When some of you say that the core audience left Wii because 3rd parties made mistakes are you saying that core wii players just stopped playing games or that they just bought a ps360? If its the latter why do you have a problem with that? It was probably better for 3rd party publishers too that core players bought their games on the HD twins instead of the Wii. More dlc and more online engagement. I guess I feel like who cares that the Wii didn't get certain games as long as those games still got made I don't see the problem. Wii was still a success and people still enjoyed for what it offered.
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NPD Sales Results for January 2015 [PS4 #1, Nintendo Numbers, XB1 Minimum]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Nightengale
Member
Speaking of the 2XX price-point, I wonder how the $275 trade-in-your-old-console programme at GameStop is doing for PS4.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
It's pretty much that simple even without a hardware revision.
Unless MS responds via a $250 (and possibly a special $199.99 Holiday) SKU. MS already dropped the price before Sony did for their console so I'm positive that MS will do it again whenever Sony decides to drop the price for the PS4.
Really have a feeling that this year's Holiday season in North America is going to be very good in terms of the competition. I think both companies are going to really "go all out" in the territory -- especially since both consoles have big exclusives coming out this year.
So low? Their aren't so desperate? Are they? Especially 199$ with 50$ gift card....smgh
ArchedThunder
Banned
Jesus, I can't even imagine the losses MS would take selling the Xbox One for 199 this holiday.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
I don't see Sony doing a race to the bottom. $299 would be a reasonable and killer price point for PS4 this Fall. If Microsoft is willing to completely devalue their product even more then they already have then you just have tip your cap.
Is anyone else looking at Amazon's hourly charts? The PS4 is currently in 11th place and XB1 in 25th place. And again, the PS4 was ahead in the first half of the month and is likely to remain ahead for the other half. I hope both consoles do much better this month after the disappointing January sales.
I'm also surprised to see The Order 1886 doing so well before release. It's been in the top 20 for a few days now. I hope it ends up being a commercial success.
I'm also surprised to see The Order 1886 doing so well before release. It's been in the top 20 for a few days now. I hope it ends up being a commercial success.
I think $50 less than the PS4 is a good assumption to make for MS' plan in North America.
While I would say that's definitely more believable than $199.99, I wouldn't say it's impossible to see the system at $199.99 either.
______________
I'm thinking that if we see it then it will only be for a limited amount of time and not for the two month period we saw last year for the system at $350.
Overall, I'm just expecting them to go $50 less than whatever the PS4 will drop to this year (assuming it will).
________________
I don't either... they don't have to.
Agreed.
Seems like they care a lot about getting people locked into Xbox Live and their Windows 10 ecosystem (especially with the latter being unified across various MS platforms); Seem to be thinking about future benefits at this point.
Doctor_Thomas
Member
Me too.
Uncharted 4 seems to be taking, very much, a more open direction over the PS3 games. It would be nice to have something to fill the more linear shooter gap that Uncharted 4 is potentially leaving, so I would like to see 1886 as a sort of "Uncharted 1" scenario where a decent success translates into a even bigger sequel.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Yep PS4 getting separation and The Order cracked the top 10 already. Really happy for RAD.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I think there is a very strong argument to be made (and it has been, by multiple people in multiple NPD threads) that abandoning people who came to console gaming via the Wii has led to those people abandoning console gaming completely, so we have a market of consolidated niches targetting solely the highest spenders.
This is great if the only games you enjoy happen to be in those consolidated niches, and you don't mind paying more and more money for less and less content.
If you don't however you might be sat there wondering "what the fuck has happened to this hobby of mine?".
It's also hugely reductive to suggest "all hardcores stayed and bought HD twins" and "all casual left to play candy crush saga". There isn't a binary switch between 'hardcore' and 'casual', there is a huge and varied spectrum. This is why you can see a company like Gameloft getting huge simply by cloning successful 'hardcore' games on mobile - those 'casuals' that left because they weren't getting any interesting games on the Wii are buying exactly the type of games they would have bought on the Wii if anyone had been making them, they're just now doing it in a completely different market.
If you enjoy console gaming, losing vast chunks of population to non-console gaming is not a good thing.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. With Uncharted 4 moving to a more open approach, a linear cinematic shooter would be nice for a change. After all, this gen seems to be the gen of open world games...
Yup, good for RaD. They deserve it. I wonder if PS4 sales will increase even more the closer we get to The Order's release date.
Especially on UK Amazon.
Really? How much better is the PS4/Order doing on Amazon UK?
Doctor_Thomas
Member
Sometimes I just want something I can sit back with and enjoy an engaging story held together by shooting galleries and set pieces. I'm OK with that because of this shift to open world design.
No arguments here, dude.
Doctor_Thomas
Member
PS4 -- 6th
The Order - 7th
White PS4 - 16th
PS4 with Minecraft and FIFA - 20th
XB1 - 23rd
Uncharted 4 is still gonna be linear, ND just widened the levels further & added more options in combat.
