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November 2015 NPD (U.S. Hardware) Predictions - Closes December 8th

Bluenoser

Member

If the assumptions we are making are correct, this is the lowest of the low. Beating the BF sales drum when not even including last year's actual BF in the comparison. Fucking hell, where does it end? They are pretty much lying to people at this point.

But the thing I don't get is what makes them think this is anything but a bad thing. People will find out, and despise them even more, so why bother with the slimy PR to begin with? It's like the Xbox division is run by high school kids.
 

Elandyll

Banned
No.. no.. i can't.. no... please tell me they didn't do that and that we're just too cynical here and they meant was 21-27/2015 vs 22-28/2014. Please?
It's very possible they meant the BF week from Sat to Friday (or Monday to Friday) in both year, and just slipped.

But then, two questions

- Why put an asterisk with a year-less date specific period, when they could have just said "BF week" and everybody would have assumed same period including BF day?
- How much does one expect MS PR to just "slip up" and not realize what they're saying?

Again, not saying they actually tried to pull one, but it is sort of ... interesting, that PR.
 
If the assumptions we are making are correct, this is the lowest of the low. Beating the BF sales drum when not even including last year's actual BF in the comparison. Fucking hell, where does it end? They are pretty much lying to people at this point.

But the thing I don't get is what makes them think this is anything but a bad thing. People will find out, and despise them even more, so why bother with the slimy PR to begin with? It's like the Xbox division is run by high school kids.

Let's assume the PR spin is true, for a moment. (It could very well not be)

Most people won't find out.

Since they don't report no.of units sold, the only way we find out is through GAF/NPD leaks, and mainstream media won't report that.
 

Elandyll

Banned
Let's assume the PR spin is true, for a moment. (It could very well not be)

Most people won't find out.

Since they don't report no.of units sold, the only way we find out is through GAF/NPD leaks, and mainstream media won't report that.
Aye. IF that's the case (big if), the job is done. PR is meant for the media, and they published it without looking into it much, so it's pretty much over.
 

Bluenoser

Member
Let's assume the PR spin is true, for a moment. (It could very well not be)

Most people won't find out.

Since they don't report no.of units sold, the only way we find out is through GAF/NPD leaks, and mainstream media won't report that.

True I guess. Let's hope we were mistaken, because it really doesn't get much more desperate than doing BF comparison's without BF lol.
 
But the thing I don't get is what makes them think this is anything but a bad thing. People will find out, and despise them even more, so why bother with the slimy PR to begin with? It's like the Xbox division is run by high school kids.

This thread might be the only place where that actually happens. Everywhere else in the world, no one cares.
 
I think Microsoft signed an exclusive deal for November NPD, so the numbers won't be out for Sony until a later date. However, they will release a definitive edition of NPD for them when they do which will include all the DLC.
 
No.. no.. i can't.. no... please tell me they didn't do that and that we're just too cynical here and they meant was 21-27/2015 vs 22-28/2014. Please?


It is hard to tell because in the part about the retail sales they say
Xbox One console sales at retail were up 22 percent over the same period last year, making it the second biggest Black Friday week
Which makes it seem like they are comparing actual BF data, and there is no ** in that whole part....

The part with the ** says
and an extensive line-up of console bundles, drove record Xbox One sales in the U.S.**

So either way it is hard to tell what is what, but I do wish that I had seen that ** before I finalized my predictions....
Guess we will find out tonight
 
I think Microsoft signed an exclusive deal for November NPD, so the numbers won't be out for Sony until a later date. However, they will release a definitive edition of NPD for them when they do which will include all the DLC.

Still a better exclusivity deal than the RotTR.

We have to observe and applaud that PR has evolved from creative uses of the comma to the asterisk and manipulating the perception of time like a wizard. I don't see too many big businesses doing that.
 
Expecting an X1 win, you can only go so far selling old games and dlc.

Eun4HNZ.gif


This GIF pulls double duty on this page. I foresee great things coming tonight/tomorrow!
 

dolemite

Member
I think Microsoft signed an exclusive deal for November NPD, so the numbers won't be out for Sony until a later date. However, they will release a definitive edition of NPD for them when they do which will include all the DLC.

Does anyone know when the review embargo lifts? My bet is on an 85-ish at Metacritic.
 
