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NPD Sales Results for May 2009
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Skiptastic
Member
dammitmattt said:
Good stuff. Achievements, while people will say are just ways to make your e-penis grow, do add a replay factor to almost every game that is on the 360 (stuff like Avatar doesn't count lol).
I just think taking online gaming from being game specific to cross game via the console was a huge step for console gaming. It allowed for communities to develop outside of just one game and for that persistent online presence that dammitmattt talked about. I mean, can you imagine only being able to see your Halo 3 friends in Halo 3 and your L4D friends in L4D now? If we devolved and that was the case, there would be riots in the online streets. It seems like a really simple and obvious thing now, but man was that important.
andthebeatgoeson
Junior Member
I find myself replaying games and being attentive to achievements. It's a good idea.Skiptastic said:
vanguardian1
poor, homeless and tasteless
Dunlop said:
I would argue that the over-focus of Live! is a deterrent for those of us without broadband.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
vanguardian1 said:I would argue that the over-focus of Live! is a deterrent for those of us without broadband.
why don't you have broadband
vanguardian1 said:I would argue that the over-focus of Live! is a deterrent for those of us without broadband.
And you'd be correct. And the requirement of a subscription is a deterrent for those who don't want to dedicate tons of time to online play/Netflix to make the subscription "worth it." And a significant portion of the console's power being focused on providing HD resolution vs. SD is a deterrent for those with only SDTVs.
However, I think the general opinion is that the benefits of a subscription-based, broadband-only, Live-focused, HD console overcome the loss of those specific portions of the market mentioned above.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
donny2112 said:
As a primarily SD-gamer with a PS3 and a 360, the visual benefit is immediately obvious on an SDTV and in my experience the majority of people with PS3s/360s are also SDTV gamers. I'm not sure the "HD" feature push really deters anyone from buying the consoles.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
birdchili said:
Well, certainly (in my library; Banjo 3, Dead Rising, Dead Space, FEAR, IU, Lost Odyssey, Lost Planet, Star Wars TFU, Two Worlds, Viva Pinata, Crackdown, Heavenly Sword, and MGS4 have either minor or major UI or text issues playing either on SDTV in general, or composite), but this is a totally scattershot issue and I refuse to believe that someone would not buy a 360 because they heard that a few games have poorly designed UIs.
donny's hypothesis is that an HD-minded strategy excludes people without SDTVs, but I don't think his premise is that they'll be excluded because of dev design issues, but rather because of product positioning (IE "the primary advantage of the xbox 360/ps3 is stunning high fidelity graphics" would make someone less likely to get a system if they don't have an HDTV)
dammitmattt
Banned
donny2112 said:
As a gamer, I'm so very glad that Microsoft didn't develop their system around the lowest common denominator. Plus, you don't need an HDTV and XBL Gold to take advantage of what the system offers and the huge library of great single-player games. In fact, I would contest your point that it's Live-focused. I play A TON of games and my split from single-player to multiplayer usage is still somewhere in the 85/15 range, so the majority of usage I'm getting out of my console has nothing to do with XBL, and I imagine that's the case for the majority of the 360 audience
Let's look at broadband and HDTV penetration:
Broadband - Penetration is already well above 50% of households, and if you take out portion of the audience who wouldn't be interested in a gaming system (elderly, very poor, very rural, anti-TV or anti-technology people, etc.), you're probably looking at 70-80% penetration for your potential audience. And that's still growing quickly. All three console makers bet on broadband, and Nintendo even took the next step of betting on WiFi, so I'm not sure what this point even has to do with the 360 specifically.
HDTV - Penetration is roughly between 30-40% of households, depending upon who you believe, and if you do the same math above, you're looking at roughly 50% of your potential audience. On top of that, HDTVs are not needed at all to clearly see the difference between generations. They definitely enhance the experience, but you can still see huge benefits, especially if you're a non-HDTV owner with broadband. I really don't see why you'd say it's a "deterrent" because aside from a few games with text issues, you're only seeing a graphical benefit when moving up a generation with an SDTV.
What's the point of all this? The point is that it wasn't as big of a risk as you imply that Sony and Microsoft focused on consoles that excelled when connected to HDTVs and broadband. Hell, if we had a study of the HDTV/broadband penetration among console owners, you'd probably see very similar percentages of penetration among 360, PS3, and Wii owners.
Stumpokapow said:
Actually "deterrent" not "excludes." And that comes more from the mindset of being forced to pay extra for a feature that you can't use, right now.
