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NPD November 2011 Sales Results [Update 7: Skyrim, CoD Wii, PC Retail Sales Up 57%]

Random three d:

blue hedgehog < 20k
doukutsu story < 10k
ninja < 3k
acahl < 2k

Ouch...just ouch.

Sonic I'm really surprised at since it typically does well on Nintendo platforms, but like others have mentioned, it only had a few days - will probably get a nice December boost.

And sad to see that for Ace Combat. It's my first AC game, but I've really been enjoying it and it fits the portable system rather well - I usually sit down and play a mission or two and then pack it up. Wish more people would give it a chance.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative


We are ahead of Keikkaku.


I don't follow Sales-Age but it seems hyper complex now. I miss the old days of bombas and megatonnes and people pinning their very identity on the retails success of a corporation in a given week.
 

Satchel

Banned
We are ahead of Keikkaku.


I don't follow Sales-Age but it seems hyper complex now. I miss the old days of bombas and megatonnes and people pinning their very identity on the retails success of a corporation in a given week.

Good to hear. I still think maybe CEA should have been built from the ground up personally, but I'm still happy with the final product.

As to the second part of your post, that still happens.

You don't frequent many threads involving Sony exclusives?
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Good to hear. I still think maybe CEA should have been built from the ground up personally, but I'm still happy with the final product.

As to the second part of your post, that still happens.

You don't frequent many threads involving Sony exclusives?

It takes too much interpretation now. It used to be so black and white.
 

donny2112

Member

It's now an option, but they've put out no press release saying they actually are. To get the Wal-Mart data, NPD would have to go through Nielsen, and they may not be willing to pony up if they think their own estimates are "good enough."

Then Nintendo is including sales bundled with the 3DS, I guess.

Poor form, Nintendo. What happened to you? Guess you got desperate to punch up your numbers ...
 
Then Halo must have sold between 625k and 700k.

The 625 number is including hardware and can't be used to determine sales like that.
Jvm's article in the new reduced style: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ay_Cheer_From_November_Game_Sales.php?print=1

I miss that sales table comparison and the rainbow graph. RIP. It was still very informative.

Only comment I have on the article is that by cutting off the software in August, one of the reasons for the growth this year is Madden.

Add a couple million to August and take it away from September and the Sep-Nov growth doesn't look as good and the Jan-Aug drop doesn't look as bad..
 

TunaLover

Member
I would buy Rayman Origins, but Ancel is ignoring Wii U for BG&E2, so I don´t want give my money to help fund that proyect anymore.
 

noobie

Banned
Overall video game software and hardware sales remained flat in November, thanks to reduced hardware sales. But the decline in consoles sales were offset by strong software sales and a huge jump in boxed PC games, according to November retail sales data from NPD Group. November saw a year-over-year decline in sales by 0.5 percent, with hardware sales down by nine percent, falling from $1.08 billion last year to $982.4 million this year. Peripheral sales were also on the decline in November by 34 percent.

Xbox 360 and PS3 software sales were decent in November, lead to highs by Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Just Dance 3 and the wonderful Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Modern Warfare 3 sold 8.99 million units across all formats in November, with Skyrim finishing a surprising second with 2.8 million units.

PC boxed retail sales also surprised analysts, jumping 57 percent year-over-year. Details on what was driving these numbers were not detailed, but one would imagine that games such as Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, and Skyrim had a lot to do with those surging numbers
Source
 

spwolf

Member
With 900k in November, 1.2m in December is charitable ? :D
1.5m is the minimum they're gonna do this year and it will be the first time they'll break the 5m units mark in a single year in the US.


i dont get 0.9m November at all... when i checked Black Friday deals, PS3 regularly had worst deal out of bunch and lowest savings. Together with SCEA execs saying they wont drop their pants for Black Friday, I thought it would tank and not get 70% increase YoY.
 

TunaLover

Member
Buy the game now, complain about it later when BG&E2 is actually announced. That's the way I did it and you know what ? The game is worth it by itself. It's probably not gonna make them any profit anyhow, so you might as well get it.
The game already bombed, I guess I will don't contribute too much sales anyway, I'll pick pick up it eventually.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Sonic had only 4 days, and came later than the HD version. 20k aren't THAT bad. It'll have legs.

Cave Story sold better than what I thought :lol
Shinobi and Ace Combat are so depressing it isn't even funny :(
Especially AC :(
 
Zelda sold less than Uncharted, I wonder if it will manage to sell more this month


We going to get a Skyrim platform breakdown? That's the more interesting number.
(considerably) more diverse than CoD. I wonder if it has anything to do with 360 gamers being closer to PC market (and inherent installed base of ES series on PC) or PS3 version problems, probably the former
 

user_nat

THE WORDS! They'll drift away without the _!
It seems to be a combination of quick edit + 3rd party GAF software.

How is it now?

All fixed.

Do we ever get a dollar value for the retail PC market?
Edit: I guess I could just use math and figure it out. So +57% isn't huge, wonder how much is Skyrim.
 

Biggzy

Member
I don't get why Skyrim is so popular. Don't get me wrong I love the game, but it doesn't strike me as a game that should appeal to the mass market.

Whatever the reason is I am sure Bioware would love to know :p
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Is Skyrim the highest selling game to launch against CoD this generation? Nearly 3 million is insane for an rpg launch.

The previous best was somewhere around 1.5-1.6 million.

I don't get why Skyrim is so popular. Don't get me wrong I love the game, but it doesn't strike me as a game that should appeal to the mass market.

Whatever the reason is I am sure Bioware would love to know :p
Open world games are a really big but underserved market.

We have GTA, RDR, Assassin's Creed, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls all pulling huge numbers, but we still don't get that many major open world titles.
 

