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NPD Sales Results for April 2009
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
NPD Canada exists too, but the numbers in this thread are USA only.Evilink said:
Japanese sales are tracked by at least three different trackers (Famitsu/Enterbrain, Media Create and Dengeki). GAF has had weekly threads for that for a long time.
DeaconKnowledge
Member
Evilink said:Thanks, I just wanted to be certain what I was looking at
It's strange for Wii to be doing so well in the west, and not in it's home turf...it just feels funny.
Well, it happens when no games of import release for months.
Zachack said:
Depends on your definition of "pretty low." But if THIS post about the various platform top 20s is right, and THIS post about MadWorld (which is somewhere below the Wii Top 20) selling 66,000 is right, then I don't consider the 20th best selling game on a game PLATFORM being north of 66,000 being a BAD thing.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
frankie_baby said:
number 20 per platform has always hovered around 8k to 20k during the non-holiday season, normally around 12k to 15k. a game not making the per platform top 20 sold less than 15k. this is not a possibility, it is a certainty. whether you find it likely or not, madworld sold fewer than 15k copies based on that top 20 per platform list.
A day late to the thread and holy shit at how bad everything did. I know this is the slowest period of the year typically but the wii and 360 dropoff both really surprised me.
I was honestly also surprised at the Rhythm heaven performance, those ads with Beyonce playing it on her couch were seemingly all over the place. Maybe it'll do the whole Wii Music trend: slower to crawl to good numbers than what many Nintendo games do.
Excitebots was sent to die.
If those creamsugar numbers are true the Wii top 20 depresses me. And did SFIV really fall off that fast with the 360 crowd?
I was honestly also surprised at the Rhythm heaven performance, those ads with Beyonce playing it on her couch were seemingly all over the place. Maybe it'll do the whole Wii Music trend: slower to crawl to good numbers than what many Nintendo games do.
Excitebots was sent to die.
If those creamsugar numbers are true the Wii top 20 depresses me. And did SFIV really fall off that fast with the 360 crowd?
jamesinclair
Banned
creamsugar said:
So rock band officially lost the war?
Mr. Enigma
Member
Guitar Hero Aerosmith?!?!?!
nincompoop
Banned
What is your source for thisStumpokapow said:
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Jokeropia said:
It's certainly not true for all platforms for all months, but I think it's certainly a fair benchmark for most platforms for most months based on the era when we did get enough leaked data to establish a benchmark for that sort of thing.
If you think there's enough post-November 06 clampdown data floating around in the public that you feel comfortable establishing a different ballpark (say 10k, 20k, 25k, 30k--certainly the multiple VE3D top 10 per console leaks tell us that 40k-60k would be the cutoff for the top 10 for a console in non-holiday months), feel free to share your insight with me.
But I feel quite confident in saying that Madworld sold less than 15k this month.
Gamasutra's Tie Ratio AnalysisStumpokapow said:
Amount of software sold outside NPD top 10 for the first quarter
Wii=11,832,000
360=7,591,000
PS3=6,286,000
Number of titles outside the NPD top 10 but in the systems top 20
March = 17 for 360 17 for Wii 17 for PS3
February = 18 for 360 16 for Wii 18 for PS3
January = 16 for 360 16 for Wii 20 for PS3
Total titles
360=51
Wii=49
PS3=55
Lets say that the top 20 for each system averages 50k if its outside the NPD top 10 (Could be to much).
Software sold outside each systems top 20 for first quarter
Wii=11,832,000-49(50,000)=9,382,000
360=7,591,000 -51(50,000)=5,041,000
PS3=6,286,000 -55(50,000)=3,536,000
Monthly average of software sold outside each systems top 20 for Jan/Feb/March
Wii=3,127,333
360=1,680,333
PS3=1,178,666
How many titles sell a signficant amount for each system outside the top 20? Well....
The number of titles that each of the gamestores have in stock (New) for sale jan-march...
