titles in November/December?

Good luck with that.
 
donny2112 said:
So you believe that a multi-platform RE5 will, in a Spring month, sell in the same stratum as MGS4 (one of the longest anticipated exclusive games of the PS3 along with FFXIII, before it went multi-platform), GTAIV ("game of the generation"), and two huge titles in November/December?

Good luck with that. :p

Sell in the same stratum as GTA4 and MGS4? No, clearing 400-500k would be selling roughly half of what MGS4 sold in June.

Also, while MGS4 has a very hardcore following, I feel RE5 has a bit wider appeal and is more accessible overall.

RE4 sold something like 1.6 million on the GC and 2 million on the PS2. Overall, including the Wii, it probably outsold MGS3.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that across two platforms it will sell around 1.2 million in its first month (400k PS3, 800k 360).
 

botticus

Member
donny2112 said:
You mean like that analyst that had the Wii showing negative growth in 2012? Where's that cool chart when you need it.
2011, actually.

wii_ps3_xbox_forecast_425.jpg
 

jgwhiteus

Member
By the way, I guess people don't pay as much attention to the NPD PC charts (also, there are no numbers, and it doesn't cover digital distribution), but I did find this sorta interesting. Spore debuted at #2 two weeks ago (August 31 - September 6), behind the Sims 2 Apartment Life (which was released the previous week at #1)...even if Spore released Friday (or was it supposed to be later? Thought it was Friday), I don't think that suggests stratospheric first-day retail sales...though it's hard to tell without numbers. I'm guessing it was probably downloaded a lot more vs. the Sims, though, and it'll probably be #1 in the next week's charts...just thought it was intriguing given the huge expectations and the DRM backlash, etc.

1. The Sims 2: Apartment Life
2. Spore
3. Spore Creature Creator
4. WoW: Battle Chest
5. The Sims 2: Double Deluxe
6. World Of Warcraft
7. WoW: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
8. The Sims 2: Apartment Life Limited Collection
9. Warcraft III Battle Chest
10. Crysis

http://kotaku.com/5051520/npd-pc-sales-charts-august-31-+-september-6
 

jay

Member
test_account said:
Did they explain how they manage to have a smaller Wii installbase in 2011 compared to 2010? Hehe :)

I just noticed the 360 install base goes down too. Is it at all normal to attempt to predict "install base" instead of sales? It seems to be the only way they can show the PS3 on top. Also it takes absurd assumptions like people throwing their systems out. How would you model that?
 

test_account

XP-39C²
jay said:
I just noticed the 360 install base goes down too. Is it at all normal to attempt to predict "install base" instead of sales? It seems to be the only way they can show the PS3 on top. Also it takes absurd assumptions like people throwing their systems out. How would you model that?
Thanks for pointing that out, i now see that it goes for the Xbox 360 as well :)

Ye, i thought about the install base instead of sales, but the only way i can think of on how an install base can go down is if people throw away their stuff, in this case their consoles. I dont think too many people throw away their consoles after some years. Atleast i dont hope so for their own sake :) Of course, maybe the consoles might stop working after some years, but i dunno if alot of people throw their consoles away because of this though, but who knows :)
 

Walshicus

Member
jay said:
I just noticed the 360 install base goes down too. Is it at all normal to attempt to predict "install base" instead of sales? It seems to be the only way they can show the PS3 on top. Also it takes absurd assumptions like people throwing their systems out. How would you model that?
Maybe they subtract a yearly non-repaired defect percentage?

Still a stupid graph though.
 

Rad Agast

Member
donny2112 said:
And now Dead Rising will be on Wii, and Lost Planet is on PS3. Again, the original maker of the game doesn't have to sacrifice any "vision" for their game to appear on other platforms.


I beg to differ. Not sure if you played Dead Rising on a 360 but any one who enjoyed that game will be disapointed with the Wii version. The number of zombies on screen have been cut back dramatically.

