They projected 4.5m, but I'm not sure if they needed 4.5m to break even. Usually with these big games, they want to get a lot of profit to cover other games possibly underperforming as opposed to just breaking even on the big game itself.
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NPD Sales Results for March 2013 [Up5: BioShock Infinite]
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
They projected 4.5m, but I'm not sure if they needed 4.5m to break even. Usually with these big games, they want to get a lot of profit to cover other games possibly underperforming as opposed to just breaking even on the big game itself.
The physical copies are reported (not downloads), but I guess neither sold enough to make the top 10. (Guild Wars 2 and Mists of Pandiara were in the top 10 in their release month, which implies there's no rule against PC exclusives).
SCIIWoL was the best selling game of July, 2010 with 721k physical copies sold.
Aquamarine
Member
You also have to remember that Tomb Raider had been in active development for nearly 4 and a half years.
Sustaining two studios with a lengthy development cycle and development issues generates massive, massive overhead.
Not to mention that the "4.5 million" must be faced with how absurdly fast video game prices depreciate these days.
On Amazon, Tomb Raider is already at $46-$49 pre-discount, and the number is just going to go down from there.
You're probably right in that S-E didn't need exactly 4.5 million copies to turn a profit, but they certainly have a LOT of expenses to pay off and current shipments / sales may indicate low profitability.
Heart of the Swarm was over 1 million in 2 days worldwide retail + digital.
Guess that just shows the digital bias.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
Interesting. I didn't think Tomb Raider had such a troubled development.
Well, I can only hope that sales were satisfactory enough to warrant further entries in the series, since I found Tomb Raider to be an excellent reboot.
Hopefully this time there won't be as much development woes.
CouldBeWorse
Member
Who's going to do the legwork to put together the top ten by units? We've got enough data to get it fairly damn close with Judgment squeaking by Ascension and Infinite 360.
Valkyria
Member
10K aprox over gears.
BioShock is obviously because the series began on 360 and wasn't even ported to PS3 until way later. You can see the same thing with Mass Effect.
If we see any franchises at the start of next gen that begin on only one platform I can see it happening.
Valkyria
Member
Actually Bioshock has the numbers according to market share of both consoles, it's Tomb Raider the one that it's an anomaly.
Tomb Raider is historically a Playstation franchise.
This is also something that we can see with FF, DMC, etc.
Also that Infinite split is far more in 360's favor than I remember for games like CoD/Madden/etc.
Valkyria
Member
That's exactly what I meant.
They actually projected 5-6M for TR, and ended up shipping ~3.4M in the timeframe. And given these NPD results (where the game was on the market for the full 5 weeks) - a good chunk of even just that 3.4M will have to be covered with significant price protection costs.
That's just downright ugly - no matter how you try to look at it.
Did they say if they'll continue shipping Pikachu's XL or not?
MrCookiepants
Member
lol no.
AdventureRacing
Member
I thought it would lean even more towards digital.
Trying more with special editions is one of the major things I wanted to see by NoA and maybe they're finally doing it: Fire Emblem bundle, Pikachu XL and AC bundle. All in the first six months of the year. I hope they'll continue by releasing the Luigi XL when M&L4 comes out like in Japan, Pokémon X/Y bundle, ALTTP 2 bundle and so on.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Within the first month, yes you are probably right. But they don't have to break even in the first month, so what's the point.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Not suprising to me, given that the first Bioshock didn't come out until years later after it was introduced on the Xbox 360.
I had a column go up today about the recent sales figures. I thought I'd share it with y'all.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/190926/Amid_challenges_US_video_game_retail_trudges_ahead.php
As always, open to comments and corrections. Thanks.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/190926/Amid_challenges_US_video_game_retail_trudges_ahead.php
As always, open to comments and corrections. Thanks.
Father_Brain
Banned
Source for this? That'll be interesting if true, as they've gone to some pretty remarkable lengths thus far to obfuscate just how badly Vita is selling; not only have they combined PSP and Vita hardware shipments, but they've also apparently taken the 1.8 million Vitas shipped in FY2011, chopped them up, and added them to multiple quarters in FY2012.
I believe this is what they'll do. We'll see if my information is wrong.
You're right. I forgot that happened when the DS Lite fell into oblivion. Thanks.
Father_Brain
Banned
Hmm, we'll see. In any case, I may have already said this earlier in the thread, but I predict a sense of deja vu from what they say about Vita in their results: a claim that the Japanese price cut was an unqualified success, a vague promise of "an attractive software lineup" coming to the platform at some point in the future (curiously accompanied by emphasizing the company's presence in smartphone/tablet gaming), and an absurdly optimistic sales prediction for FY2013, albeit not quite as crazy as last year's 10M (perhaps 6M)?
