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Why is the industry so secretive about sales numbers?

Bioshocker

Bioshocker

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,200
Sweden
I find it a bit funny that Nintendo, a company so secretive in many ways and which leaders are not nearly as open as, say, Phil Spencer (I never saw a candid interview with Reggie Fils-Aime), are completely open about their sales numbers. Even during the Wii U era, they reported how the console and their best selling games did.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,190
Helsinki, Finland
ghostcrew said:
I'd say movies are fairly unique in that regard. I wouldn't look at it necessarily as 'it's weird that games don't do this' but rather 'it's kinda weird that movie studios do this'.

You never hear about what the budget of your favourite bands new album was. Why should we, as consumer, care what the budget was?
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Actually, it would be interesting to know, but I'm a musician myself. I'd definitely be interested in seeing how much money some bands used (/wasted) on recording in a studio instead of at home, and how much of the budget went on cover art, band photos, and possible music videos. It would be nice to be able to compare how much/little different budgets actually had an effect on the overall product, be it sound quality or visual style.
 
Zalman

Zalman

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,896
I love that Nintendo is so open about sales numbers. It's super interesting, and I wish others would do the same.
 
jaymzi

jaymzi

Member
Jul 22, 2019
6,536
For movies it really only applies to the box office right?

Are they that open about physical disc and digital rental/purchases?
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,348
H-I-M said:
But you do hear about the album sales...
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Not universally. You hear estimates or you can find industry only data (like NPD numbers). I work in the industry and I see midweeks and weekly charts and sales but they're not for public consumption. You have to pay to get them.

Obviously they leak sometimes. But, to OPs point, labels and artists aren't 'shouting from the rooftops' to share sales data and production budgets.
 
OP
OP
KDR_11k

KDR_11k

Banned
Nov 10, 2017
5,235
What I find odd is that it seems to go beyond just not publishing, you can often see indie devs wanting to talk about their numbers but apparently being locked down by an NDA from a store or something so they have to use vague terms.

Also edge cases like publishers leaving the dev companies in the dark about sales, making it impossible to calculate royalties (cf. Dangen). Gives them a great opportunity for fraud.
 
Parenegade

Parenegade

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,589
ghostcrew said:
I'd say movies are fairly unique in that regard. I wouldn't look at it necessarily as 'it's weird that games don't do this' but rather 'it's kinda weird that movie studios do this'.

You never hear about what the budget of your favourite bands new album was. Why should we, as consumer, care what the budget was?
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Click to shrink...

Because we're not normal consumers.
 
BayonettasBuddy

BayonettasBuddy

Lead Producer at Cold Symmetry
Verified
Oct 30, 2017
233
Because it's a secret sauce. As a publisher you can know the kind of deals competitors are going for and the investments they are making. Personally it'd make life easier if all cards were on the table.

But imagine having to discuss a turd of a game your company had worked on, stating really sub par sales? As a developer I'd not want to sign with them knowing how badly something has performed.

It's why generally you'll only see positive milestone stories, e.g X game has sold over 500,000 copies!
 
justiceiro

justiceiro

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
6,664
Because it's really hard to get funding to a game project or additional funding if the initial sales or the sales of the previous entry were really low. Also, players are less likely to get a multiplayer game if the initial figure of players is already low. Movie tickets also don't get price cuts.

People are way more obsessed about having sequel for games than for movies, and having less people watching a movie don't devalue it, but with games, it does.
 
Aswitch

Aswitch

Member
Nov 27, 2017
5,118
Los Angeles, CA
FluxWaveZ said:
It's interesting information.
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This.

I find it very fascinating to see how a game ultimately sells especially considering various scenarios of sales in conjunction with how it reviewed, current events, trends etc.

I think since it's ultimately what matters arguably the most at the end of the day in regards to the game franchise's future in odds of a continuation of the game or not.

Obviously, being a member of a gaming enthusiast forum is very uncommon compared to the general casual gaming market. So I get why it's not as publicly portrayed as other media. Also anything less than stellar sales wise generally doesn't work in favor of the game in what I've seen. As video games become more established as a renowned and known medium, I think the info will be more publicly available and acknowledged than it is currently.
 

NeroPaige

Member
Jan 8, 2018
1,708
It interesting info when you compare it to it's own genre and in a historical context (launch system releases, exclusives). Maybe in context to critical reception and so on (reviewed badly, sells tons). For example Mortal Kombat is not given the same tournament circuit reception or respect as other fighting games, but sells tons anyway.

It's expected that fighting games developers would want people to purchase a game blind without knowing if the active playerbase is even still around. This is why you sometimes see people asking about this before making purchases, not just in fighting games but shooters etc. It's not just corps that have a stake in creating (false) narratives too. Sometimes it's not just sales numbers either. Tournament entrants numbers are the new "games sales" but with movie ticket sales exposure.

For example KOF14 was benched to fan-run side tourney for abysmal entrant numbers at EVO 2017. They had a free entry-tournament for KOF14 in EVO Japan 2018 and released the entrants numbers, KOF14 did bad there too. 2019 looks like it had a steep drop, from 500+ in 2018 to 129 in 2019 according to challonge.com and then KOF was dropped in EVO Japan 2020. Basically it's always done badly or below expectations (yes that's overall events too not just huge EVO level events), something that I can certainly see being "bad for business" and bad for fan hyperbole. Basically bad entrant numbers can be self-inflicting, like bad sales exposure could and something anyone would want to mitigate somehow (probably can't with tournaments but can with sales). Which brings us back to the Mortal Kombat point I made earlier and why knowing sales could be interesting in outside contexts too.
 
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