SonicMegaDrive
Member
Yeah, it's amazing what success you can have on the Wii if you just try. Like, even just a little.
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NPD Sales Results For December 2010 [Up5: Some Kinect/Move Data]
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
boiled goose
good with gravy
SlipperySlope said:
People knew what it was. No one was fooled.
Littleberu
Banned
Dabanton said:
Well, maybe. I'm just looking at the numbers we have, and they surely didn't think their plan all the way through. I mean, 2 millions in the UK is not a lot for a product like Move ; they spent 1 million [in the UK] for Uncharted 1 alone.
Unless they're not telling everything (which I supposed you would, especially when shareholders would mark the launch of Move as a failure), Move never was and still isn't a serious business initiative from Sony. It's purely an accessory. Microsoft spent almost 500 millions again for the Windows Phone they launched earlier this year ; again, it's a new brand, a new product. They're desperate to get into the tech-gadget business.
You're right, this is the kind of money you spend to launch a platform. They spent about the same on Windows Phone 7. I'm going to guess that this may be the single biggest mid generation marketing spend ever. I haven't put too much thought into that, but it seems like it could be right. I doubt there was this sort of spend on the Balance Board or Motion Plus. Downplaying that because there are Move ads on TV seems a bit silly.Littleberu said:
yurinka
Member
Shareholders won't look at 1 month NPD Move sales vs Kinect. They will consider the entire quarter worldwide (if not the entire FY), maybe for the whole gaming division if it didn't performed as scheduled (both too well or too bad).Littleberu said:
And then will check how some things affected, like Christmas sales, Move, GT5, Kinect, etc.
SlipperySlope
Banned
Paco said:
I can name many things that people get fooled into buying. Work at home programs. Acai. The muscle pills. Penis enlargement pills.
I can go on. People get fooled by advertising all the time.
Littleberu
Banned
Fredescu said:
I'm having a totally different conversation ; the launch is huge for something concerning video games, but it's not special considering the money that goes into these kind of gadgets.
FWIW, Nintendo spent 40 millions on Wii Fit for the US alone. Nintendo launched the Wii with a 200 millions budget for the US alone. We could easily guess that they doubled that with Europe and Asia.
For a UK comparison (for the numbers we are concerning Move are UK only), they spent 10 millions for the Wii Launch.
In 2007, Sony had a 8 millions pounds budget for the PS3 in the UK, a budget Microsoft matched. The move would represent a quarter of the budget, so, in perspective, it's a lot, but still not as serious as Microsoft's offering.
The interesting numbers to have would be Gran Turismo 5 marketing numbers.
SlipperySlope said:
The advertising for those particular products has to do with emotional appeal, specifically confidence derived from body image. I'm still not sure how you're drawing a comparison of advertising a pet rock or body supplements to an entertainment product.
Please, go on.
antiquegamer
Member
Fredescu said:
And you would think since they also spend $500 millions on Windows Phone 7 they would at least sell a few millions of those instead of meager few 100 thousands by your guys logic.
Kincect success was not solely due to its marketing budget size. Also you have to remember MS loves them number PR, they love to throw out 8 million in 60 days, 500million advertise budgets more than 360 console laucnh yada yada....
That just makes it even more special, that the marketing spend matched the PR. Prior to this generation, has there ever been a mid generation console add-on that had platform like marketing and sales? It's early days, but Kinect seems to be fairly unique. If it runs out of steam before 20 million perhaps it's no big deal, but I think they'll be aiming higher than that.Paco said:
Literally no one is saying this.antiquegamer said:
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Guys the only way to defeat SockingAlberto is to either be more reasonable, or completely batshit.
Straddling the line ensures his victory.
Straddling the line ensures his victory.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I can agree with that my boney fucktoy.Boney said:
Haunted
Member
I don't want to get involved into this discussion since ya'll are arguing along scales meaning this'll never get resolved satisfactorily...
But those downplaying a fucking 500 million marketing expenditure as "nothing unusual" are fucking crossing the line in their Kinect defence, clearly.