Yup I had a momentary brain cramp there, thinking GAF = world.

I agree with you though. Some of MS' PR has been misleading if not downright deceptive. Some PR person thinks they're being a very clever person right now. It's gross.

MS' analytics have gotten much worse lately. They throw some big numbers (like, literally big. Big font) on a PPT slide with a background image and some flashy charts and graphs to imply they know what they're talking about. In many cases, the data presented doesn't really say what MS' analysts think it does. This is a bit inside baseball, but MS analytics gives no f's about sample size or accounting for outliers. A couple titles do huge numbers on consumables and MS recommends all pubs implement consumables in everything, even when there's no natural or gameplay fit. It's pedestrian analytics done in a flashy way so of course it snows over all the execs who run around thinking they've discovered the grail. Sony is much better about this stuff, but since they do it in a more intelligent and subtle way findings are often overlooked or glossed over.

You take this way too serious cousin.

Well yeah. It's part of my JD.
 
Demand for the Elite controller 🎮 has to get a mention this PR release. Has to. I just want it in there because I like to see the NPD thread burn 😉

I agree with you though. Some of MS' PR has been misleading if not downright deceptive. Some PR person thinks they're being a very clever person right now. It's gross.

You take this way too serious cousin.
 

Bluenoser

Member
Demand for the Elite controller 🎮 has to get a mention this PR release. Has to. I just want it in there because I like to see the NPD thread burn 😉



You take this way too serious cousin.

But the drama that ensues has me going to Costco for more popcorn. The more controversy MS creates, the more popcorn I will need to eat. Tummy pains for days.
 

viHuGi

Banned
If the assumptions we are making are correct, this is the lowest of the low. Beating the BF sales drum when not even including last year's actual BF in the comparison. Fucking hell, where does it end? They are pretty much lying to people at this point.

But the thing I don't get is what makes them think this is anything but a bad thing. People will find out, and despise them even more, so why bother with the slimy PR to begin with? It's like the Xbox division is run by high school kids.

Lol what? They beat last Black Friday week plain and simple and it was the 2nd best on Xbox History, nothing to see here, they sold better over the same period of Monday - Saturday, stop this non sense lol.
 

PhineasRed

Neo Member
If the assumptions we are making are correct, this is the lowest of the low. Beating the BF sales drum when not even including last year's actual BF in the comparison. Fucking hell, where does it end? They are pretty much lying to people at this point.

But the thing I don't get is what makes them think this is anything but a bad thing. People will find out, and despise them even more, so why bother with the slimy PR to begin with? It's like the Xbox division is run by high school kids.

The PR that everyone is referring to has a hyperlink (embedded directly in the sentence In question) that links to their prior statement where they clearly state the rise YOY over Black Friday last year. this should have been a dead issue pages ago.
 
Lol what? They beat last Black Friday week plain and simple and it was the 2nd best on Xbox History, nothing to see here, they sold better over the same period of Monday - Saturday, stop this non sense lol.

But MS PR LIES!!#*! They don't CARE about us gamers. They just want money!
 

Bluenoser

Member
The PR that everyone is referring to has a hyperlink (embedded directly in the sentence In question) that links to their prior statement where they clearly state the rise YOY over Black Friday last year. this should have been a dead issue pages ago.

This sentence?

"Worldwide Xbox Black Friday sales in the Xbox Store broke records with an increase of 57 percent across Xbox One and Xbox 360, global Xbox Live Gold subscriptions were up over 40 percent, and U.S. Xbox One console sales at retail were up 22 percent over the same period last year, making it the second biggest Black Friday week in 15 years of Xbox history in the U.S."

You are mistaken sir.

What would be the point for MS PR to lie if the numbers are out in a week to expose them? If the numbers are bad they just wouldn't say anything.

Exactly my point. What good does it serve to spin that hard if the numbers will show otherwise? MS never stays quiet, that's their problem. :)
 

dolemite

Member
What would be the point for MS PR to lie if the numbers are out in a week to expose them? If the numbers are bad they just wouldn't say anything.
 
How so? It's just a controller, and a really good one by all accounts. I don't think I've once seen accessories become a point of contention in an NPD thread.

Have you seen the comments in here claiming MS is lying already about Black Friday? And you are feeding into it without the facts. Lets just see what NPD gives us.
 
