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Official Sept 2008 NPD Results

Zihark

Member
Stumpokapow said:
It's not broken. I know what you were saying. I was adding my personal opinion of Wall-E 360 since I have played it and most people have not.



That's shipped numbers from Microsoft.
So it only shipped 700K, didn't sell that number.
 
darkvir said:
wut a crap top 10 games list :lol
Yeah . . . it has so little info since
1) Star Wars takes 3 slots (duh)
2) The everlasting extra Wii controller Wii Play is up there.
3) 2 slots taken by the annual Madden

That only leaves 4 slots . . . and only 2 of those are new titles (Rock Band 2 and Mecenaries)

How did all the other games do? Who knows?
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Sales numbers make fanboys cry, so they get around the problem by pretending they don't care about sales - it's about the games, stupid. Which, coincidentally, is a good attitude to have. After all, they're just consumer products and the games they like will indeed still be made.

You'll note though, that this thread's view to post ratio shows that they in fact, do care, but they're just not posting out of fear of embarrassment or having their previous triumphant prediction posts rubbed in their faces. Only the bravest
(stupidest)
fanboys dare to come in here spinning the numbers now.

There are a few who secretly or not-so-secretly hold out hope that one game will come along and turn things around, in spite of all the evidence and past experience to the contrary. Many of them used to sport FFXIII, Killzone or MGS4 avatars and are currently wearing the LBP warpaint. They're silently waiting for the numbers to come in that will vindicate them, so that they can make their triumphant return, but will remain silent if the numbers are not in their favour.

Which won't stop the spinning and meltdowns by the crazier fanboys, of course.

Well said, brozu.
 

GPsych

Member
Coolio McAwesome said:
"Random guy at Target" is quickly becoming the "Joe the Plumber" of sales-age. The only difference is Joe the Plumber is a real person.

- C

You don't have to believe it, that's your choice. I just thought it was interesting in relation to Pachter's upgrade statements and the Wii's current dominance in terms of family perception and MS's recent marketing direction. Sorry if you didn't like it.
 

jrricky

Banned
GitarooMan said:
You guys look at everything is such broad strokes it's hard to have a conversation about anything. No shit the Wii sells software, so does the 360. Here what I would like someone to answer. If you're Ubi or EA and you're about to invest in a game like Far Cry 2 or Dead Space or something of that ilk, is the sales potential higher on a game made for Wii or 360/PS3? If your answer is Wii, where is the support for that? If the answer is 360/PS3 why is it that people constantly decry the lack of certain genres of games on Wii(especially for Western devs) like the devs are throwing money away, when in fact the better bet is in 360/PS3 for these genres.

This goes back to Force Unleashed in the sense that LucasArts has to look at those numbers and say our next big budget "core" (for lack of a better word) project will be PS3/360 focused. And this advertising issue some people have brought up I don't think adequately explains the fact that FU sold 50% better on a system with half the userbase.
Why cant it be PS3/360/WII?
And I dont get what you are trying to say in the last bolded sentence about the advertising issue...

Oh and Star Wars Force Unleashed Wii made no money it seems....compared to the tech put into the PS360 versions......
 
Zihark said:
source, hope it isn't chartzzz-I'm sure it sold zip in europe.

It seemed to do OK over here in the UK at least. #5 in the charts on release and it stuck around in the top 40 for another 3 weeks. I think the TV ad campaign helped it a lot.
 

Deku

Banned
GitarooMan said:
No doubt stuff like the Lego games and other examples have done well, but people are always wondering why Western third-parties aren't throwing resources at the Wii and my main point is just that based on the numbers, it's not exactly clear that they should for every type of game. Ubi is an example of a company that gets shit on constantly, but do people really blame them for making games like Far Cry 2, Assassin's Creed, Brothers in Arms, etc.. on the 360/PS3/PC when I think the trend still shows those types of games selling better on those platforms.

It's more of a genre argument I guess than a quality argument, people just shouldn't be shocked when companies continue to primarily focus on 360/PS3/PC for certain genres, which is a problem for Wii's software library (not its sales), which is lacking to me in areas like racing, FPS, action/adventure, etc..

You're working backwards post facto. Lego games were never part of the arguments early on, and now that Force Unleashed charted for the Wii, the argument will be revised yet again just like it was revised last time when GH became a huge hit.