Best buy = 100 unique titles MAYBE?
Gamestop = 100-150 unique titles?
Target = 50-75 or so unique titles?
Walmart= 50-75 or so unique titles?
Lets say theres only a 100 titles outside each systems top 20 that sell beyond >1000. The averages for each of these titles would be (Monthly average)....
Wii=31,273
360=16,803
PS3=11,786
Obviously lots of guestimations but people can make changes where they see fit (More Wii titles less 360/PS3). I think though that this shows that for the Wii there should be a signficant amount of titles that could be selling 30k+ each month but be outside the Wii top 20. The 360/PS3 obviously have less.
Disclaimer: This is obviously all based on averages for Jan-March and April obviously sold less software than each of those months.
Vinci said:
Nintendo may not, but every major Western 3rd party publisher seems to be desperate for their business, and chooses to almost totally ignore the casual consumer. And the discussion was specifically about companies refocusing and restructuring their dev/pub process into a more sustainable business model.
Neo C. said:
While your final assertion may be true, a large number of those gamers are now in their 30s or older. The older a person gets, the harder it is to shift their perspective, and the concentrated marketing the other way is going to be hard to counterprogram.
Yes, I think the console manufactures should take a stand and say, what we've achieved this generation is great, lets slow things down a notch and focus on some other things (overall better game design would be a great way to go). The thing is, if they all do that, and Nintendo chooses to catch up to them (because at that point it'll certainly be cheap enough for them to do so since every other company has already payed the way for them, then how do they differentiate themselves?
Flying_Phoenix said:
I don't know what you're talking about. What marketing are you referring to that is targeting the adult male demographic on Nintendo's part? I haven't seen it, nor seen any effects of it.
Bizzyb said:
Yeah, see, the problem is for grassroots marketing to take effect, you still have to hit a large enough segment to spread word of mouth. 500 people is not going to be sufficient to spread the glory of the game to 500,000 potential buyers. Even if they have 2 years to drool over it. What's worse, you're going to lose some of that original core market to attrition as other things take their interest away while they're waiting for the game to finally come out.
Honestly, I think Nintendo's approach of announcing and releasing games over a short time span is the right way to go. I just think they fail to understand how to properly market these games, and how much money to allocate for marketing expenses.
I also think that it was actually a bad thing that Reggie ended up as President of NOA. As Head of Marketing, he did a lot of good things. As President, he has too much other stuff to deal with to turn his hand to the effective marketing that Nintendo needs, and they've yet to find someone with his skill to take his place.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
justchris said:
Honestly I hardly ever watch TV yet ever time I do I nearly ALWAYS see these commercials.
And when I went to see Xmen Origins (eck!).
justchris said:
GTA: CTW's legs possibly?
Flying_Phoenix said:
One commercial is hardly a marketing campaign, nor is is particularly aggressive, although a commercial before a solid summer male demographic blockbuster like Wolverine does support your argument.
Flying_Phoenix said:
Are entirely normal with relation to the sales of most handheld games, and DS games especially, as well as the extremely good word of mouth for the title. Its own specialized advertising and its release immediately prior to a new hardware revision were also probably a factor.
charlequin
Banned
Chumly said:
Making one assumption and then extrapolating from known data may sometimes provide a certain amount of insight. By the time you're making two different assumptions, your own cherry-picked data has crowded out whatever real info was there to start with. And you made three here. (And the idea that the top 20 games of all three systems that are outside the top 10 overall will average out the same is not a particularly defensible assumption.)
The idea that a game that fell outside the system-specific Top 20 sold 15k or less, on the other hand, is pretty justifiable based on what we know from old leaked data and from our occasional chances to extrapolate data ranges thanks to specific data points in past months. If we were looking at a particularly strong month or a particularly solid slate of Wii titles, that might be a good reason to question the idea, but we're not; nothing did particularly well in April 2009 outside the few perennial sellers.