Have you seen the comments in here claiming MS is lying already about Black Friday? And you are feeding into it without the facts. Lets just see what NPD gives us.

I wasn't speaking just about the Black Friday commentary. It's a trend with MS right now. Been that way for a while now. It's okay to call something what it is.

And yeah, like bluenoser says, no one's saying that MS is lying. But I would say that wording in PR statements like that is very carefully constructed and scrutinized. What isn't said directly is as important as what is.

NPD is going to give us a month. It will be very difficult to parse out this week from the full month. There will be no way to verify or refute MS' statement using NPD data.

there was that guy that hated Disney Infinity. Figures are accessories right?

LOL missed that one. Too bad no one talks about TTL anymore. =/

It sold way better than in last year's black friday for example.

Up an INFINITE %!! Great success!
 

Bluenoser

Member
Have you seen the comments in here claiming MS is lying already about Black Friday? And you are feeding into it without the facts. Lets just see what NPD gives us.

Just for the record, I haven't seen anyone outright claim MS lied, just that if they did spin the numbers to not include last year's BF, then it's pretty close to lying, but that's all a big IF, which will likely be hard to prove, even with NPD numbers. I guess if Nov sales are down quite a bit from the 1230k of last year, it will probably be reasonable to conclude that they were down on BF as well, but again, hard to prove this.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
If ms' marketing was as good as their pr, tomb raider wouldn't be an über bomba and halo fans wouldn't have bought 90% digital but instead 900% digital.

I guess that's better than Sony who doesn't have enough money to pay for either!
 
9 out 10 of my friends bought a digital ps4. Let's hope Sony include these. That's 90% of the sales digitally. So if Sony sold 1 million ps4s, that means they sold around 10 million if you include digital ps4. Sony killing it.
 
This is incredible. Is this real? Zod almighty could it actually be the case...??? Lords of spin will have outdone themselves if true.

No to mention that the tile of the press release is blatantly misleading: "Xbox Breaks Black Friday Records", when the actual language in the release is vague, but implies that Xbox broke Xbox records during Black Friday AND that it talks about the "New Xbox One Experience complete with Backward Compatibility" which is not true, as the BC is limited to a specific list of games.

To me, MS is worse than any other company when it comes to this sort of thing, whether it be for video games or any other lines of business that MS has.
 

Stanng243

Member
9 out 10 of my friends bought a digital ps4. Let's hope Sony include these. That's 90% of the sales digitally. So if Sony sold 1 million ps4s, that means they sold around 10 million if you include digital ps4. Sony killing it.

I hope one day they do sell them digitally. You just hook your fancy 3d printer to the internet, and it prints it out for you.
 
I hope one day they do sell them digitally. You just hook your fancy 3d printer to the internet, and it prints it out for you.

Well one company is beta testing this for the future, so... we are in luck?

Off topic: I am excited as hell for the prospect of delivery services + 3d printing that are being pitched around.
 
Yep. All good points. There will be less (true) AAA exclusives as games become even more expensive to make.

I just don't like it since (as you've said) this current gen simply feels like a continuation of the last four years of the previous gen instead of a true complete refresh (again, like we saw back in 2006/2007). That's not to say that I've hated it though -- I have MANY enjoyable games to play. It just simply feels like the "next gen newness" has worn off already (where as 2007 for example still felt fresh and new). 2016 is looking really good though. Hope it won't disappoint.
_____________________



I said it before, but again -- major props. I amazed at how retail workers have the ability to work through this insane period.
Well here's a narrative I would like to challenge. And this is one that AAA exclusives are that important anymore. Its not like there are three or four consoles now competing, its either Xbox or PS, and you get a Nintendo to play their games. So what would be the point of exclusive deals for the sake of promoting your console? There's only one other option to choose from, chances are it'll be ours. (each company can reason this way) The risk is just not worth it.

