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The November Videogame Market By the Numbers
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Dec 18, 2007 01:34 PM
from the plumbers-vs.-space-operas-in-a-fight-to-the-death dept.
from the plumbers-vs.-space-operas-in-a-fight-to-the-death dept.
Along with the news that more than half of the US is playing games, the November NPD numbers offer an interesting insight into the games industry. The ongoing console war was white hot, with record hardware sales. The Wii outsold the PS3 by half a million systems last month, and is quickly gaining on the Xbox 360's total sales figures. The big winners last month were software publishers, though, with a record $1.3 billion in sales. "Obviously Call of Duty 4 performed well on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. It is now second only to Halo 3 for first-month sales numbers on the Xbox 360. On the PlayStation 3 no other game has launched as well as Call of Duty 4 in November. Super Mario Galaxy performed extremely well for its first month. Two new properties - Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect - sold well enough to make the top 10. Across both platforms, Assassin's Creed was actually the second best selling game of the month. It is amusing to note that despite the unprecedented Nintendo DS and PSP sales, no game for either system sold well enough to make the top 10 software list for November."
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If this is a manufactured shortage... (Score:3, Interesting)
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The original sentence was not clear at all and it is only by sheer luck that you could
Call me when it's over. (Score:3, Insightful)
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This sort of behavior happe
Re:Call me when it's over. (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of behavior happens any time a decision has been made and there is a conflict over that decision, and is caused by several well-known cognitive biases (mostly originating from confirmation bias).
Wii -> Alternative games
PS3 -> Traditional Japanese style
360 -> Traditional American
Parent
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Not sure what you meant by "
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5(wiis):4(360):2(PS3) in relative numbers
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The market seems to be splitting as well. There seems to be a much more distinct break up of whats games ends up on which system. The wii is getting novel party games (doing well everywhere). The PS3 still has a lock on the traditional Japanese franchise (given the world wide sales distribution this will continue to be true, doing well in Japan, poor in the US), while the 360 is getting many more of the American titles (and also doing poorly outside the US, well in the US).
That's just not true at all.
I'm more interested in the japanese games, and for those, your analysis is plain wrong.
First, the PS3 has no lock on the traditional japanese franchise, at all. The "locks" you see are for games which have started being developed 2 years before even the PS3 launch, and can't be wasted.
Instead, what we see, is that the traditional Japanese franchises have started jumping ship to the Wii.
How could anyone looking at the japanese market miss that? Dragonquest, Monster Hunter, Final
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Since when was the PS3 doing well in Japan?
since [google.com] launch.
*Google Translation of media create (Japanese console sales site, look at the bottom for weekly sales).
They have already surpassed all 360's sold in japan. They are behind the wii in numbers but still have games show up in the top 20 fairly often.
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(The ranking page [m-create.com]. Note that they use the common abbreviations for all but one of the various consoles. This charts the software sales over the past week, sorted by the last column. At the bottom of the page is another chart with, presumably, the hardwa
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Attach Rates (Score:2)
Attach rates are bollocks (Score:4, Insightful)
In short the "attach rate" has too much of an historic component to tell you clearly what is going on "now" which is the interesting thing.
Attach rates are only a useful measurement for console manufacturers selling consoles at a loss. In that situation the manufacturer knows that it has to reach a certain attach rate to claw back that loss before it can even think about a profit (though that is changing now they have additional profit streams such as subscriptions, virtual consoles, blu ray etc).
For everyone else you may as well just talk about total games sold. Dividing it by the number of consoles doesn't tell you anything useful.
Parent
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The attach rates affect 3rd party developer interest in the system. Nintendo, despite their words, have proven time and time again that they intend to make a system that support primarily their own games, not anyone else's. This has negatively impacted 3rd party participation (whether Nintendo cares or not is unknown) on the Wii, and failing attach rates will drive support down further. Whether this even matters in the Wii's meteoric success is unknown :P
The 360 and PS3 are a different story. These are co
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I don't have either; the only next-gen console I have is a Wii. But if I was to get one of the two, it would be the 360, purely because of the game selection. I'm just pushing that purchase off as long as possible, hoping the console will be more reliable and chea
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I'd buy a 360 over a PS3 and you'll find lot of other Europeans are too if you ever spoke to anyone outside of the official Sony fan club. Try checking Amazon.co.uk's games sales list, the top 3 PS3 games are at 18th, 40th and 61st, not exactly what I'd call a triumph.
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a textbook example of "raving fanboy" :) Students in the crowd, I hope you're taking notes!
Honestly guy, give it a rest. To still be trying to claim that in late 2007 is borderline delusional.
Uh huh. Let's ignore the more patent examples like Madden '07, which is universally agreed to look a great deal better on 360 compared to PS3. This may simply be due to EA being incompetent, so let's ignore that. We see consistently that cross-platform games like COD4 and Assassin's Creed look identical on both platforms (there are many side-by-side comparison videos on both game
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Oh, you mean like the new 399 PS3?
Re:360 In Serious Trouble (Score:4, Informative)
" The graphics are pretty much comparable,"
Honestly guy, give it a rest. To still be trying to claim that in late 2007 is borderline delusional.
But they are. The PS3 is better in some games, the 360 is better in others. I expect that in the long-term, the PS3 will turn out to be more powerful, but they are clearly similar. Just like the original X-Box was in the same league, but slightly superior, to the Gamecube. They are both graphically superior to the Wii, which is closer to last gen graphics. The 360 & PS3 are close enough in power to negate it as a serious advantage for one consoleor the other.
"is less expensive"
When has console price EVER been a factor in which system gamers buy? Saving 50,100,150 dollars to give up on all the games for an entire generation? PS2 owners are still working through their insanely large library of games and are upgrading to PS3s when the price drops to their own personal price point.
I think that your last sentence contradicts your first. Price is always a factor, in everything anybody buys.
The 360 library is garbage. Halo 3 is a basketcase, Mass Effect is a massive step backwards in rpgs with last gen looking graphics, Lost Planet and Dead Rising were mediocre titles, Forza and PGR are jokes compared to GT.
I think this statement is probably most indicative of your skewed perspective. Saying the graphics on a PS3 are better than the 360 is completely reasonable. Saying the PS3 has a better library of games is silly. By the time that you make this claim, the vast majority of readers have dismissed you as a partisan troll. The selection of games and the price are the two major liabilities the PS3 has.
The PS3 will play every single big name franchise so many Europeans bought PS2s for. Anyone suggesting that all those PS2 gamers are going to give up all those big name titles for a graphically weaker, absurdly unreliable console just to save 50 to 100 bucks?
Well, the 360 is more successful than the PS3 in the US. Lots of people here have given up all those big name titles for a "graphically weaker, absurdly unreliable console". Are they all wrong? Besides, most of those titles will eventually migrate to whatever console is most successful. There are no loyalties among companies, just temporary alliances.
Parent
Re:360 In Serious Trouble (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wish there was a "-1, Dumbass" mod.
Parent