NPD Armageddon: PS4 nearly double the X1 sales in Jan

Channel stuffing can only get you so far Microsoft.

https://twitter.com/geoffkeighley/status/434102813178597376

X1 -143K (Wow terrible)

PS4 - 2x 143k = 286k

Software:

Trivia:

-Tomb Raider PS4 outsold Tomb Raider Xbox One by 2:1

-Xbox One has a 2.7 attach rate.

-2.27 million games were sold on "Xbox" this month.

Hardware:

PS4: Almost double Xbox One. [#1 best selling platform]

Xbox One: Estimated 143K (thanks Aquamarine) [#2 best selling platform]

Originally Posted by VentureBeat

“PS4 led overall hardware sales this month, followed by the Xbox One,” said Callahan.

We reached out to Microsoft for its sales result, but it declined to comment. Sony, however, confirmed that the PS4 doubled Xbox One’s sales.

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/13/ja...ends-its-lead/

Other Info:

Edit: Microsoft PR

The release of January NPD Group data today provides a chance to reflect on the success of Xbox One. We are incredibly humbled and proud to see Xbox One continue to be the best launch of an Xbox in our history. Comparatively, Xbox One consoles have sold at a rate of 2.29 times faster than Xbox 360 in the U.S. in the same timeframe for the first three months on the market. From our blazing start out of the gate, we have continued to see Xbox One delight fans in 13 markets around the world, with many more markets to come this year.

More importantly, it is gratifying for our team to see Xbox continue to prove it’s the best place to play games. January NPD Group figures released today revealed Xbox* sold the most games across all console platforms in January with 2.27 million units sold, making up 47 percent of software market share. Fans continue to show their excitement for new generation Xbox One games, with U.S. consumers purchasing an average of 2.7 games per console since launch. This amazing success is due in large part to our unrivaled games lineup, first class Xbox Live multiplayer games service and a platform for game developers that offers unique capabilities such as Kinect and Xbox SmartGlass.

TV and sports? On a video game console? No thanks.

Xbox One has a Wii U esque drop.

Wii U Dec 2012 (460k) > Jan 2013 (57k) = -88% drop.

X1 Dec 2013 (908k) > Jan 2014 (145k) = -84% drop.

Someone from GAF did the math, but numbers look ok.

I blame Flappy Bird.

Great numbers for the PS4. I think with the Vita they learned the hard way that one can't sell HW at a premium even if it is more powerful. I also think this validates Sony's tendency to strongly support its old systems even as their successors approach. If you let your 'old' console flounder, consumers drift and maybe find an alternative which keeps them from buying your next console.

What happened to the Xbone is partially due to relatively low demand, partially the downside of channel stuffing. You get 'strong' numbers for a month, but for a few months afterwards sales are down because it takes retailers a while to clear the channel. As I said last month, channel stuffing is pointless because it doesn't impact momentum/word of mouth.

As Sony found out with the PS3 (Blu ray) you can't force people to pay a premium for stuff which doesn't clearly impact gaming. People like the multimedia functions of game consoles (nods towards Netflix) but they don't want to pay extra for them.

Still, the Wii Uesque drop is way steeper than I anticipated. MS ought to be in panic mode. Titanfall isn't going to save the system. A pricecut is clearly needed. A normal company would have to unbundle the Kinect to save costs, but MS has unimaginable amounts of money so if they prefer to keep the Kinect and take a steeper loss they can.

Its mildly interesting that MS had managed to hold onto the lion's share of the CoD fanbase (the temporarily exclusive DLC probably helps a lot). Its really surprising that Lego on the Xbone outsold its PS4 counterpart. Perhaps its because on the PS4 Knack and Lego are chasing the same dollars?

If 3DS sales are that bad I don't want to think about the sales numbers of my beloved Vita.

Also, Minecraft (X360 version) at number six is awesome. Its great that kids and adults are so into games which encourage creativity and bodes well for the future of game design.

It seems to me that it's getting more difficult to gauge the health of software sales when digital sales go unaccounted for.