I had to read the post comparing marketing budgets with Apple's in an effort to show how little it was several times because I thought it was sarcasm at first. I mean, of all the companies out there, this is not the one you want to be looking at for standard marketing budgets. :lol
But those downplaying a fucking 500 million marketing expenditure as "nothing unusual" are fucking crossing the line in their Kinect defence, clearly.
I had to read the post comparing marketing budgets with Apple's in an effort to show how little it was several times because I thought it was sarcasm at first. I mean, of all the companies out there, this is not the one you want to be looking at for standard marketing budgets. :lol
Quick questions for those still in this thread...
Do you guys know how advertising works? Do you even know where, and over what period Microsoft would be spending the 1/2 Billion on advertising?
How do we know how much MS has spent to this point in time? Maybe MS and Sony have spent the same to this stage? But MS is just going to stay for the long haul where maybe Sony has blown their load on Move advertising?
These are all things we don't know.
So all those "500 million is why Kinect is successful" type of posts need to get their facts straight before posting stuff like that.
It could be Kinect is successful because it's a good product?
Hell, here's an anecdote for you:
My mother had heard of Kinect on a Current Affairs program here in Australia, and was a bit 'meh' initially. This is a woman who wouldn't touch a videogame console. I have a Wii, and tried to get her on Wii Fit. She used it once and never thought about it again.
Once I actually bought Kinect, and she played Dance Central. She was hooked. She went out and bought a Kinect 250GB plus 2 more stand alone Kinects for Christmas for various cousins of mine.
She then said she would buy one for herself as soon as my house was built and I move out.
Right now she uses mine.
So that's 3 Kinect sales that were not related basically at all to Micorosofts "1/2 billion dollars", but to word of mouth and actually trying the product.
Do you guys know how advertising works? Do you even know where, and over what period Microsoft would be spending the 1/2 Billion on advertising?
How do we know how much MS has spent to this point in time? Maybe MS and Sony have spent the same to this stage? But MS is just going to stay for the long haul where maybe Sony has blown their load on Move advertising?
These are all things we don't know.
So all those "500 million is why Kinect is successful" type of posts need to get their facts straight before posting stuff like that.
It could be Kinect is successful because it's a good product?
Hell, here's an anecdote for you:
My mother had heard of Kinect on a Current Affairs program here in Australia, and was a bit 'meh' initially. This is a woman who wouldn't touch a videogame console. I have a Wii, and tried to get her on Wii Fit. She used it once and never thought about it again.
Once I actually bought Kinect, and she played Dance Central. She was hooked. She went out and bought a Kinect 250GB plus 2 more stand alone Kinects for Christmas for various cousins of mine.
She then said she would buy one for herself as soon as my house was built and I move out.
Right now she uses mine.
So that's 3 Kinect sales that were not related basically at all to Micorosofts "1/2 billion dollars", but to word of mouth and actually trying the product.
antiquegamer
Member
Fredescu said:
From reading the last few pages of this thread I would think that seems to be many people argument, that Kinect have no redeeming quality and it sold millions because of the advertising budget that fool people into buying something they don't really want.
I am sure Sony marketing for Move is quite big also, but they market mainly to the converts instead of the mass.
charlequin
Banned
ShockingAlberto said:
I don't think anyone is disputing this, but "oh it wasn't marketed well" is an age-old dodge to let companies off the hook and allow them to avoid responsibility for the underlying causes of a product's poor performance. Almost every comment on GAF about "marketing" with regard to a product's success or failure is at best empty and content-free, and at worst actively misleading, due to this sort of marketing-as-excuse thinking.
Or, to put it another way: the first step in marketing any product is at the very beginning, and that's to make a product that people want to buy. Kinect is succeeding because Microsoft created a product that people wanted to buy and then used their marketing muscle to tell people it existed; Move is underperforming because Sony made a product with a very narrow purchase appeal (as many people have noted, it was a product intended for existing PS3 owners, not new buyers) and no amount of marketing is likely to change that.