Freeman
Banned
To me it makes total sense for Sony to cut the PS4 in NA first if they need it to remain ahead of Xbox and more important for the PS4 to have a 20m year.
Sony got cough with its pants down last holiday season, GTAV+TLoU was what covered their ass(those are games with great world of mouth and that isn't something they can replicate every year).
This year they know they are going to dominate up until the end of the year and that MS will have a small window where they are going to try to turn things around, so Sony should be better prepared.
If Sony can ship enough PS4s, they should just keep the price of the PS4 as low as they can regardless of what Xbox is doing, with PS+ and software sale it makes no sense to focus on profiting with hardware.
If they were really aggressive they could do something like 299 at E3 bundled with TLoU or LBP3 and during the holiday add a second more recent game to the bundle.
Sony got cough with its pants down last holiday season, GTAV+TLoU was what covered their ass(those are games with great world of mouth and that isn't something they can replicate every year).
This year they know they are going to dominate up until the end of the year and that MS will have a small window where they are going to try to turn things around, so Sony should be better prepared.
If Sony can ship enough PS4s, they should just keep the price of the PS4 as low as they can regardless of what Xbox is doing, with PS+ and software sale it makes no sense to focus on profiting with hardware.
If they were really aggressive they could do something like 299 at E3 bundled with TLoU or LBP3 and during the holiday add a second more recent game to the bundle.
I mean on hourly chart, not monthly.
Doctor_Thomas
Member
They really didn't. They maintained a lead in the US overall for the year and didn't have to resort to a firesale. They were in a very good position and didn't feel the need to reduce their profit to win the sales war. Microsoft had no choice, Sony did.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
The revenue both companies get from their online services does help mitigate losses on hardware sales if they can keep customers in the ecosystem. It's almost mandatory with so many games having an online focus.
Amentallica
Unconfirmed Member
Terrible advice.
Doctor_Thomas
Member
Oh, sorry
The Order is third. Even though I think Amazon is one of the more expensive online retailers at the moment, but that's actually fantastic.
Only sitting behind Majora's Mask and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.
Pound_lb003
Member
I will say, regardless of which console performs better, to get to those heady 100mil install bases, these consoles need to drop in price.
It needs to happen for the PS4, and good show on Microsoft doing it. Cheaper they are, the more relevant they are for millions of people.
And unlike phones there aren't ways to subsidise consoles - so maybe both companies can look at that option again. Get PS+ and a PS4 for £35 a month for 24 months. Simple!
It needs to happen for the PS4, and good show on Microsoft doing it. Cheaper they are, the more relevant they are for millions of people.
And unlike phones there aren't ways to subsidise consoles - so maybe both companies can look at that option again. Get PS+ and a PS4 for £35 a month for 24 months. Simple!
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Yeah Sony needs to be aggressive with pricing, but no more loss leader strategies. $299 should be doable later this year without incurring losses if Cerny's design has worked as planned.
Freeman
Banned
Not wanting to profit on the hardware sale doesn't mean losing money, just to be clear. Both consoles were pretty much made to drop in price really fast.
StealthGoblin
Banned
If I were Sony i'd include a digital copy of The Last of Us in every single PS4 console going forward and 3 months of PS+.
Then when they do drop the price of the PS4, the value would be such that it would be silly to not get one.
In addition to that, by the time the sequel to The Last of Us comes around you'll have tens of millions of people who would have been exposed to that brilliant game already.
Then when they do drop the price of the PS4, the value would be such that it would be silly to not get one.
In addition to that, by the time the sequel to The Last of Us comes around you'll have tens of millions of people who would have been exposed to that brilliant game already.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
You'd expect it to be top 5, it's a major AAA first-party title.
$199 Xbox One? What, just $35 more expensive than the 360?! Come on, not happening for at least another 2/3 years if they're really desperate.
I would assume the 360 would drop in price too if that happened; especially considering the system would already be more than 10 years old at that point (it should honestly be $99 in my opinion).
Again though, I think the possibility of it happening this year is slim -- think they'll simply aim to be $50 less than whatever the PS4 is.
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Yeah, definitely.
Manmademan
Member
not to mention that the Xbox One is more expensive to produce than the PS4 is, even without kinect, and the PS4 is much, much easier to cost reduce thanks to GDDR5 inevitably going down in price.
MS can't undercut sony on console costs without taking losses. the opposite isn't true.
A Human Becoming
More than a Member
Check a few pages back.
