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NPD Sales Results for April 2014 [Up2: XB1/360 hardware, PS4 #1/XB1 #2 best selling]

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
BOMBA SOULS

Three Lego games charted in April (and also Minecraft). Whoever decided to get serious with that franchise and focus on property tie-ins must be a very rich man by now.

Probably was just a strategist who was regularly employed and who did not get a lot of money for that decision. Lego, Warner and Traveller's Tales will be very happy though. Also Nintendo can be happy, because the good performance (relatively speaking) of the Lego games even on Wii U is probably an important reason there are still Warner games coming to Wii U.
 
Thinking about it, I fear all hardware combined are < Wii numbers in April 2008. Is that correct? XD
Of course it is. As far as I know, Wii 2008 is by far the highest April for any home console ever. (Accompanied in the same year by the highest-ever March, May, July, August, September, October, and November!)

Out of interest are the numbers actually that close between PS4/X1?
No. PS4 is at 3.11m, Xbox One at 2.65m in the U.S. (None of the numbers in that image are at all trustworthy.)

The gap from PS4 to One worldwide is even larger, something like 7.5m to 4.5m. Those numbers include some estimation, though, and are neither as accurate or precise as the NPD ones.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Not great, but good to see that they didn't completely tank :D

They probably are not even that close to 100k, are they? Because iirc, MH3 was above 100k for quite a while already. I hope Rayman and Sonic will perform (relatively) well in the future, too.
 

EGM1966

Member
I agree, but the biggest selling point of these consoles are there exclusive games. If nearly all of the games will be multiplatform, people will decide to buy the PS4 version because of better resolution or framrates. If Microsoft can't fix that gap or make it so small that customer don't care, that would change the situation completely. Till then...

In my view this is MS's biggest challenge because for the Playstation and Xbox brand I disagree with the bolded. Since PS3/360 I don't think exclusives are the biggest draw/decider (of course they still matter but they're not the biggest draw anymore IMO).

My view:

  • The biggest draw is best version of big AAA multi-plat titles. CoD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, GTA, Destiny, etc.
  • The second biggest draw is where are my friends/social network? Which platform ecosystem?
  • Then comes price differential - is it worth paying more to get the better versions of the big games and join my friends?
  • Then comes exclusives - still a draw but not enough to drive the really big leads and hardware unit sales. Exclusives in my view are now the icing on the cake for the majority of gamers - they will determine where the initial franchise fans will go at launch of course : plenty of people bought (and will buy) XB1 for Halo and Gears and plenty will buy the PS4 for more Uncharted and Gran Turismo but I think it's become clear that these games don't drive sales to the extent the big multi-plat titles now do.

And I believe this is the issue for MS. Within a couple of months the market perception was:

  • PS4 is best place for AAA multi-plats (BF4, CoD Ghosts and ACIV were all deemed "better" on PS4)
  • PS4 has more people on it and more friends (this is in general clearly groups of Halo fans will go XB and groups of Uncharted fans will go PS)
  • PS4 is actually the cheaper option

To really regain the momentum in my view MS needs to somehow alter the above three before exclusives will make enough difference, and that's a tough ask because its actually weaker hardware and its already dropping pretty far behind PS4 in install base and every month this trend continues the depth of the hole they need to climb out of gets deeper.

Dropping Kinect is a strong step in the right direction, and strong exclusives will help bolster it, but the main advantage Sony has - better versions of most big titles and a matching or lower price - will continue to give edge to Sony I believe unless MS works some magic with their SDK, drivers, etc and drops the price down below PS4 to where people ask are the extra pixels/frame rates worth paying more for?
 
Of course it is. As far as I know, Wii 2008 is by far the highest April for any home console ever. (Accompanied in the same year by the highest-ever March, May, July, August, September, October, and November!)


No. PS4 is at 3.11m, Xbox One at 2.65m in the U.S. (None of the numbers in that image are at all trustworthy.)

The gap from PS4 to One worldwide is even larger, something like 7.5m to 4.5m. Those numbers include some estimation, though, and are neither as accurate or precise as the NPD ones.
Quoting vg numbers is balsy.
 

SighFight

Member
i647FhtOzjtJj.jpg

:) I guess you're right.
 

Ty4on

Member
They probably are not even that close to 100k, are they? Because iirc, MH3 was above 100k for quite a while already. I hope Rayman and Sonic will perform (relatively) well in the future, too.