In addition, I think ps4 does indeed have more meaningful exclusive experiences because they are spread out across genres and adds a better variety or in other words attracting a more diverse gamer. Not only is the marketing strong, but you have games like transistor or FF14, and the Japanese support. I see this on forums about how something is on PC its not really exclusive. Well that's irrelevant to the end user. To more mainstream gamers, FF14 is a ps4 game, will be the same with paragon, firewatch NMS, SFV, etc...so I would argue MS needs to step up significantly there first party efforts or the rest of the Gen and next will be even lower in market share. XB1 is still coasting off of 360 success and brand growth, Sony really has countered a lot of what MS accomplished. They have Windows and Minecraft, so anything is possible, but I'm just not sure the market wants a bunch of consoles anymore. Sony has the opportunity to become the Apple of the gaming world if VR is a hit for them. There will be a bunch of players, but one company getting the bulk of the profits. Apple only has like 30% of smartphone market or less, but make like 90% profit. Lol...Consumers want the best, and will spend top dollar for it, particularly with good marketing. Everything else is for niche specific taste, or the cheapest alternative. I think Nintendo as well will have a difficult time in the console space, it is simply too many alternatives to a traditional console.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Always amusing seeing random people pop in to NPD threads to tell us all how wrong we are to question MS PR as if they haven't proven their statements should be treated with utmost skepticism a thousand times over. Whether it's SW sales, exclusivity announcements, HW sales reports or even tweets they have proven time and time again that they are willing to bend the truth as much as needed to give the illusion of success.

On a side note, if they truly are "drinking their own koolaid" in regards to their internal figures/reporting as Cosmic's post would imply, that does not bode well. Big corporations live and die by having accurate data and operating in response to it. Spinning not only the consumers but also themselves is counterproductive to the company's interest. It's basically trading the possibility of future growth for the ability to look less bad to investors now. Seems to be a problem with a lot of companies TBH but I'd wager most separate the misleading reports from internal reporting.
 

donny2112

Member
Happy Birthday, Ryng_Tolu! Here's hoping Splatoon brings you an early Christmas present!

My take on PS4/XB1 ratios for November is that the consoles sold in Black Friday week may be dead even. The early Infoscout numbers point to this, they were both mostly available for $299, and consumers don't really seem to care for one or the other that much at Christmas. However, I think the earlier month sales with BlOps3 LE PS4 and more importantly the Vader PS4 with Star Wars fever so high will push PS4 over the top. Also on 3DS, I believe in Wal-Mart. $129 3DSXL (not New variety) will carry the system higher than most predict to possibly ~flat YOY (it's still a declining system, after all).

Also, I'm going to assume that Welfare didn't mean to predict 3DS sales of 4.7m for the month. (~_^) (Edit: See Welfare's comment on it now. I just assumed it was an order of magnitude error and deleted an extra zero to make it 467K.)

NeoGAF Aggregate Predictions - Nov-2015

1. PS4 - 1257K
2. XB1 - 1108K
3. 3DS - 425K
4. WIU - 334K

Edit:
Well, the way I'm going with posting and editing my predictions and still not getting the format right after all this time and having errors kindly pointed out to me, then I dont deserve to participate in these prediction threads anymore:(

Too late to edit out the ":"

Rules are rules, and it's my stuff up.

Please use the correct format in the future. That said, I read that you had it completely the wrong format originally and then tried to modify it to use the right one. I do try to take that kind of effort into account, so I corrected it for you this month. Just use the OP format going forward, please. Thanks!
 
Happy Birthday, Ryng_Tolu! Here's hoping Splatoon brings you an early Christmas present!

My take on PS4/XB1 ratios for November is that the consoles sold in Black Friday week may be dead even. The early Infoscout numbers point to this, they were both mostly available for $299, and consumers don't really seem to care for one or the other that much at Christmas. However, I think the earlier month sales with BlOps3 LE PS4 and more importantly the Vader PS4 with Star Wars fever so high will push PS4 over the top. Also on 3DS, I believe in Wal-Mart. $129 3DSXL (not New variety) will carry the system higher than most predict to possibly ~flat YOY (it's still a declining system, after all).

Also, I'm going to assume that Welfare didn't mean to predict 3DS sales of 4.7m for the month. (~_^)

NeoGAF Aggregate Predictions - Nov-2015

1. PS4 - 1257K
2. XB1 - 1108K
3. 3DS - 425K
4. WIU - 334K

The X1 numbers would be really good (since it would be a much small drop then expected) but if those PS4 numbers are remotely close to the mark, then wow. That YoY increase.

Only a few more hours to go.
 
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