Agreed, digital sales are on a upward trend, have been for a while. PS4 started to hit it's stride as far as availability, it still sells out, but everyone seems to get new stock on a weekly basis now. Then people see the price and realize it's only $100 more than the top of the line packages for the Xbox 360 and PS3, and it seems like just that much more of a deal.

@Archangel3371: Agreed. You to have believe that more gamers are purchasing games online. Great to see the PS4 still doing well and not surprised by the Xbox One. DFC Intelligence recently posted an article saying both consoles will both sell 100 million consoles by 2020.

BTW " NPD Armageddon"? Did I miss something? This is a title you would see in System Wars...smh

Crazy numbers, let's remember that this is MSs stronghold, or should I say use to be.

Knowing how much EA loves money, for MS to get Titanfall exclusivity, they would have to at least match lost revenue from playstation skus, so we are talking about potentially hundreds of million dollars. Still, all else being equal, EA would rather have the same amount of revenue but with the game in more peoples hands, which leads me to believe EA would want even more than just lost revenue....that 1 billion for games MS paid for? I wouldn't be surprised if at least 30% went towards Titanfall. regardless I think EA is kicking themselves.

lol there is no way MS paid $300 million to EA to secure an exclusive. I am guessing $50 million max. Probably less. They probably dropped their 10% royalty fee and decided to take on all the marketing and shipping costs. I highly doubt something like $50-$100 million exchanged hands. Wouldnt EA have to disclose that to investors?

Respawn is the only one to be blamed here. They should've signed a better contract after getting royally fucked by Activision.

Great sales for both Mario and Zelda. Both are fantastic games. Does the game play differently when you select different characters in Mario 3D Worlds? I heard Princess Peach can float in midair, but I never really played the game with anyone other than mario.

Given that those are LTD numbers and not monthly, the numbers don't strike me as good, especially for Mario.

Anyway, here's an interesting Gameindustry.biz article which observed (as I said yesterday in The Ring of Fire) that the Wii tablet/controller hybrid and the Kinect are both bloating the price of/holding back their respective systems.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-13-kinect-and-gamepad-are-both-deadweights

In short, I think consumers are confused about what exactly Nintendo and Microsoft want to sell them. Sony's proposition is clear - it's a much-upgraded and improved successor to the PS3, which was a much-upgraded and improved successor to the PS2, and so on. Nintendo and Microsoft make claim to be something more than that, then mumble incoherently when asked what exactly they mean, or what precisely they're proposing to achieve.

It feels like both companies want to bottle some of the magic which fuelled the Wii to such great heights in the last generation, but they've forgotten that the real magic of the Wii wasn't actually the Wiimote - it was Wii Sports. In one superbly crafted game, bundled free with the console in many territories, Nintendo explained exactly what the Wii was for. A few minutes with Wii Sports showed anyone and everyone what the Wiimote was designed to do and how it would change the game experience. Moreover, it set out a clear agenda for the console as a whole - a social machine, a family machine, an accessible machine. Wii Sports wasn't just a game, it was a powerful demonstration, a mission statement and perhaps the greatest piece of marketing anyone in the games industry has ever crafted.

@CarnageHeart: 700k in three months on a console that is barely limping along are fantastic sales. Let's not forget that Beyond and Puppetear failed to even sell 100k on the PS3. GT6 sold like 200k and dropped off. GoW Ascension sold better in the first month but we never got the confirmation that it has sold 1 million.

Mario 3D World is still very much a failure because it failed to move Wii U systems. Selling decently over a long period of time to the existing user base was not what that game was intended to do. Mario 3D World was very much intended to be a major catalyst for the Wii U, which is why it's sale projections were previously so much higher. They were really counting on Mario to get things moving, as he has done so many times in the past for virtually every Nintendo system. (except for the Wii, which didn't need good games to sell at all, Nintendo made or otherwise) It's evidence that Mario simply doesn't have the same appeal he used to have.