I think the problem with western third parties is they haven't found the right games and their sales on the HD platforms made them complacent to look for those titles. Japanese mid sized developers have no such luxury.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
LO has sold more than half of 700k with public NPD data and no Euro sales included. I can't make any claims about Europe, but I'd hazard a guess that LO is around 500-600k sold (leaving a wide range to protect npd data as well as allow estimates for europe)

charle is referring to US sales. LO's US sales are better than all but around a dozen-15 last-gen RPGs (more if you include Zelda / SOTC / stuff that aren't really RPGs but people count anyway for some reason)
 
GitarooMan said:
You guys look at everything is such broad strokes it's hard to have a conversation about anything. No shit the Wii sells software, so does the 360. Here what I would like someone to answer. If you're Ubi or EA and you're about to invest in a game like Far Cry 2 or Dead Space or something of that ilk, is the sales potential higher on a game made for Wii or 360/PS3? If your answer is Wii, where is the support for that? If the answer is 360/PS3 why is it that people constantly decry the lack of certain genres of games on Wii(especially for Western devs) like the devs are throwing money away, when in fact the better bet is in 360/PS3 for these genres.

This goes back to Force Unleashed in the sense that LucasArts has to look at those numbers and say our next big budget "core" (for lack of a better word) project will be PS3/360 focused. And this advertising issue some people have brought up I don't think adequately explains the fact that FU sold 50% better on a system with half the userbase.

Good post dude..i totally agree...baffles me as well... i get a kick out of this stubborn blindness around here with a particular bunch.

All that i really care about though at the end of the day..is that im enjoying my pc games, my wii games, my 360 games and ps3 games, oh and my psp games. Thats all that matters to me...i dont got time to get in all this fanboyism going on,etc...to me, enjoying some gaming is what counts for me. Man this holiday lineup is remarkable guys.. FarCry 2, Dead Space, Banjo, Fable 2, Crysis WarHead, LBP, Motorstorm2,etc
 

avatar299

Banned
Honestly Clone Wars alone make everything Gitarooman says irrelevant. Obviously Lucas Arts believes that they can make games on the wii, and they clearly aren't at the ubisoft level, so for him to act as if we are calling them out to the same degree people bitch about ubisoft is a little disingenuous.
 

Cloud

Member
gkrykewy said:
The majority of JRPGs from last gen? Really? I think that's very likely.

I can't remember every crappy JRPG that released only in Japan but iirc even the mediocre ones that were being released worldwide were selling much better than this.
 
Cloud said:
With 700+k shipped copies I doubt it did.

In the US. (I figured that was obvious since we're in the NPD thread, talking about US sales.)

Anyway, LO sold 203k in its first month in the US, which already puts it above a huge portion of the RPGs released in the PS2/GCN/Xbox generation. Assuming that it did not suffer an anomalously huge cliff-like dropoff, it probably hit 300k lifetime in the US, which is pretty huge for a non-Square RPG.

Outside a few consistently successful series (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean), a few standalone marketing successes (Dragon Quest 8, Tales of Symphonia), and some series that did well on a first-entry/early-in-the-gen benefit-of-the-doubt (.hack 1, Xenosaga 1, Dark Cloud 1) most jRPGs do somewhere between 0 and 150k in the US.

EDIT: 203k number cites this post just in case there's any concern about it.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
charlequin said:
Outside a few consistently successful series (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean), a few standalone marketing successes (Dragon Quest 8, Tales of Symphonia), and some series that did well on a first-entry/early-in-the-gen benefit-of-the-doubt (.hack 1, Xenosaga 1, Dark Cloud 1) most jRPGs do somewhere between 0 and 150k in the US.

list of last-gen rpgs with higher sales than LO... not including any zelda sku.

ps2: .hack infection, dark cloud 1, dqviii, ffx, ffx2, ffxi, ffxii, kingdom hearts, kingdom hearts 2, star ocean 3, xenosaga 1

gcn: tales of symphonia, paper mario 2

xbx: fable, kotor, kotor2, morrowind

gba: fftactics advance, golden sun, kingdom hearts, pokeymans ruby sapphire emerald fire red leaf green, mario and luigi, pokeymans mystery dungeon red

missing data: i don't know if golden sun 2 or jade empire are there, and there are 3 ps2 games within striking distance of lo that i'm not sure if lo or the ps2 games are higher.
 

Haunted

Member
oh shit, I'm late.

well, damn at those hardware numbers. Wii is running off and Microsoft won't let Sony get closer.
 
GitarooMan said:
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but here's people's answer so they can stop whining about why the Wii gets less third-party big budget "core" game development in the West.