I think Sega has done a great job keeping kids interested in Sonic. I remember when we had some family visiting with a 10-12 year old child and his eyes lit up when he saw my Sonic games. Rayman is also kinda surprising when it didn't chart anywhere.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Of course it is. As far as I know, Wii 2008 is by far the highest April for any home console ever. (Accompanied in the same year by the highest-ever March, May, July, August, September, October, and November!)


No. PS4 is at 3.11m, Xbox One at 2.65m in the U.S. (None of the numbers in that image are at all trustworthy.)

The gap from PS4 to One worldwide is even larger, something like 7.5m to 4.5m. Those numbers include some estimation, though, and are neither as accurate or precise as the NPD ones.

Ehi, it's you! My method worked quite well, see? The test went well :)
 
Those are where the numbers come from.
I think you're confused. The numbers I posted come from this thread. Now, I was responding to a question about a Chartz image from this post. But both Aquamarine and I were being critical; I called it not trustworthy. And if you check the image, you'll see that they have different (wrong) numbers than I gave.
 

starmud

Member
kind of in shock conception 2 did that well...

releasing these niche titles as dual 3ds/vita releases seems to work out pretty well...

kirby sales are awesome for two days. there seems to be a good amount of energy following the game, hopefully it shows some ok legs.
 
I think you're confused. The numbers I posted come from this thread. Now, I was responding to a question about a Chartz image from this post. But both Aquamarine and I were being critical; I called it not trustworthy. And if you check the image, you'll see that they have different (wrong) numbers than I gave.
It's been updated since yesterday. I follow it for laughs. Strange coming up with the same wrong numbers.
 

dolemite

Member
115k for XBone? MSFT should be grateful they have Titanfall preventing the numbers from dropping to WiiU territory. The month of May will be rough though.
 

kswiston

Member
115k for XBone? MSFT should be grateful they have Titanfall preventing the numbers from dropping to WiiU territory. The month of May will be rough though.

I think May will be under 100k for sure. Unless you really want a kinect, why would any gaming enthusiast (which are going to be most of the buyers at this point, early in the generation and outside of holidays) buy the system in the last two weeks of this month?
 

spekkeh

Banned
Microsoft will attempt the 'sandwich' tactic to get people to forget this news.

Phase 1: Announce the $399 Kinectless Xbox One
Phase 2: NPD where they get embarrassed
Phase 3: Some news about Halo

Result: Hey there's a new cheaper Xbox One SKU coming soon, and that new Halo game sounds awesome!

Boom! Next day no less. Also new Gears of War news to forget the NPD results.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
That vita drop is crazy and unexpected, especially when you think of the amount of people creating a thread to announce their vita purchase in recent months.
 

Lubricus

Member
I think May will be under 100k for sure. Unless you really want a kinect, why would any gaming enthusiast (which are going to be most of the buyers at this point, early in the generation and outside of holidays) buy the system in the last two weeks of this month?


MS may do some sales and discounts to clear stock out of the retail channel. I bet they do right around 100,000.
 

TomShoe

Banned
That vita drop is crazy and unexpected, especially when you think of the amount of people creating a thread to announce their vita purchase in recent months.

Not really. Especially considering the lack of notable games and the stores clearing excess stock in preparation for the 2K bundle.
 

Ty4on

Member
That vita drop is crazy and unexpected, especially when you think of the amount of people creating a thread to announce their vita purchase in recent months.

New model coming in May so no one had any stock. The Vita dropped to 3k in Japan the week before the PCH 2000 came out and the next week it did 60k.
 
That vita drop is crazy and unexpected, especially when you think of the amount of people creating a thread to announce their vita purchase in recent months.
I don't think my friends gamestop had a vita for almost a month due to clearing out the old stock for the new vita. He said they got like 10 bundles of the new one and sold out the same day.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
I'm guessing PS4 didn't sell a million units this month. Usually they've announced their sales before NPD, right? Or could they be waiting until E3 when Watch_Dogs has released?
 
I posted this before. Even though the perception is that since the ps2 the market shrunk, it has not. And the reason for the constant total growth changed reularly. Nintendo always decreased from the NES with the exception of the Wii. I would not expect much greater sales than from the gamecube because it seems this is the "true" market for nintendo consoles.

consolesales_spkxiy.jpg


Edit: I just noticed this is the first time there is no new contender in three consecutive generations.