Dead Rising on Wii is a good thing to expand the franchise but don't try to make it sound like it's the same game as the original. So yeah, visions have been sacrificed.
 

[Nintex]

Member
Rad Agast said:
I beg to differ. Not sure if you played Dead Rising on a 360 but any one who enjoyed that game will be disapointed with the Wii version. The number of zombies on screen have been cut back dramatically.

Dead Rising on Wii is a good thing to expand the franchise but don't try to make it sound like it's the same game as the original. So yeah, visions have been sacrificed.
Inafune had two visions:
1) Kick Mikami out
2) Make money

What did he sacrifice?
 
donny2112 said:
It's good to know there are people out there who realize the PS1 and PS2 didn't have the best quality games in everyone's opinion. Sales != Quality.

People don't think that the PS1 and PS2 have the best libraries because of sales; people think that because they have the best libraries. Both systems have such a dominating share of the overall software titles from their generation that there are many genres where their libraries are literally uncontested, and many others where those systems can offer more critically-acclaimed titles than their competitors offer titles at all. Outside of wildly specific taste (or, more commonly, 1st-party-developer dedication) there is essentially no way to make a well-reasoned argument that the N64, (US) Saturn, Xbox, or Gamecube even competes with the PS1 or PS2 library in any kind of objective way.


No, I do not believe that RE5 will sell 400-500K in its debut month NPD listing.

400k is not unreasonable for a high-end launch month estimate for RE5. RE4 did 320k in its launch month on the GameCube, and RE5 should see at least some boost from positioning itself as a co-op shooter game.

I do agree that being a "beloved franchise" has nothing to do with it, though; RE was always a successful franchise but not a huge one, and last generation reduced its sales stature by quite a bit.
 
360 DEVIL MAY CRY 4* CAPCOM USA 8-Feb 295.2K 2
PS3 DEVIL MAY CRY 4* CAPCOM USA 8-Feb 233.5K 4

If you combine the SKUs then DMC4 did indeed sell more then 500k in its opening month. However, I believe donny is arguing that RE5 for the PS3 will not sell 400K in its opening month, which is not an unreasonable argument.
 

llonesmiz

Member
Son of Godzilla said:
What the bizarro fucking fuck? RE5 is releasing in february or something ain't it? Fucking DMC managed to sell more than 500k didn't it?
DMC(360+PS3) was a little over 500k last February, but the discussion was about the PS3 version specifically. Sho_Nuff82 said that the PS3 version of RE5 would outsell in March 09 the LTD sales of RE4 WII and donny disagreed.

Beaten.
 

Rad Agast

Member
[Nintex] said:
Inafune had two visions:
1) Kick Mikami out
2) Make money

What did he sacrifice?


His humanity!

Did I win some thing?


Son of Godzilla said:
What the bizarro fucking fuck? RE5 is releasing in february or something ain't it? Fucking DMC managed to sell more than 500k didn't it?

I don't know, is any one here really expecting RE5 to sell less than 500k for it's first month? How did Lost Planet do with first month numbers on both systems?

RE5 will do fine on both HD consoles. Releasing in the first quarter of 09 would be much better for it than during the holiday season I think. I'm not so sure I would pick it up though. The E3 demo didn't look so hot.
 
frostythecat said:
If you combine the SKUs then DMC4 did indeed sell more then 500k in its opening month. However, I believe donny is arguing that RE5 for the PS3 will not sell 400K in its opening month, which is not an unreasonable argument.
Fair enough. The quote was fairly diluted and I didn't look that hard for the original. 500k is a more than lofty upper bound for the PS3 version.
 

Sharp

Member
jgwhiteus said:
By the way, I guess people don't pay as much attention to the NPD PC charts (also, there are no numbers, and it doesn't cover digital distribution), but I did find this sorta interesting. Spore debuted at #2 two weeks ago (August 31 - September 6), behind the Sims 2 Apartment Life (which was released the previous week at #1)...even if Spore released Friday (or was it supposed to be later? Thought it was Friday), I don't think that suggests stratospheric first-day retail sales...though it's hard to tell without numbers. I'm guessing it was probably downloaded a lot more vs. the Sims, though, and it'll probably be #1 in the next week's charts...just thought it was intriguing given the huge expectations and the DRM backlash, etc.