If anything, I'd guess Madworld did well under 15k this month -- after all, nothing guarantees it was even close to making the top 20 -- but even giving it a ton of credit and assuming it somehow did something like 20k, we're still looking at a cap of 86k LTD and probably not enough momentum even to crawl to 100k.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
justchris said:
That was just one I found on Youtube there are many other versions. Trust me there are TONS of them just turn on your TV to ESPN or similar stations.
And yeah there were 3 DSi commercials before the movie started.
justchris said:
But who were those who brought the game? I mean the game is "M" rated meaning that only those who are adults can buy it. Now obviously kids will buy it too (No I'm not going to ignore the white elephant in the room) but I highly doubt that irresponsible parents will be the result of the game selling on legs. Though this is a foolish statement as of now because it's only been two months. I'll be sure to keep this quote and see how much support it has in hindsight.
That saying one thing that supports my argument is that Nintendo asked Rockstar to create this game and there is no way that it's just mere coincidence that Nintendo started this campaign the same exact time of the games release.
- The DS is now 2x the PSP in the U.S. (30.3m vs. 15.0m).
- This month is the lowest average weekly sales for the PSP ever in the U.S.
- The DS averaged a higher weekly total sold this month than in the November following the DSLite launch. Only Novembers and Decembers since then have passed this month's average weekly sales.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Could you explain the significance of that last point Donny? I think I'm missing the point.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
About the whole "games outside the top 20 are under 15K" thing; that seems low to me. However, I don't have anything to counter it. Anyone have a decent example of a leggy game that hung around near/outside the top 20 for a while? Perhaps something could be gleaned about its average monthly sales from periodic LTDs?
Then what do they do with the "Waggle PS2" if it's actually more successful than a blip? Continue supporting it into PS4 time frame? Drop it after two years so they don't get stuck in the position of trying to support 4-5 systems simultaneously, leaving customers to get their waggle fix elsewhere?
Confusing the market with two incompatible upgrade paths is not without risk. Some company thought it was a good idea to have both 32X and Saturn, too.B-Rad Lascelle said:
Then what do they do with the "Waggle PS2" if it's actually more successful than a blip? Continue supporting it into PS4 time frame? Drop it after two years so they don't get stuck in the position of trying to support 4-5 systems simultaneously, leaving customers to get their waggle fix elsewhere?
PantherLotus said:
Note that I use average weekly sales to be able to compare months of different # of weeks. With that in mind, the DS's average weekly sales in April 2009 were greater than DSLite's first November (Recall that November is usually greater than every other month in a year except for December). Only the December following the DSLite (2006) and the Novembers and Decembers since then have higher weekly averages than this month.
Essentially, DS just had another November in April.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
That's amazing. Excellent analysis donny.
Suburban Cowboy
Member
PS3 doesn't buy you?Truespeed said:
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
I should have my charts up sometime tomorrow to fill my quota of attention getting. Should they stay in here, get their own thread, or go in JVM's thread of analysis when it goes up?
TheGreatDave
Banned
jamesinclair said:
Wait for Beatles?
Jon said:
For a reference on behind the calculation.
Nintendo spent about the same on the Rhythm Heaven marketing campaign as they did with the March Professor Layton campaign (it was within 6% of each other). I figured the Lisa Kudrow/Professor commercials would drive and equal amount of sales to the Beyonce /Rhythm Heaven plus additional sales from being a new release.
Surprisingly, Professor Layton in March performed equally to Rhythm Heaven in April.
Only element I could think of that made Rhythm Heaven fall short is the difference in size of the genres. Possibly that Professor Layton, a puzzle title, had a broader appeal than Rhythm Heaven, a music title. Or maybe Kudrow, who probably appeals to the 25-40 age range, has a larger base than Beyonce who probably appeals to the tween - 24 range.
What are your thoughts on the short-fall?
Cygnus X-1
Member
creamsugar said:
Disappointment after disappointment on Wii...
lowlylowlycook
Member
Sweet graphs donny112!