This will be the first gen where total HW will be lower, and it's not actually bad news. The decrease in sales will come from the outflow of non-gamers from the Wii installbase, it's not impacting the market of MS and Sony. Between those 2, I expect Sony to pick up most of the lost marketshare from the PS2 era, PS360 evenly split PS2's 157m installbase.
 

molnizzle

Member
I haven't been keeping up with the last 30 pages as I'm currently on vacation in Europe. Do we have any leaked hardware numbers for Sony's platforms?
 
Odd that inFamous didn't make it to the charts.

Damn Infamous dropped off the cliff WTF...

Great game.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/15/april-2014-npd-playstation-4-outsells-xbox-one-again/
“Infamous: Second Son was the top-selling new-gen software title in April,” PlayStation brand boss Guy Longworth said in a statement. Of course, that only includes physical retail games sold in the U.S. But we double checked with Sony, and it confirmed that, according to the NPD, Infamous outsold the Xbox One SKU of Titanfall.

Looks like it did well to me.
 
Thinking about it, I fear all hardware combined are < Wii numbers in April 2008. Is that correct? XD

The only reason for that to be a fear is if you are nintendo or made games for nintendo systems which was only nintendo anyway. Its also a weird point in time to choose a comparison. almost like that was the only year you could choose to make such a comparison
 

stilgar

Member
This will be the first gen where total HW will be lower, and it's not actually bad news. The decrease in sales will come from the outflow of non-gamers from the Wii installbase, it's not impacting the market of MS and Sony. Between those 2, I expect Sony to pick up most of the lost marketshare from the PS2 era, PS360 evenly split PS2's 157m installbase.


wow, that is a LOT of daring assumptions right there.
 

prag16

Banned
This will be the first gen where total HW will be lower, and it's not actually bad news. The decrease in sales will come from the outflow of non-gamers from the Wii installbase, it's not impacting the market of MS and Sony. Between those 2, I expect Sony to pick up most of the lost marketshare from the PS2 era, PS360 evenly split PS2's 157m installbase.
People say this a lot about the PS2 base, along with characterizing the PS360 base as 160 million customers. But that doesn't account for people who own/owned both and people who had to buy multiple consoles due to failures.

This time around I expect the amount of people owning both will drop, as well as hopefully the amount of failures.
 
wow, that is a LOT of daring assumptions right there.

Wii install base is 100m, Wii U might not even reach 20m, that is a decrease of 80m PS4 and Xbone will not make up so we can safely come to this conclusion rather than panicking at the dawn of Gen 9 for the future of consoles.
PS360 total install base: 160m split ~50/50m, PS4 is leading the gen, the case is that 360 users are upgrading to this system rather than PS3 owners upgrading to the Xbone.

People say this a lot about the PS2 base, along with characterizing the PS360 base as 160 million customers. But that doesn't account for people who own/owned both and people who had to buy multiple consoles due to failures.

This time around I expect the amount of people owning both will drop, as well as hopefully the amount of failures.

Regardless of how many people consoles people owned, that is the install base of both, the PS2 also had the dreaded DRE.
 

zeopower6

Member
...

Jesus.

It's assumed that the Vita sales are that low because they had been phasing out the older model for a while before the slim model that came out shortly after NPD stopped tracking sales for the month. I don't think anyone expects the slim Vita to sell like hotcakes this month (or any other month really) but it should at least be better than sub-3k... HOPEFULLY at least.
 

erpg

GAF parliamentarian
Really cementing that even among niche Japanese games, marketing matters. Demon Gaze in undoubtedly a better game than Conception but NISA doesn't do much (or anything) on Twitter/Youtube outside of Prinny Bombs. Atlus is very active and in touch with their community.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
This will be the first gen where total HW will be lower, and it's not actually bad news. The decrease in sales will come from the outflow of non-gamers from the Wii installbase, it's not impacting the market of MS and Sony. Between those 2, I expect Sony to pick up most of the lost marketshare from the PS2 era, PS360 evenly split PS2's 157m installbase.

PS4 at "just" 200,000 units this month, with One doing 115,000 and Wii U 50,000 makes me think it IS impacting MS and Sony market too. Not in a "dooomeeeeed!!!" way, completely erasing their market, but the impact will be visible.
 
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