1. The Sims 2: Apartment Life
2. Spore
3. Spore Creature Creator
4. WoW: Battle Chest
5. The Sims 2: Double Deluxe
6. World Of Warcraft
7. WoW: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
8. The Sims 2: Apartment Life Limited Collection
9. Warcraft III Battle Chest
10. Crysis

http://kotaku.com/5051520/npd-pc-sales-charts-august-31-+-september-6
Spore was actually released on Sunday, September 7th. So given that this is a chart from August 31 to September 6 that actually suggests pretty monstrous Amazon sales the week before, which would further indicate Spore's success really.
 
llonesmiz said:
DMC(360+PS3) was a little over 500k last February, but the discussion was about the PS3 version specifically.

Ah, I see. I thought there was something screwy about the idea that Private Hoffman could be right in a sales discussion with donny. :lol

In that case, yeah. There's no way that RE5 sells 1.5 million or whatever opening month in order to do 500k copies on PS3 alone.
 
I don't really do predictions, but for those of you who are: Resident Evil 4 did 319k its first month on Gamecube, which was January 05, and 103k in Feb. On PS2, it did 65k its first month, which was October that year. I don't have the November number.

I'm sure cvxfreak has more detailed numbers on other titles, but I don't believe it's a particularly front-loaded franchise, historically. Maybe the whole 360 hive mind "game of the month" phenomenon and dashboard advertising, etc will boost it.

For what it's worth...
 

donny2112

Member
Rad Agast said:
I beg to differ. Not sure if you played Dead Rising on a 360 but any one who enjoyed that game will be disapointed with the Wii version. The number of zombies on screen have been cut back dramatically.

Dead Rising on Wii is a good thing to expand the franchise but don't try to make it sound like it's the same game as the original. So yeah, visions have been sacrificed.

Its closeness to the original is not the point (as long as its still trying to be a port and not a spinoff). I said that the original creator didn't have to sacrifice his vision. Another team did it. In the same vein, if RE5 comes to Wii, I'm sure it won't be ported by the same team that made the 360/PS3 versions.

charlequin said:
there is essentially no way to make a well-reasoned argument that the N64, (US) Saturn, Xbox, or Gamecube even competes with the PS1 or PS2 library in any kind of objective way.

Opinions usually aren't objective. (I suppose an opinion might happen to match an objective statement, but I think that opinions might never actually be able to be truly objective.) The underlying idea being that sales (or even general opinion) does not override personal opinion for said person. It applied for losing (sales) system fans in previous generations and losing (sales) system fans in this generation.

frostythecat said:
However, I believe donny is arguing that RE5 for the PS3 will not sell 400K in its opening month, which is not an unreasonable argument.

llonesmiz said:
but the discussion was about the PS3 version specifically. Sho_Nuff82 said that the PS3 version of RE5 would outsell in March 09 the LTD sales of RE4 WII and donny disagreed.

Beaten.

Thanks for providing the clarification. :)

DeaconKnowledge said:
I think it's funny that a company heretofore unheard of

iSupply was known (to me) for providing the estimations of manufacturing costs for the consoles. If you've ever seen breakdowns of all the parts in a PS3 (for example), it was probably from an iSupply report.
 
donny2112 said:
Opinions usually aren't objective.

And library quality isn't really an opinion. (At best, it's one of those icky in-between things, where an element of opinion is involved but to some significant degree the matter is quantifiably measurable.) If you treat the quality of a system's library as a topic with real semantic meaning and that can be discussed amongst people in a semi-objective fashion, you basically can't construct a non-farcical metric by which the Gamecube or Xbox overwhelms the PS2. By overall quantity of games ranked (by fan polls or reviews) above certain point, by either number or quality of the best games in a large series of genres, or even just by overall poll of gamers, the conclusion is foregone.