Grinchy

Banned
Dayam @ Skyrim. I bought a copy too, but I'm shocked that it sells so well too. It's a relatively slow and boring game for such mainstream success. I do not understand how it did so well, but good for it!
 
Open world games are a really big but underserved market.

We have GTA, RDR, Assassin's Creed, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls all pulling huge numbers, but we still don't get that many major open world titles.

I think it's more than just being open world. I think there is a huge demand for games set in that medieval sort of period and i'm amazed more devs haven't tried to crack that market. It kinda means that skyrim is guaranteed big sales by default because there is so little competition for it.

Open world games tend to be fairly costly and more prone to bugs so i think that's why you don't see as many games of that nature.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I think it's more than just being open world. I think there is a huge demand for games set in that medieval sort of period and i'm amazed more devs haven't tried to crack that market. It kinda means that skyrim is guaranteed big sales by default because there is so little competition for it.

Open world games tend to be fairly costly and more prone to bugs so i think that's why you don't see as many games of that nature.

I feel that Fallout's success though shows that it revolves a lot around Bethesda being the only developer making large budget open world RPGs.

I mean, there are certainly games like Risen and Two Worlds, but unless I'm blanking out on something, they're the only ones making games like this that aren't a hole in the wall.

There is Reckoning coming up as well, but I feel that is also being developed and marketed in a fairly low key fashion.

However, on the second note, given that the retail games market seems to have evolved into a "Go ultra huge or go home." scenario, I feel that open world games are no longer tremendously harder and/or more expensive to create compared to what you have to do to compete at the top of other popular genres.
 
3DS software in general seems to be doing pretty poor worldwide excluding Zelda and Mario.

Makes me wonder if third parties will risk getting burned again.
Street Fighter, Star Fox and the LEGO games did relatively well in the US too. Lots more titles have done well in Japan (Pokemon Scramble, MH3G, Senran Kagura, etc) which is probably the most important region for 3rd parties who traditionally support dedicated handhelds.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Pretty crazy number for a nerdcore RPG series. I'm impressed and also assume this isn't counting DD sales via Steam?
 

Wilsongt

Member
I wonder if those numbers take into account people who traded in the PS3 version and had to buy a new version of Skyrim on 360...
 

Elios83

Member
i dont get 0.9m November at all... when i checked Black Friday deals, PS3 regularly had worst deal out of bunch and lowest savings. Together with SCEA execs saying they wont drop their pants for Black Friday, I thought it would tank and not get 70% increase YoY.

Can't agree with that, the holyday bundle with a PS3 and two games at 199$ was an absolutely great deal and the main reason for such numbers.

Also great numbers for Skyrim!
Rayman just lol, looking forward to the PSN version at 19.99$.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Nope, just retail.

Even more encouraging for PC sales.

And 57% increase for PC retail puts a big grin on my face. DD is just trucking along like usual but you have to believe we are seeing increases on DD across most platforms (Steam, D2D, GG, GOG, etc)
 
I feel that Fallout's success though shows that it revolves a lot around Bethesda being the only developer making large budget open world RPGs.

I mean, there are certainly games like Risen and Two Worlds, but unless I'm blanking out on something, they're the only ones making games like this that aren't a hole in the wall.

There is Reckoning coming up as well, but I feel that is also being developed and marketed in a fairly low key fashion.

I think both markets are massively under populated and that has worked out incredibly well for skyrim. Fallout was a success but it was nothing compared to what skyrim is doing now.

However, on the second note, given that the retail games market seems to have evolved into a "Go ultra huge or go home." scenario, I feel that open world games are no longer tremendously harder and/or more expensive to create compared to what you have to do to compete at the top of other popular genres.

The only problem is that there is an expectation for open world games to look and perform as well as the more linear games. This surely has to lead to the budget being somewhat larger than a game much smaller in scope.

Just look at the budget for something like the GTA games

I definitely agree that it is a genre that has a lot more potential. It seems at the moment though that everyone just wants a piece of the FPS pie.

Maybe skyrims sales will be a wake up call to others in the industry.
 

kswiston

Member
Isn't 2.8M units what GTA4 launched to?

Crazy that Skyrim had one of the largest first month's this gen. Other than COD and Halo, I can;''t think of many launches that were larger.


I think both markets are massively under populated and that has worked out incredibly well for skyrim. Fallout was a success but it was nothing compared to what skyrim is doing now.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 had very long legs. Apparently Oblivion is at 3M in the United States alone, and we know that it launched to around 400k. It wouldn't surprise me if Fallout 3 is in the 3M range as well. I think Skyrim is the cumulation of the popularity that Bethesda titles have been gaining all generation.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Almost 2 million is not the same ballpark as 2.8 million. Skyrim topped BF3 by over 45%

To be fair here, Skyrim had almost the entire month whereas Battlefield had about a week.

Given Battlefield's sales this month, I imagine their pace is rather comparable.

Hmm i though it was 4m, my bad.

The worldwide week one sales were 5 million sold/10 million shipped for Battlefield 3 and 3.5 million sold/7 million shipped for Skyrim.
 

kswiston

Member
To be fair here, Skyrim had almost the entire month whereas Battlefield had about a week.

Given Battlefield's sales this month, I imagine their pace is rather comparable.

Skyrim came out on the 11th, the period ended on the 26th. 2 weeks and 1 day :p

Battlefield also had Black Friday sales in its favour last month. Skyrim didn't really go on sale.

But you are right, in the end, both did extremely well.

I am curious to see how Skyrim does in December. Nintendo titles are going to eat up more of the top 10, but it should still safely make the list.
 
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