Sorry, but dual analog controls are garbage for aiming. So much so that it requires developers to build in a cheating mechanism into every game and give it a fancy name. So much so that since the proliferation of console dual analog fps, the genre's level design has been fraught with a distinct lack of verticality and dynamic movement because of the pad's limitations. The wiimote IR controls are orders of magnitude better than dual analog, even when you consider that you have to adjust turning to your liking. It's no KBM but it doesn't require a built in cheat mechanism to function. Even the gyroscopic pointers of move and WM+ are improvements over DA. It's a crying shame that console gamers had their heads up their asses in regards to adopting a positive change to their obviously favorite genre just because of how resistant to change they have been for a long time. As a result, we are still stuck with a garbage control scheme for the genre on consoles. Here's hoping valve's touchpad game pad catches on.
Not IW, Activision. Console manufacturers' online services are a revenue tool for some publishers, so if you're looking for another reason in the endless discussions about how publishers say they always develop for the largest user base and then don't, well...
Sorry for the DP.
No, they're not. It's PR bullshit.
Welfare
Member
<5% difference between XB1 and PS4 software, so eh.
somehow this smacks me as rather unrealistic.
So they aren't then? Or are they? Why wouldn't you want only facts in a thread about facts?
I'm strictly speaking of the big movers in the industry, i.e. publishers of 3rd party AAA retail games. There is a lot of inertia in these organizations, and plans have to be long term.
Like I said, it would have taken several years to pivot; and the fact that Wii was standard def and very low power cannot be discounted since getting the core excited has involved spectacle graphics for as long as I can remember.
If they had known in advance what kind of sales the wii was going to have, things would have been different, I'm sure.
pharmboy044
Member
I think in one of The Order threads it was mentioned that preorders for the game was very good and people are looking forward to buying the game.
I'm guessing it will be in the top 5 of February's NPD list.
Welfare
Member
PS4 is ahead in software this month, but the diff is <5%
Aquamarine
Member
PS4 software > XB1 software in January, but the difference was only <5%.
Microsoft's PR statement was this:
“With record January sales for Xbox One and more game sales per console than any other platform.”
So the Xbox One sold more games given its relatively smaller installbase, but the PS4 sold more games in total.
It's "PR bullshit" because people only look at the "more game sales ... than any other platform" component and draw false conclusions.
As has been previously said, though...what's important isn't the fact that PS4 won this month...it's that software sales are so close to each other.
Imru al-Qays
Banned
It's certainly a popular sentiment, but it seems like wishful thinking to me. How exactly do you gently introduce a bunch of non-gamers who have no interest in playing traditional games to traditional gaming on a console they bought to play motion and fitness games? Keep in mind that however you do it you'd better do it fast, because you've only got a few years before smartphone gaming eats the Wii's lunch.
In order to hold on to the blue ocean audience you've got to find a way to make them appreciate the sorts of experiences that they can only have on a console as opposed to a mobile device. It would have taken years and years to slowly acclimate the Wii's audience to console gaming, and the Wii didn't have years and years.
The reason these casuals are buying Wii games on mobile now instead of on the Wii isn't that no one was making those games on the Wii. It's that they prefer playing games on their smartphones to playing games on their Wiis: a smartphone requires no additional expense since you already own one, it's always with you so you can play on the go, you don't have to fight with anyone over the TV when you're at home. All else being equal this audience just prefers gaming on their phones because the sorts of games they play aren't improved by superior graphics, the home stereo experience, more precise controls, or any of the other advantages of consoles over mobile devices - especially considering the Wii explicitly rejected those advantages in favor of SD and waggle.
It's not a good thing, but it's only a catastrophe if you think that this audience comprised a large proportion of PS2 gamers, which I don't, or that this audience could have feasibly been convinced to stick around instead of defecting to mobile gaming, which I also don't.
excellent post, but...
Most console gamers have come to expect these hidden built in cheat systems because they believe they are headshot rockstars. Trying to change that would be really hard because they are also trained to expect games to make them feel potent and highly skilled from frame one. Gameplay that requires practice and skill development isn't good design in 2015.
Remove the cheat systems and have skill gating and watch the hate flow...
Xbox One broke records in January with the highest sales of any Xbox One Console in January.
How, exactly? They have no real exclusive games for the next 6 months of this year.
Just what are people going to buy on Xbox One besides weaker versions of multiplat games? ScreamRide? It's nothing more than a HD Rollercoaster Tycoon, & it's also on Xbox 360. Ori & The Blind Forest? It's downloadable only, & it's also coming out on PC. State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition? Downloadable only, & they're just compilations of the original versions of SoD from XBLA on Xbox 360. Also coming out on PC.
Imru al-Qays
Banned
I mean, Guitar Hero didn't just explode "late in the cycle," it exploded in 2006, when the PS2 was firmly a budget console aimed at families and non-gamers - the Wii's only competitor in that chunk of the market.
The demographic that accounted for the vast majority of the PS2's sales was just the regular old gamer demographic that we recognize today as accounting for the vast majority of the PS4's sales.
You'll have to forgive me for disagreeing. I spent as lot of time with Wii fps games, they control like absolute garbage. The movement is putrid. And I tried all the ps3 move fps as well, absolute disaster there also.