Or, to put it yet another way: a product that succeeds because of a big marketing budget is a product whose presentation and content are innately appealing to a wide market of people. If one "knew" that a product would be a huge success when one saw that it would have a huge marketing budget, one very well ought to have been pretty darn confident about it beforehand.
SlipperySlope said:
You have to separate the idea of "something people want to buy" from the idea of "something people are happy with once they own it" to analyze the use of marketing in an effective manner.
Penis pills are actually a perfect example. Why does marketing these products work? Because people certainly do want to pay money for a product that enlarges their genitals. They may be "tricked" in the sense that the pills they receive don't actually do that, but only because the ads are actively lying -- if they actually got penis enlargement pills these companies would have a tremendous number of extremely satisfied customers.
The "marketing" argument on Kinect consistently boils down to the idea that people will take it home, unpack it, and realize that they didn't actually want a camera-based arm-flailing game, a premise which is deeply absurd. In reality, basically anything that's heavily marketed in the gaming industry is something that customers will have an extremely good idea about the contents of when they buy it and as a result you almost never see any serious sales backlash following up one of these huge marketing-driven hits: didn't happen with the Wii, didn't happen with franchises like GTA or FF or COD or Halo, and it's very unlikely to happen with Kinect.
antiquegamer
Member
Haunted said:
So saying Kinect success only come about because of $500 million marketing is OK?
I am in no way saying $500million budget is small but what I am and many here are saying is that it's not the reason why Kinect is a success which seems to be the argument bring about by Move defence (or Anti-Kinect) group.
As for comparing to Apple, I am not sure what you mean you think it was sarcasm. I think all it does was to show that the range of $500 million is not unusual and other company spend just as much to promote their products.
ShockingAlberto
Member
Who exactly is saying this?antiquegamer said:
Is the root of this problem varying definitions of success? When I said I didn't think it would do terribly well, that still involved selling 3-5 million units before the end of 2010.
No amount of marketing is going to sell a product that doesn't appeal to anyone. On the other hand, without marketing less people are aware of your product and therefore less gets sold. Word of mouth helps but only takes you so far. If you're trying to launch a "platform", being successful out of the gate is critically important for follow up software development.Why For? said:
a Master Ninja
Member
You do realize why the RE4 controls worked so well, right? You don't move and shoot at the same time in RE4. Most FPS and TPS aren't like that, which is why developers still need to figure out how to make pointer controls "work". Killzone 3 is making positive strides, though.yurinka said:
goldenpp72
Member
I find it amusing people keep bringing up the 500 million dollar thing, first we don't know how that was distributed, if it's entirely used up yet, nor how much sony spent on marketing move.
Secondly, that marketing is a great thing that will assure support and longevity. Kinect will EASILY pass the 10 million mark soon, even with retailer fees, manufacturing cost, R&D and the cost to develop kinect adventures, MS has probably made something like a billion dollars in revenue on the hardware and software. Add in the sales of stuff like dance central and kinect sports which should both be able to cross the 3 million barrier at some point as examples, and you have model that not only generates high sales and demand, but also a fuck ton of money for them.
Unlike with the xbox and even the xbox 360, kinect seems to have come out of the gate with a huge profit right from the start, and best of all the thing is actually really damn fun. People seem to not put any value in this, but microsofts prior attempts at similar marketed games (banjo, viva, kameo, scene it, etc) probably never even broke a million copies sold or even close, where as stuff like kinectimals will probably end up outselling viva pinata easily, and kinect sports may outsell every single rare developed title on xbox 1/360 combined.
Another fun thing to think about, rare being declared as a failure purchase for microsoft because of that 350 million dollar expense, guess how much of a dent the kinect sports series will likely put into that old number?