Stumpokapow said:
Yeah. I'm not saying it's a big deal. Just pointing out that the idea of a online-focused, broadband-only console excluding dial-up/no internet users isn't the only design choice the 360 made that could be offputting to some portions of the market. However, I think the general opinion is that the benefits of those design choices outweigh the cost of the portions of the market that may be deterred from those design choices having been made.
dammitmattt said:
It wasn't my point. I just included it from vanguardian1's post. I would say that the 360's online-focused, but that doesn't mean you have to have a Gold subscription to get some benefit out of that.
dammitmattt said:
Microsoft made the decision with the Xbox to require broadband access for Live. I'm not saying it's a point that specificially has to do with the 360, but rather it's just another portion of the market that might see that as a problem, such as pointed out by vanguardian1.
dammitmattt said:
If you only have an SDTV, you're paying for capability that you can't use. Some people could see that as a deterrent.
dammitmattt said:
I never implied it was a big risk.
Honestly, I think you're ascribing motivations to me that aren't there. My purpose in replying to vanguardian1 was to show that the deterrent of being broadband-only is not that big a deal in the overall picture, and if you're going to point out that small level issue, here's a bunch of other relatively small level issues, too. I think you took my post as some kind of attack on Microsoft's decisions with the 360/Live, and I'd categorize it as somewhere near the exact opposite of that. :lol
Zachack said:
Very much so.
No Blu-Ray movies? PS3 Blu-Ray movie player is useless to you.
No Wireless internet? PS3/Wii WiFi native access is useless to you.
No TV (i.e. projector)? Wii's sensor bar becomes offputting.
Likewise, no broadband makes you lose capability on every single major console and handheld this generation. vanguardian1 pointed it out in relation to the 360, which to be fair is probably the most online-focused console this generation just as the Xbox was probably the most online-focused last genreation, which is why I went that direction. However, it could be taken in many directions and not just in video game consoles, and some portion of the potential buyers in all of them could feel like they're being asked to pay for a feature they can't/won't use.
But just because some people out there may not like paying extra like that doesn't mean the inclusion of the extra features is an overall bad thing.
DeaconKnowledge
Member
Hey, what's the US installed base of the DS and the PS2?
Curious.
Curious.
boiled goose
good with gravy
donny2112 said:
ok
ok
wat?
DeaconKnowledge said:
PS2 - 44.3m
NDS - 30.9m
PS2 @ 5th May (where DS is now) - 29.0m
amtentori said:
Matt-IGN talked about it at launch. If you use a front-projector system for your TV, you don't have to have a physical TV for the sensor bar to rest on. Even the projector screens may not work to have the sensor bar on it. (This is also where the wireless sensor bars come in handy, but that means you still have to have something sitting where the projector is projecting.) It can be offputting to some people that they'd have to "mess up" the empty area where the projector points with a sensor bar to play Wii games.
vanguardian1
poor, homeless and tasteless
Stumpokapow said:
Because it isn't available. I have satellite internet ($300 setup fee, $70 a month, 300mb download limit daily), but it can't play games online. Works for buying Virtual Console/Wiiware/360 arcade titles though.
Kusagari said:
Quite obviously I've barely been able to try it. I did manage to get a few games of Civilization 4 using 28.8 dial-up with friends before I switched to satellite though. Wish I could do it again.
Zachack said:
Quite the opposite if you consider their support of local multiplayer games along with single-player games.
Brakara said:
And how the hell are you so ignorant?
a rude comment deserves such a response, sorry
Last I checked, about 25% of homes in mainland USA alone lack cable/dsl availability. Is it really that surprising to you guys?
I would be amazed if I see *real* broadband out here before 2020. Being on the county line between 2 fair-sized cities really makes it bad, all cable/dsl connectivity stops 2-3 miles away from the line on both sides.
By the way, I own 9 360 games (outside of sonic tennis that came with it) and all of them are single-player focused games, excluding Chromehounds, because it was only $5 and I have a soft spot for mecha games.
dammitmattt said:
I'm confused as to why you say this... how does Microsoft having a download service for games impact Nintendo and/or Sony, exactly? It's not as though Microsoft was the first company to develop a download service for computers -or- game systems.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
DavidDayton said:
So the original Xbox Live Arcade launched in November of 2004. What game system had an online service to download games before that?