I'm not sure what else they can do if they're not willing to kill the platform this early, and while it's not impossible, I don't think it's likely that they will be just yet.
(Also, minor nitpick: the Sony results are coming May 9, not the first week in May.)
Yeah, DSLite was at $99, and once that was pretty much all cleared out, DSi dropped into that slot. Maybe drop DSi to $69 for holiday sales and DSiXL go to $100? With Pokemon Black 2/White 2 out of the way and Pokemon X/Y coming this Octoboer, seems a good time to tip the remaining DS buyers into the 3DS bucket. I don't expect a 3DS price cut, but it's already been getting $40 off sales this year, so I'd expect more of the same in the Fall. They need to generate as much profit off of 3DS as they can this year to make up for a (hopefully) big price cut in Wii U.
Edit:
I don't think a new model would be coming this year, but if it does, I'd expect it to slot into the original 3DS's place at the original 3DS price and the OG 3DS get a clearance drop. They changed the manufacturing a lot on 3DSXL to save costs, so they could probably transfer some of that knowledge over to a 3DSLite model at the current OG 3DS positioning.
Even if they break even eventually that's not good enough. At all.
Yep, we'll know if my info is right or wrong in a couple of weeks. I'm optimistic.
On a personal note, I've had the pleasure of using a PSV since late last year, and it's really a delightful piece of hardware in many ways. But it simply cannot justify itself to consumers, especially at the given price.
And, I'm still waiting on a Sony device that silently handles things like network authentication and synchronization as background operations. It's crazy that I still have to wait for my PSV to sign into PSN by looking at the same kind of monotone grey screen that the PSP had.
I feel like this is true across the PS3, PSP, and PSV and it's annoying.Yeah you don't invest this much capital chasing the break even mark.
Not a bad idea. The DS Lite certainly was a hit when it slipped right into the $130 price of the original DS. That's what got me to buy one back then. (As I've said before, it wasn't until October, but I was on board as soon as the DS Lite appeared.)
Aquamarine
Member
zomgbbqftw
Banned
I do hope so, a lot of investors were narked at us when they weren't able to find out what Sony's exact Vita/PS3 shipments were for FY2012/13 so we passed on the sentiment to Sony. Hopefully other banks and investors have told them it's unacceptable to hide Vita sales behind last generation sales. If it's bad news then investors need to know and Sony need to have a plan to either dump Vita or rectify the situation.
Father_Brain
Banned
I've been impressed with the hardware every time I've gotten my hands on one, too. But it's a 2012 product designed with a 2007-2008 mindset, and the portable entertainment market has changed far too much since then for it to have any place there. At least, absent a first-party lineup as strong as Nintendo's, which Sony obviously doesn't have.
I'd say it's worse, but if GameCube had launched in November 1999, this would've been the LTD graph after 3 years...
Wii U is doing worse than GCN, but I also think there's essentially a 0% chance of either PS4 or Durango doing as well as PS2.
Edit:
Pachter's comment is about software, but it's still worse than GameCube with software, in my opinion.
I'd say it's worse, but if GameCube had launched in November 1999, this would've been the LTD graph after 3 years...
Wii U is doing worse than GCN, but I also think there's essentially a 0% chance of either PS4 or Durango doing as well as PS2.
Edit:
Pachter's comment is about software, but it's still worse than GameCube with software, in my opinion.
Well, if the GameCube had launched in 1999, it would have only been competing with the Dreamcast for that first year, instead of the PS2 and XBOX, which would have helped it immensely. So the WiiU looks even worse.
That's a U.S.-only chart.
Right, NPD thread!
Yeah, I don't expect PS4/Durango to do these numbers.
Yes, it is possible. The problem with Bioshock Infinite is that 2K didn't take the time to properly establish the franchise on PS3. The original game came way out after all the hype had died down.
If early gen exclusives are the norm, it could heavily alter sales on each platform for the entire generation. Short term gain for long term losses.
Father_Brain
Banned
Interesting stuff, but regardless of what investors want to know, I have a feeling Sony will offer vague platitudes and disingenuous bullshit instead of either, though the latter definitely isn't happening.
Even if jvm is correct, Sony won't be providing an actual FY2012/13 shipment number, since they've already moved their FY2011/12 numbers into the following year. I'd guess that the former would be 2-2.5 million on top of the known 1.8 for the latter, though.
test_account
XP-39C²
Now that the DS is being discontinued, how much do people expect the 3DS sales to increase? I'm sure there are some DS stocks left in the stores, but those will be sold out sooner or later.
Did we get any DS hardware sales for March 2013 by the way?
Did we get any DS hardware sales for March 2013 by the way?
~86k