This is nothing but a success story for the industry in general, hopefully the momentum can continue and we see 20 million units in hands this year. Fans should not declare a company backing their product 100 percent as a bad thing, because people who own kinects will continue to get compelling software and updates, where as sony will probably treat move the same way they treated the dual analog on ps1 (aka very few really good games exclusive to it)
Secondly, that marketing is a great thing that will assure support and longevity. Kinect will EASILY pass the 10 million mark soon, even with retailer fees, manufacturing cost, R&D and the cost to develop kinect adventures, MS has probably made something like a billion dollars in revenue on the hardware and software. Add in the sales of stuff like dance central and kinect sports which should both be able to cross the 3 million barrier at some point as examples, and you have model that not only generates high sales and demand, but also a fuck ton of money for them.
Unlike with the xbox and even the xbox 360, kinect seems to have come out of the gate with a huge profit right from the start, and best of all the thing is actually really damn fun. People seem to not put any value in this, but microsofts prior attempts at similar marketed games (banjo, viva, kameo, scene it, etc) probably never even broke a million copies sold or even close, where as stuff like kinectimals will probably end up outselling viva pinata easily, and kinect sports may outsell every single rare developed title on xbox 1/360 combined.
Another fun thing to think about, rare being declared as a failure purchase for microsoft because of that 350 million dollar expense, guess how much of a dent the kinect sports series will likely put into that old number?
This is nothing but a success story for the industry in general, hopefully the momentum can continue and we see 20 million units in hands this year. Fans should not declare a company backing their product 100 percent as a bad thing, because people who own kinects will continue to get compelling software and updates, where as sony will probably treat move the same way they treated the dual analog on ps1 (aka very few really good games exclusive to it)
Fredescu said:
I'm aware of that, and between my poor choice of words, and you;'re taking that one line out of my post, it makes it look like I'm ignoring the marketing budget.
But a few in here are insinuating that the marketing budget is basically the ONLY reason Kinect is a success.
It's quite clearly a combination of all those things (Marketing, word of mouth, quality product). But any success is ultimately built on the foundation of a quality product.
If Kinect was shit, the word of mouth would take away a lot of the sales outside that launch few days to a week.
The best example I can think of is Killzone 2. Amongst PS3 owners I know, that demo, and then poor word of mouth really hurt that game. Sony I feel got the marketing basically right on that one. They flooded TV and cinema screens, internet sites etc. The hype was there, the interest was there, but the demo, and then the actual product weren't great, which means the word of mouth went against it, and the marketing meant fuck all.
Haunted
Member
I said you all are arguing along a scale.antiquegamer said:
The 500 million marketing budget:
Did not matter <---------------> is the sole reason for success.
The two extremes are literally the only indefensible positions in this argument, that's why both groups are attempting to peg the other as saying this.
And Apple spends a disproportionate amount on advertising, trying to position them as some sort of comparable average making Microsoft's number look smaller is fucking ludicrous.
ShockingAlberto
Member
They could have only spent $5 as far as we know!Fredescu said:
Flakster99
Member
Yo. Any chance for more software numbers? NSMB Wii, Mario Kart Wii, DKCR Wii?
antiquegamer
Member
ShockingAlberto said:
You did, and now you are back paddling. 3-5 milion unit is not terrible successful?
Anyway I agree with Chalequin, the products and marketing messages really have to resonate with consumer and Move just doesn't. (nor Windows Phone 7 despite just as big marketing budget).
Not only MS paid a huge upfront amount for Rare, they also had to pay for running the studio for 9 years and shipping multiple bombs. Too early to say that purchase is redeemed.goldenpp72 said:
Obviously if they are able to make more big hits that drive Kinect hardware sales, then they'll turn out to be possibly the greatest asset for MS.charlequin
Banned
ShockingAlberto said:
The problem I would raise, basically, is that if you didn't think Kinect would do "terribly well" until you heard about the marketing budget, either a) you didn't think the product would be very appealing, which basically means you were wrong about it, or b) you thought it would be appealing but you didn't think people would have it brought to their attention enough for that appeal to kick in, in which case presumably you didn't remember it was a Microsoft product.