OldJadedGamer
Banned
chubigans said:
I had the Sega Channel actually here in San Francisco. We were lucky enough to be on the markets that covered it. I thought he was talking about an online service but re-reading his comment it was a generic "download service" and not online and yes, there were plenty of these before but I can't think of any that were online before XBLA.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
OldJadedGamer said:
charlequin
Banned
vanguardian1 said:I would argue that the over-focus of Live! is a deterrent for those of us without broadband.
But Live/PSN is what makes 360/PS3 actually next-gen consoles instead of just really ponderous and rotund mockeries of last-gen.
I mean, it sucks that you don't have access to a gaming-quality internet connection where you are, but Live's functionality really wouldn't work without broadband access and it's such an important part of the overall console experience that I can't say there's any way it was a mistake.
DavidDayton said:
Live on the OG Xbox was quite a bit more thorough (and much more importantly, quite a bit more successful) than any other attempts at online console gaming up to that point. It brought online play into the console mainstream and therefore made it a significant enough bullet point that other systems had to respond with their own online gaming setups.
I mean, I feel like this question is like asking "how does Wii having motion control impact Sony and/or Microsoft" -- it impacts it because when one player launches a great feature that works well and end users enjoy, their competitors feel compelled to match it somehow.
D.Lo
Member
That was certainly my issue for years with the HD systems. I like to play my games looking as good as they can, and paying a 360 or PS3 on my new-ish SDTV (bought it about half a year before the 360 was released) I had the niggling feeling the whole time that I was 'missing out' on how good the game could look, particularly as they were also designed for widescreen. So I held off buying an HD console until I could play the games properly, as designed, on a good HD screen.Stumpokapow said:
On the other hand, there still isn't much HD content on TV in Australia, my large flat CRT still looks stunning for DVD movies, and I have no other HD sources, so buying an HD screen would pretty much be for games. I don't want to get a stop-gap TV, my next one would have to be my TV for years. And so the decision to purchase an HD console becomes quite expensive, good HDTV+console. To me, no point getting one without the other.
In every previous generation the consoles were behind or equivalent of the average TV in specs, TV differences were largely just size. Last gen my new TV allowed me to go to component on the consoles, which gave a huge boost in image quality (particularly on the GameCube, damn that machine had great IQ, far better then the other two), but didn't change the games at all.
By next gen there will be enough HD content to justify a new screen apart from games, and so HD focus makes sense. But this gen I think a lot of people were in my boat.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
bmf said:
The Satellaview was just the Sega Channel but instead of cable, it used a Satellite signal. Again, I was thinking of an online download service for game systems.
charlequin
Banned
D.Lo said:
As an SDTV/360 owner (who's had the chance to sample it on HDTVs elsewhere), let me assure you that you would not be missing all that much. Nice looking games still look pretty phenomenal -- and way better than PS2/GCN games -- on my TV, as long as I'm hooked up with component cables.
dammitmattt
Banned
DavidDayton said:
They were the first one to do it on a console and Sony/Nintendo were able to learn a lot of lessons from what they did right and what they did wrong. Well, Sony did for the most part. I'm not sure that Nintendo has learned a whole lot.
But still, Microsoft was the first company to heavily push digital downloads on consoles and it's impossible for it to not have had an impact or influence in some way over the competition.
And I was one of the proud subscribers to Sega Channel back in the day, and it's nothing like XBLM, PSN, or WW/VC. It's actually much more like GameTap, GOG, or what OnLive could be.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
DavidDayton said:
Fine, must be connected to the internet through an ISP. What game system allowed you to connect to the internet using your ISP and then pay for individual games to be downloaded to your game system?
2 Minutes Turkish
Banned
JoJo13 said:
Firstly, comparing Left 4 Dead to Killzone 2 is a bit silly. Left 4 Dead is a new IP, and has a strong focus on MP only.
Killzone has had the advantage of a massive budget (both developmental and marketing) and has 2 prequels across 2 platforms.
This word of mouth thing you speak of happens to GENUINELY GOOD games. Halo and CoD didn't get good word of mouth out of nowhere.
Halo became Halo on the XBOX, not the 360. The Xbox's userbase was ZILCH when Halo hit, and the PS2 already had sold MILLIONS of consoles by the time Halo hit and it STILL sold a shitload and created a brand single handedly.
This is what GENUINELY GOOD games do.
If Killzone 2 hasn't generated this, then what does that tell you? Userbase is NO excuse for Killzones sales.
dammitmattt said:
See, I'll give you the rest of your arguments (even though I think most of 'em have predecessors, it's true that Microsoft did a LOT to standardize things on game systems), but I don't see how downloading games on Nintendo or Sony systems was directly influenced by the fact that such a system appeared on the Xbox.