Beyond Two Souls and Puppeteer are the definition of niche games (and on top of that they are both original), so excusing the failure of a major franchise by comparing its sales to such games (I'm pretty sure Puppeteer is a sales disappointment even as a niche game, but Quantic Dreams, who keeps its budgets modest, is happy with the sales of Beyond, even though they aren't quite up there with HR's) doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Comparing Mario to GoW Ascension and GT6 is valid. As I've said many times before, GT6 is an absolute disaster. My pet theory is that the crappy state Polyphony Digital/Sony shipped GT5 in soured a lot of fans (including me) on the series. Ascension was a solid game, but it marked a de-escalation for the series in terms of stakes, story and intensity and the MP was the answer to a question no one asked.

So why do you think Mario's sales are so low?

It does. Everyone has a different quirk to them: Luigi jumps higher, Toad runs faster, Peach floats, and Rosalina has that spin move.

@CarnageHeart: I dont think Mario sales are low. They are decent sales for a game that launched on a platform no casual even knows about.

3D marios usually dont sell as well as their 2D counterparts. The second galaxy game sold 560k copies in its first month which was less than half the number of copies Galaxy 1 sold.

Take a wild guess what the worse selling of the 3D Mario games is though at this point. From most angles Mario 3D Worlds performance has been a substantial let down.

The attach rate for the latest 3D Mario is lower than that of past 3D Marios.

Click on the link, scroll down to the bottom of the page and a graph shows that Nintendo has been milking Mario platformers a lot harder than they used to. I think franchise fatigue is kicking in and Marios are stepping on each other.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=733933

Hardware LTD Mario 3D Sales Attach Ratio

GCN 2.120.000 350.000 16.5%

Wii 6.000.000 1.120.000 18.7%

Wii U ~ 1.550.000 215.000 13.9%

Congratulations to PS4. But being that it's available in more regions, this isn't too impressive of a feat. With that said, congrats still stand.

The NPD only covers the US and Canada.

Not if they don't grow the install base it won't. (and that was the whole point of Mario 3D World) If Mario can't do it, what will?

Wow, what let all the air out the 3DS's ballon all of a sudden? O_o

@dvader654: Looks about right. Be interesting to see how the Xbox One does after the release of Titan Fall.

January is usually a weak month. IIRC, last year the 3DS was around 100k as well. And last January NPD had a 5 week sales period. This year we only have 4 weeks of data.

- Mario Kart 8

- Smash Bros

- Zelda U

Even so, Wii U will never sell like gangbusters, but the user base will be good enough to sell Nintendo franchises.

Hasn't the Mario Kart games been the stronger system sellers for Nintendo? Anyway I think that the Wii U will be 'fine' in that it'll putter along for another 3 to 4 years in 3rd place.

That was true on the Wii, but on the GC it wasn't true. The multiplayer oriented Kart and SSMB vastly outpaced the sales of 3D Marios on the Wii (their sales were in the same ballpark as casual games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit), but on the GC Mario Kart and Smash's Brother's sales were both a little below those of Sunshine.

While clearly casuals were happy to buy those games when they appeared on platforms that they owned, I doubt their drawing power for casuals. The original NSMB (whose multiplayer orientation similarly made it attractive to casuals) put up astronomical numbers but NSMBU hasn't had the same pull. Also, its worth bearing in mind that Wii Fit U has sold less than 20K copies (the original Wii Fit's sales are well north of 20 million).

There's also the fact that both games are also appearing on the 3DS (which pretty much all stalwart Nintendo fans own since it has been and continues to remain Nintendo's focus). Why buy a dying, relatively expensive console to play those games when one can buy a reasonably healthy and relatively cheap handheld?

*Shrugs* I'm sure you disagree. Time will settle the argument.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=100731176

Originally Posted by creamsugar

fitu < 20K

Mario Kart 8 is going to be on the 3DS? That's news to me.

Since Mario Kart is being brought up, let me just say right now that I have no idea how that series is still popular. The Blue Shell has wrecked every entry in that series since it appeared. Mario Kart Wii and 7 were the worst of all. I honestly thought both of those games were flat out broken, on a fundamental level. I really felt that Sega All Stars Racing out Mario Karted Nintendo the last few years.