Basically, I see any analysis of Kinect that involved changing one's prediction due to the $500m number as basically having been lacking some key parts to begin with.
Arpharmd B
Banned
szaromir said:Not only MS paid a huge upfront amount for Rare, they also had to pay for running the studio for 9 years and shipping multiple bombs. Too early to say that purchase is redeemed.
Kinect Sports is already over a million just in the US after two months, and I think Avatars and games like Kinect Sports were absolutely intstrumental in the Kinects success. Rare went from shit to probably MS most important 1st party.
All Rare needs to do to totally make themselves a worthwile purchase: Killer Instinct 3. In the age of fighting games, this would do huge numbers on hype alone, even if it was an unbalanced pos. Rare would be totally redeemed in the minds of the hardcore.
You'd think it would comfortably get to 15 mill by the end of this year, given bundling especially.
Even then, 15 mill for a product making decent profit on every unit sold, plus all the software and live subs that come as a result would be very nice for MS.
As long as software as good as Dance Central continues to come, I'm good with my purchase. Hell I spent $200AU on the DJ Hero Renegade bundle, so it seemed illogical to skip Kinect under the circumstances.
Don't regret the purchase for one second. Any peripheral than can get my mother to actively want, neigh demand a game console must be doing something right.
Even then, 15 mill for a product making decent profit on every unit sold, plus all the software and live subs that come as a result would be very nice for MS.
As long as software as good as Dance Central continues to come, I'm good with my purchase. Hell I spent $200AU on the DJ Hero Renegade bundle, so it seemed illogical to skip Kinect under the circumstances.
Don't regret the purchase for one second. Any peripheral than can get my mother to actively want, neigh demand a game console must be doing something right.
Arpharmd B
Banned
Why For? said:
I'd say it's going to comfortably sail over 20 no problems. It did 8 in its debut holiday season alone.
I also expect Dance Central and Kinect Sports to just keep selling and selling like you see Nintendo software do.
Arpharmd B said:
My 15 mill was being conservative, and more of an actual sell through estimate. They'll easily SHIP 20 million by years end. They'd be at halfway now, and we're still in January.
Dance Central is simply an amazing piece of software, and I'd expect the sequel to do ridiculous numbers. I don't think you can explain how great that game is to someone, you have to play it.
It is literally worth the price of admission.
I bought my household's second Kinect last week.
Let me tell you, in a household in the middle of winter with two small children? Those suckers saw a LOT of play this weekend. I did not foresee back in November that I would have to buy a second one because the first one got so much use. We were running into problems constantly with me or my wife wanting to use one to exercise, the kids wanted one to play on, somebody was watching the Kinect/Xbox TV, etc...
On the contrary, I was half expecting it to die off after the first few weeks like the Wii did.
Well done, MS. Keep the software coming. We really need some better workout software, all the current titles have a billion "rushed to market" problems. They completely lack Kinect Sports' and Dance Central's level of polish.
Let me tell you, in a household in the middle of winter with two small children? Those suckers saw a LOT of play this weekend. I did not foresee back in November that I would have to buy a second one because the first one got so much use. We were running into problems constantly with me or my wife wanting to use one to exercise, the kids wanted one to play on, somebody was watching the Kinect/Xbox TV, etc...
On the contrary, I was half expecting it to die off after the first few weeks like the Wii did.
Well done, MS. Keep the software coming. We really need some better workout software, all the current titles have a billion "rushed to market" problems. They completely lack Kinect Sports' and Dance Central's level of polish.
goldenpp72
Member
Fredescu said:
Kinect is slated to outsell the dreamcast, gamecube, and xbox 1 well before the generation is over, that's a pretty cool accomplishment
I predict MS will be dropping the current non kinect model 360s this year though, and drop the prices of the 300 and 400 dollar models to the 200 and 300 range of the current, meaning no price drop for those who don't want a kinect, but a good one for those who do.
That's just a hunch of course, but with this generation only having a few years left, gotta start the drops sooner or later.