Heck, I think the Dreamcast being online had more influence on the gaming industry (even though it failed miserably) than the Xbox's arcade software.
Why are you making a distinction between an ISP and a modem to a private server? They accomplish the same thing and the interface is the same -- the technology is even the same. The only difference is that one didn't use the internet.OldJadedGamer said:
dammitmattt
Banned
DavidDayton said:
You can keep splitting hairs all you want, but there was no real equivalent in the console space to XBLM in its original incarnation on the Xbox or in the much improved v2.0 on the 360.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
DavidDayton said:
Hence my original confusion since I thought you said that there were other downloaded services for game consoles before XBLA from the internet which is why I asked which ones they were. To my understanding, XBLA is the first time you could pay for individual games and download them to your system without a requirement of any extra hardware.
dammitmattt said:
While you could very well be right, I think you have to define the characteristics of XBLM that make it unique and distinct from previous offerings... and even if you do prove that it was unique, that doesn't mean that it directly influenced download systems on other consoles. The general concept of "downloading a game to a system" predated the Xbox, even if it hadn't taken off in the mainstream (of course, one could argue the Xbox's download service didn't take off with the mainstream EITHER, and it wasn't until the 360 that it became a solid service... at which point.
Again, perhaps I am splitting hairs, but I dislike when prior innovations are ignored and all focus is placed on the current generation of gaming hardware. Precursors to the modern download services DID exist -- XBLM didn't create an entire arena by itself.
Granted, it's not the world's most important debate, but...
See, I don't think the -internet- is an important distinction here... online <> Internet.OldJadedGamer said:
As far as the requirement of extra hardware, it is true that the Xbox had online hardware integrated into the system -- as did the Dreamcast. However, yes, I will agree with you that the Xbox represented the first game system system with integrated communications hardware TIED to a system for downloading entire games, I suppose.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
Same concept, just pre widely available internet.OldJadedGamer said:
OldJadedGamer
Banned
bmf said:
But not online which is what I said when you quoted me. I'm more thinking a service where you didn't need new equipment, could pay for individual games over the internet and have them delivered to your home system.
Firestorm said:
No, it's not a 360 exclusive. It's a Microsoft exclusive unless it's coming for OSX and I don't know about it.
Woo-Fu
Banned
Seems to me that the shooter market is a wee bit more crowded nowadays than back when Halo brought multiplayer FPS to everybody who hadn't heard of goldeneye. Halo is a great game, no doubt, but it owes as much of its success to timing as it does to the quality of the game.2 Minutes Turkish said:
It is OldJadedGamer, the website might change---evilavatar, colonyofgamers, or NeoGAF---but his battle rages on.CoG said:
Y2Kev said:I feel like the industry is teetering towards armageddon. All these big projects that were greenlit three and four years ago are just bombing
While this would be kinda delightful, most of the "big projects" aren't bombing at all. On 360, they're by-and-large enormously successful.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
Slavik81 said:
I thought I said game system...............
2 Minutes Turkish said:
I wasn't the one originally comparing the two.
It had a large budget, though I wouldn't say its marketing budget was particularly large.
The first true prequel was widely recognized as a failure critically and commercially, so it had to counteract that for KZ2.
Word of mouth happens to both good and bad games. Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc, weren't received well, but their results speak for themselves.
Halo and CoD's success owes much to being the first big budget console shooters to market.
The first mover advantage here with CoD/Halo is easily recognized, and it has as much to do with that as it does to their quality. Halo: ODST looks to be a pretty cheaply made expansion pack with little improvements to Halo 3, but it will go on to sell a ton of units due to brand name alone. Halo Wars sold completely on brand name as the title wasn't received very well and it was an RTS title -- nevertheless, it sold big numbers in its first month.
Killzone 2 was too late to market and on a system that doesn't show huge preference towards shooters like the Xbox 360.
Exactly, and the reasons for that are as follows:
1) There were no other big name FPS titles on consoles. The genre always showed potential (Goldeneye, Perfect Dark) in years prior, but there really hadn't been a great FPS title on consoles for the current gen. They were at the right place at the right time.
2) The genre at that point wasn't crowded. This allowed them to become the first mover.
3) There weren't very many other standout Xbox titles, so it became the defacto purchase.
It tells me that the Playstation audience wasn't formed on the back of a single genre and that the FPS genre in question is incredibly crowded at this point.
If I wanted a great FPS back in the Xbox days, all I basically had was Halo. This gen there's a lot more competition.