The underlying idea being that sales (or even general opinion) does not override personal opinion for said person. It applied for losing (sales) system fans in previous generations and losing (sales) system fans in this generation.

Sure, there are outliers, but the taste of said outliers is generally so specific as to be fairly irrelevant. No one who would honestly claim that the Gamecube had the best library of last generation's machines has taste even within the vague bounds of relevancy within the industry.

What's interesting about this generation, really, is that it bucks this trend: the Wii is not a dominating force in terms of library composition, despite having an essentially insurmountable hardware lead (unlike the SNES, the last winning system to have an arguable library-quality positioning compared to its rival.)
 

Slurmer

Banned
donny2112 said:
Finally got through the thread. :)


4 PS3 games have sold 400K or more in a month.

Assassin's Creed (December)
MGS4
GTAIV (April and May)
COD4 (November and December)

No, I do not believe that RE5 will sell 400-500K in its debut month NPD listing.

page 1, first post
 

Opiate

Member
test_account said:
Did they explain how they manage to have a smaller Wii installbase in 2011 compared to 2010? Hehe :)

I can: ensemble forecasting. That may not be the actual explanation here -- it would be an unusual application and in many ways it's more reasonable to assume they made a mistake -- but it's possible.
 
botticus said:
2011, actually.

wii_ps3_xbox_forecast_425.jpg

Can someone tell me the story behind this chart? Was it created by a serious firm, or was it intended as a joke? The chart suggests that the PS3 will have the largest userbase by 2011 and, yet, its numbers from 2011 still aren't as high as the Wii's from 2010. Does anyone actually expect the Wii and 260 each to sell negative two million between 2010 and 2011?
 
Coolio McAwesome said:
Can someone tell me the story behind this chart? Was it created by a serious firm, or was it intended as a joke? The chart suggests that the PS3 will have the largest userbase by 2011 and, yet, its numbers from 2011 still aren't as high as the Wii's from 2010. Does anyone actually expect the Wii and 260 each to sell negative two million between 2010 and 2011?
Believe it or not, it was a serious forecast.

About the negative thing, those are yearly sales, not cummulative ltd.
 

milanbaros

Member?
titiklabingapat said:
Believe it or not, it was a serious forecast.

About the negative thing, those are yearly sales, not cummulative ltd.

That's impossible. No way all 3 consoles sell over 30m in a year :lol :lol

I think what they are doing is 'active' install base. I think they assume people will grow tired of their wii.
 

Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
titiklabingapat said:
Believe it or not, it was a serious forecast.

About the negative thing, those are yearly sales, not cummulative ltd.

The chart says "Installed Base," not "annual sales."
 
titiklabingapat said:
Believe it or not, it was a serious forecast.

About the negative thing, those are yearly sales, not cummulative ltd.

Those can't seriously be yearly sales, can they? That would mean they are forcasting sales of 165, 150, and 135 million for the Wii, 360, and PS3 respectively. That sounds about as likely as the Wii and 360 selling negative amounts. I guess the numbers make no sense regardless of which way you look at them. How could a serious company release such an absurd forecast?
 

donny2112

Member
charlequin said:
If you treat the quality of a system's library as a topic with real semantic meaning and that can be discussed amongst people in a semi-objective fashion, you basically can't construct a non-farcical metric by which the Gamecube or Xbox overwhelms the PS2. By overall quantity of games ranked (by fan polls or reviews) above certain point, by either number or quality of the best games in a large series of genres, or even just by overall poll of gamers, the conclusion is foregone.

I'm pretty sure I'm in agreement with the part I quoted. However, I'm talking about opinion that only applies to the individual person as opposed to something used to convince others of the same opinion. Again, sales or group opinion does not override personal opinion as it applies to that person.