I played The Force Unleashed Wii. You personally owe me an apology for that remark.
 
speculawyer said:
2) The everlasting extra Wii controller Wii Play is up there.

Eh, that was a pretty convincing argument when Wii remotes were scarce but they're easily found now for ten bucks less. I think saying it's still up there because it's a ten dollar game is much more compelling. If LBP cost ten bucks I'm sure it would quickly have a 1:1 ratio with PS3.
 

Scrubking

Member
markatisu said:
:lol at the people who still to this day dont get how Wii software sells

Force Unleashed will keep selling especially with Clone Wars coming only to the Wii next month, and then at Christmas, thats how titles sold last year as well

The 360 will keep selling STFU as well, but I can guarantee you the PS3 edition is just about done, you want to talk about front loaded sales...that platform is one of the kings of front loaded.

Whats interesting to me is that the PS2 edition did not make it to the Top 10, makes me wonder if it was just outside the Top 10

God every month is the same, Wii Software does not sell, well some of it does, well that does not count because it sells over time, well it does not sell genres good enough

3 things that needs repeating in every sales thread.

1. 3rd party multiplatform Wii games don't usually have the same effort put in as the other versions and consumers know this

2. Wii versions of multiplatform games are barely advertised

3. Wii games have legs
 

RJT

Member
Sciz said:
I know it's a slow NPD thread when I can catch up with the posts by page 11.
We need predictions!
I say this month we'll have a 25 page thread. GAF is too hardcore to reach the masses.
 

hellclerk

Everything is tsundere to me
Scrubking said:
3 things that needs repeating in every sales thread.

1. 3rd party multiplatform Wii games don't usually have the same effort put in as the other versions and consumers know this

2. Wii versions of multiplatform games are barely advertised

3. Wii games have legs
4. despite 1&2, Wii games do sell better (as in 3rd parties as a whole, let alone first & 3rd parties)

5. most of the top 30 is what's fueling this statistic, and not exclusively the top 10
 

CoG

Member
2 Minutes Turkish said:
Wow, NPD threads die in the ass quick these days.

Pretty lame NPD this month. The Nintendo Juggernaut just keeps plowing through, Microsoft's price drop neither threatened the Wii or crushed the PS3, and the PS3 maintained status quo.
 
Coolio McAwesome said:
"Random guy at Target" is quickly becoming the "Joe the Plumber" of sales-age. The only difference is Joe the Plumber is a real person.

- C

Why would you doubt GPsych's story? Everyone knows that the are no games on Wii where you can run around a do cool stuff. None whatsoever. Zero. Null. Absolutely Nada.

He was lucky he found Wall-E.
 

FrankT

Member
We know from ChartTrack numbers they stated the 360 price cut pushed down PS3 weekly sales down by 8% or so. Well from NPD basically they are saying there was no impact month over month. Interesting side note.
 

schuelma

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.
So based on my own estimated world wide sales, Wii is at 32.361M, PS360 is at 33.473M.
 
Opiate said:
As an addendum to the argument I just made, I'd like to strongly encourage every sales age poster to begin speaking in demographic terminology rather than in internet jargon like "casual" and "core". If someone were to check my post history, you'd likely notice that I nearly always put the word "core" in quotations, because I strongly dislike it. The only advantage to such lingo is that it is shorter to type.

On the other hand, I think there is more substantial evidence to support the demographic discussion (for example, games like Mass Effect, Bioshock and Call of Duty did very well on the 360, but so did Madden and Fifa, neither of which I think of as "core," but which I do think lean heavily towards the 16-30 year old male demographic that enjoys games like Bioshock). In addition, these definitions are much clearer: saying 16-30 year old males instead of "core" will prevent discussions like this one from breaking down in to arguments about what "core" and "casual" mean. My definition brooks no such opportunities. Lastly, I believe demographic terminology, by the very nature of its empiricism, removes much of the stigma that has come to surround both the word "core" and "casual." It has become too common to mock the "casuals" for their pedestrian taste or the "core" for their stubborn myopia; I believe such vituperative discussions would become less frequent if people were forced to talk about, say, 16-30 year old women in a direct fashion, rather than smearing them with the maleficent and nebulous term "casual."

I believe we will find that such diction minimizes vagueries and focuses discussion on more tangible argumentation.
I agree. Too bad most people will ignore the validity of your points :(
 
Wow at PS3. Pretty good. The 360 still being below the Wii is a bit shocking. It's not even close. Though the price drops impact will probably be seen during the holidays more than anything.
 

