The November Videogame Market By the Numbers

Along with the news that more than half of the US is playing games, the November NPD numbers offer an interesting insight into the games industry. The ongoing console war was white hot, with record hardware sales. The Wii outsold the PS3 by half a million systems last month, and is quickly gaining on the Xbox 360's total sales figures. The big winners last month were software publishers, though, with a record $1.3 billion in sales. "Obviously Call of Duty 4 performed well on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. It is now second only to Halo 3 for first-month sales numbers on the Xbox 360. On the PlayStation 3 no other game has launched as well as Call of Duty 4 in November. Super Mario Galaxy performed extremely well for its first month. Two new properties - Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect - sold well enough to make the top 10. Across both platforms, Assassin's Creed was actually the second best selling game of the month. It is amusing to note that despite the unprecedented Nintendo DS and PSP sales, no game for either system sold well enough to make the top 10 software list for November."

Comments

If this is a manufactured shortage...

[seebs]

You can only wonder how many systems the people claiming Nintendo is manufacturing this shortage think are being produced.

Call me when it's over.

[flitty]

The so called xbox/ps/nintendo "console war" has been going on hot and heavy for what, 7+ years now? Can we stop calling it "white hot" and finally conceed that the each console of this generation is filling a different need, as shown by last month's NPD data? Galaxy sold well, COD4 sold well, Assasin's creed sold well, Mass effect sold well, Halo 3 sold well, the DS and PSP hardware sold well, even if they didn't have any standout games. To me, that sounds like everybody's pretty damned happy about this holiday season, and even though the ps3 isn't doing as well as the rest, they will catch up eventually. Everyone has nailed what they were trying to accomplish this gen. Congrats to all the consoles and software developers.

Re:Call me when it's over.

[SparkleMotion88]

Sorry, there will always be a "console war." The war is caused because a large number of people can only afford to buy one console. These people choose the one that they think will be the best console. Once their purchase is made, they will fight to convince everyone (including themselves) that their console is the best because, more than anything else, people like to believe that they made the best decision. So you can't end the "console war" without changing human nature.

This sort of behavior happens any time a decision has been made and there is a conflict over that decision, and is caused by several well-known cognitive biases (mostly originating from confirmation bias).

Re:Call me when it's over.

[king-manic]

Sorry, there will always be a "console war." The war is caused because a large number of people can only afford to buy one console. These people choose the one that they think will be the best console. Once their purchase is made, they will fight to convince everyone (including themselves) that their console is the best because, more than anything else, people like to believe that they made the best decision. So you can't end the "console war" without changing human nature.

This sort of behavior happens any time a decision has been made and there is a conflict over that decision, and is caused by several well-known cognitive biases (mostly originating from confirmation bias). The market seems to be splitting as well. There seems to be a much more distinct break up of whats games ends up on which system. The wii is getting novel party games (doing well everywhere). The PS3 still has a lock on the traditional Japanese franchise (given the world wide sales distribution this will continue to be true, doing well in Japan, poor in the US), while the 360 is getting many more of the American titles (and also doing poorly outside the US, well in the US).

Wii -> Alternative games
PS3 -> Traditional Japanese style
360 -> Traditional American

Re:Call me when it's over.

[mr_mischief]

In a product field like game consoles, confirmation bias can coincide with enlightened self-interest or can fill the same logical need. The more people think Console A is great and represents the future direction of all consoles, the more content gets targeted to Console A. If this is in addition to another console or in place of another console that would have been the exclusive target for that content, then it's a win for the owner of Console A. It's one of the few instances in which a format war or platform war actually benefits people.

Unfortunately, the people often pick the technically inferior platform or format. Beta was superior to VHS but was more expensive. In the short term, VHS was more suitable because of its price. It became a shorter-term solution than Beta could have been, because Beta is (a bit) closer to DVD quality with video and closer to DVD in audio quality. The IBM PC was in many ways inferior to the MicroVax, the Alpha, the Sun workstations, the SGI workstations, the Apollo, the Amiga, the Mac,and even the Color Computer 3. It has caught up pretty well, and surpassed the older systems that never got established or that were allowed to die. It's difficult to argue that the Intel x86 line was originally an elegant design, but it was made primarily to run 8080 and 8085 code with minimal porting effort and was not a fresh design like the Motorola 68000. It won based on its business case, so it's difficult to blame Intel for it.

So yeah, confirmation bias is one part of it. People really do want to own the platform that gets the best games, though. The little control consumers have over that is to lobby other consumers to make the platform more attractive for game studios and to lobby the game studios directly. Either way could be interpreted as confirmation bias, or confirmation bias could be interpreted as attempting to protect one's investment. They could even coincide between an unconscious (or semiconscious) decision and a conscious decision which reinforce one another.

Re:Call me when it's over.

[magus_melchior]

Compared to the PS2 and 360, yes, but Sony was still pounded by Nintendo in Japan last week. I think that the market in Japan is becoming more geared towards mobile platforms (DS and PSP are doing exceptionally well), although your point about the 360 stands.

(The ranking page. Note that they use the common abbreviations for all but one of the various consoles. This charts the software sales over the past week, sorted by the last column. At the bottom of the page is another chart with, presumably, the hardware sales of the consoles over the past week.)

Re:Call me when it's over.

