The November Videogame Market By the Numbers 57
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."
Call me when it's over. (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:360 In Serious Trouble (Score:3, Insightful)
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 cheaper in the future.
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.
Re:Attach Rates (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:360 In Serious Trouble (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wish there was a "-1, Dumbass" mod.