EDarkness

Member
GitarooMan said:
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but here's people's answer so they can stop whining about why the Wii gets less third-party big budget "core" game development in the West.

My take on this is that Lucasarts pimped the hell out of the 360/PS3 versions. All of the promos I've seen for the game were for those versions. The Wii version was mentioned a few times, but if they got some sales of that game, then that was good. The real version of The Force Unleased was on the 360. This is the same with Madden. All of the promos for the game were for the 360/PS3 versions. Whenever there's a Wii version and you don't see it at all in the promotions or advertising, then it's a good guess the game is going to be garbage.

The market is there for the Wii games, but really, no one is really trying to tap into it. I doubt they'll be able to do it at this point, either. Thing is, it's their own fault. Low quality ports, or simply low quality games in general and you'll start turning off the "core" gamers. At first I was pretty much buying everything to try the controls, but now I'm extremely cautious. Why buy a watered down, cheap port of a game when you can buy the fully featured one on the 360?
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Stumpokapow said:
list of last-gen rpgs with higher sales than LO... not including any zelda sku.

ps2: .hack infection, dark cloud 1, dqviii, ffx, ffx2, ffxi, ffxii, kingdom hearts, kingdom hearts 2, star ocean 3, xenosaga 1

gcn: tales of symphonia, paper mario 2

xbx: fable, kotor, kotor2, morrowind

gba: fftactics advance, golden sun, kingdom hearts, pokeymans ruby sapphire emerald fire red leaf green, mario and luigi, pokeymans mystery dungeon red

missing data: i don't know if golden sun 2 or jade empire are there, and there are 3 ps2 games within striking distance of lo that i'm not sure if lo or the ps2 games are higher.

Golden Sun 2 was up there. lso dont forget that several of the Battle Network games also sold up there.
 

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!

jj984jj

He's a pretty swell guy in my books anyway.
Y2Kev said:
Would like to see a source on 700k for LO.
We know it did ~270k by February in the US thanks to IGN giving us the numbers (it did ~205 in the top 10 for January), and the last update we got for Japan was ~110k. It's not hard to believe that they shipped another 300k between the rest of the world and whatever they got out in the US March onward.
 
not really anything shocking....nothing meltdown worthy at all honestly. STFU did better overall than I expected. And Rock Band 2, great numbers.
 

Ganhyun

Member
Fuzzy said:
They mistakenly posted the PS2 number as the PS3 one.


Oh, ok. It confused me because I've never seen them make that sort of error and leave it up without an edit/update explaining the issue.

I guess someone needs to tell them who has an account there maybe.
 

WinFonda

Member
I would have expected a bigger boost on 360's sales... PS3 got a stronger uptick on MGS4 alone. I think Microsoft might be in deep doodoo when Sony gets their price down.
 

larvi

Member
GPsych said:
I'm really not kidding. At the time I thought it was a bit strange, but I actually wonder how common that situation really is. What if Pachter was correct that the non-gamer guy would start playing the Wii with his kids and decide he wants better graphics and more "hard-core" games? Trouble is, the Wii was purchased for the kids as a family machine. At this point, I really don't think MS or Sony have managed to break away from their core userbase enough to push a family to get a 360 or PS3 in addition to the Wii they already have. It seems that MS is really working on this, but I wonder if they'll ever manage to find some success there. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

-G

The answer is simple, just buy or upgrade your PC to play "hard core" games. That's how it worked in the old days, the kids had thier NES or Genesis and the adults gamed on PCs.
 
PS3 fared better against the X360 than I expected considering the substantial price discrepancy. If the PS3 was the same price as the X360.....
 

GPsych

Member
Saint Gregory said:
Why would you doubt GPsych's story? Everyone knows that the are no games on Wii where you can run around a do cool stuff. None whatsoever. Zero. Null. Absolutely Nada.

He was lucky he found Wall-E.

Hey, I never said I agreed with the guy, that's just what he said. I have no idea what he actually meant. My assumption was that he meant something with better graphics, but as was pointed out to me in the thread, he never actually mentioned that. He was probably just venting how much he hated Wall-E. I've never played the game, but it's a movie licensed game so I assume it's terrible. Then again, maybe he just had pragmatic speech deficits and could not articulate what was in his mind to the Target clerk. Maybe I should have stopped and given him a clinical interview and the Rorshach Inkblot Test after obtaining informed consent for psychological services. Of course, I would have had to get a release so I could post the results on GAF. There might be some other legal difficulties regarding performing a psych eval at Target as well. I would have to ask the Board on that one.
 
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