If you want to discuss my personal opinion, we can, but be aware that I have pretty much no interest in trying to convince others to accept my personal opinion on library quality as their own. (If you did want to, I'd suggest in a less public forum.)

charlequin said:
What's interesting about this generation, really, is that it bucks this trend: the Wii is not a dominating force in terms of library composition, despite having an essentially insurmountable hardware lead (unlike the SNES, the last winning system to have an arguable library-quality positioning compared to its rival.)

I thought the SNES total eventually passed the Genesis total in the U.S. (unless you're referring to some of the yearly sales). I do agree that this console generation is not as objectively dominated in game quality (across the whole range of tastes as opposed to core-only tastes) by a single console as past ones were, though.

Slurmer said:
page 1, first post

Ah, thank you. My (hole-filled) database is only up through July. Madden would be the fifth game > 400K on the PS3 in a month.
 
donny2112 said:
Again, sales or group opinion does not override personal opinion as it applies to that person.

Well sure. That should pretty much go without saying, right?

If you want to discuss my personal opinion, we can

My interest is in establishing that there is a concept of "library quality" that one can discuss as a semi-objective concept, distinct from how much one personally enjoys the games on a given system, and that under that concept we've moved from two generations where unambiguous sales domination was mirrored by unambiguous library domination to one where five distinct systems are all peeling off their own portions of the market and even the system with the fullest library (DS) still only covers a relatively narrow set of genres and game types.

I thought the SNES total eventually passed the Genesis total in the U.S. (unless you're referring to some of the yearly sales). I do agree that this console generation is not as objectively dominated in game quality (across the whole range of tastes as opposed to core-only tastes) by a single console as past ones were, though.

It did, I think I worded my sentence there very awkwardly. My intent was to describe how the software picture between SNES and Genesis was consistently close throughout the generation and how even though the SNES eventually became the clear "victor," you still can't look back on the 16-bit era and say "oh, yeah, you could play pretty much all the good games if you just had an SNES."
 

donny2112

Member
charlequin said:
to one where five distinct systems are all peeling off their own portions of the market

What portion of the video game market does the PS3 peel off that isn't comparable to a non-leader system in previous generations? Otherwise, I think we're fairly in agreement.
 
August top 20 is finally up. (Sorry if old - had all but given up on it for this month)

11. Mario Super Sluggers (Wii)
12. Soul Calibur IV (PS3)
13. New Super Mario Bros. (NDS)
14. Mario Kart (NDS)
15. Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (Wii)
16. Super Smash Bros: Brawl (Wii)
17. Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (NDS)
18. Madden NFL 09 (PSP)
19. Call of Duty 4 (X360)
20. Mario Party (NDS)

http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=marketData&content=topgamesellers
 
Man, Mario Party is turning into quite the evergreen title itself. The two Olympic games were certainly boosted by the actual Olympics, but that's just plain legs there.

The expanded lists always do a great job of showing how Wii and DS software sales trump everything.
 

HolyCheck

I want a tag give me a tag
Saint10118 said:
August top 20 is finally up. (Sorry if old - had all but given up on it for this month)

11. Mario Super Sluggers (Wii)
12. Soul Calibur IV (PS3)
13. New Super Mario Bros. (NDS)
14. Mario Kart (NDS)
15. Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (Wii)
16. Super Smash Bros: Brawl (Wii)
17. Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (NDS)
18. Madden NFL 09 (PSP)
19. Call of Duty 4 (X360)
20. Mario Party (NDS)

http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=marketData&content=topgamesellers

coming up to three years since release in november. insane.
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Ridiculous how much money Nintendo makes with their software... damn...
 
Regulus Tera said:
I'm surprised Sluggers didn't rank better, to be honest.

For what its worth, if Soul Calibur is 110k for PS3 and Guitar Hero (NDS) is 111k, it doesn't look like sluggers was displaced out of the top 10 by much at all.
 
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