[king-manic]

Their at about 1/3 of the wii. The Wii is a smashing beyond all hope success. I'd argue that the PS3 is doing well compared to the outrageous success of the wii. Sales plotted against the 360 world wide sees the PS3 at roughly the same spot the 360 was last year. So it's going to be a three horse race with competition for 2nd. Competition is always good. Because frankly, despite the success most Wii games aren't my cup of tea. I love fire emblem but almost the entire rest of the library is aimed at someone other then me.

Re:360 In Serious Trouble

[Toonol]

Why do you think the PS3 is selling better in Europe than the 360? The graphics are pretty much comparable, and the 360 has a much larger library of games and is less expensive. Is the Blu-Ray drive a bigger factor in Europe than in America?

I don't have either; the only next-gen console I have is a Wii. But if I was to get one of the two, it would be the 360, purely because of the game selection. I'm just pushing that purchase off as long as possible, hoping the console will be more reliable and cheaper in the future.

Attach rates are bollocks

[Chuck Chunder]

They are useless for comparing pretty much anything as they are "per console". When consoles have been out for different lengths of time it's meaningless to compare attach rates. If xbox owners have had an extra year (or whatever) to buy games then you'd expect it's attach rate to be higher (a more impressive back catalogue that extra time generates will also help). Perhaps there might be some value in comparing the Wii and 360 attach rates x months after launch.

In short the "attach rate" has too much of an historic component to tell you clearly what is going on "now" which is the interesting thing.

Attach rates are only a useful measurement for console manufacturers selling consoles at a loss. In that situation the manufacturer knows that it has to reach a certain attach rate to claw back that loss before it can even think about a profit (though that is changing now they have additional profit streams such as subscriptions, virtual consoles, blu ray etc).

For everyone else you may as well just talk about total games sold. Dividing it by the number of consoles doesn't tell you anything useful.

Re:Attach Rates

[Anonymous Coward]

Attach rates are not actually relevant to 3rd party developers in the abstract. Only the number of games sold compared to the cost of development is. The PS3 has a higher attach rate than the Wii, but it is much more expensive to develop for, and there is a much smaller market. The PS2 did not have a great attach rate, but it was much more popular to develop for. The reason you are not seeing as much 3rd party support is because the Wii's success was unexpected and design cycles take a while. Expect to see a boom in the not too distant future.

Re:360 In Serious Trouble

[Toonol]

*sigh* I should learn that you can't attempt reasonable and moderate posts in a console thread without getting flamed.

" The graphics are pretty much comparable,"
Honestly guy, give it a rest. To still be trying to claim that in late 2007 is borderline delusional.

But they are. The PS3 is better in some games, the 360 is better in others. I expect that in the long-term, the PS3 will turn out to be more powerful, but they are clearly similar. Just like the original X-Box was in the same league, but slightly superior, to the Gamecube. They are both graphically superior to the Wii, which is closer to last gen graphics. The 360 & PS3 are close enough in power to negate it as a serious advantage for one consoleor the other.

"is less expensive"
When has console price EVER been a factor in which system gamers buy? Saving 50,100,150 dollars to give up on all the games for an entire generation? PS2 owners are still working through their insanely large library of games and are upgrading to PS3s when the price drops to their own personal price point.

I think that your last sentence contradicts your first. Price is always a factor, in everything anybody buys.

The 360 library is garbage. Halo 3 is a basketcase, Mass Effect is a massive step backwards in rpgs with last gen looking graphics, Lost Planet and Dead Rising were mediocre titles, Forza and PGR are jokes compared to GT.

I think this statement is probably most indicative of your skewed perspective. Saying the graphics on a PS3 are better than the 360 is completely reasonable. Saying the PS3 has a better library of games is silly. By the time that you make this claim, the vast majority of readers have dismissed you as a partisan troll. The selection of games and the price are the two major liabilities the PS3 has.

The PS3 will play every single big name franchise so many Europeans bought PS2s for. Anyone suggesting that all those PS2 gamers are going to give up all those big name titles for a graphically weaker, absurdly unreliable console just to save 50 to 100 bucks?

Well, the 360 is more successful than the PS3 in the US. Lots of people here have given up all those big name titles for a "graphically weaker, absurdly unreliable console". Are they all wrong? Besides, most of those titles will eventually migrate to whatever console is most successful. There are no loyalties among companies, just temporary alliances.

Re:360 In Serious Trouble

[Cornflake917]

After 6 to 7 billion dollars and six years on the market you have to start thinking the rumors of Microsoft planning on exiting the console market have truth to them. What rumors? Oh, you mean the one you're trying to start?

The US is the only market the 360 is selling decent numbers but it appears that there are a massive number of current 360 owners who are either re-buying 360s or buying newer models hoping to get a console that doesn't have the RRoD or disc scratching issues. Yeah the increased sales are totally because of the RRoD issue. Lets just totally ignore the fact that Microsoft replaced most of the consoles with RRoD issues by paying out of their own pocket. They counted these replacement consoles as a loss, not as sales but lets not quibble with minor details. There's just no way that Halo3, Mass Effect, CoD4, BioShock, and Assassin's Creed had anything to do with the increased sales of the 360 in the last quarter.

I really wish there was a "-1, Dumbass" mod.