Benji has proven time and time again to be spot on with his insights, so please don't lump him together with self-proclaimed "insiders" who are merely talking out of their asses.
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NPD Oct 2018: COD: BO4 and RDR2 top the charts, PS4 best selling hardware
- Thread starter ZhugeEX
- Start date
Only thing Amazon is good for is to see if something did poorly. If something did poorly on Amazon, chances are it sold poorly overall.
Even then, that is hard to tell as most of the time Amazon's current best sellers are populated by PSN cards and newly released games
Even then, that is hard to tell as most of the time Amazon's current best sellers are populated by PSN cards and newly released games
20% per se doesn't mean anything.
If the sample is representative of the population than it's a pretty freaking good one to make inference on total sales in the market. In the case of Amazon, we don't know whether it's a good sample or not; now everyone buys online but I'm pretty sure some consumers still vastly prefer physical purchases.
It didn't, as has been indicated. But even if it had, that wouldn't be a record. Wii won every month in 2008. (And the only month it lost in 2007--barely, even with shortages--was Halo 3's September.)
That's not the mark to beat for consecutive wins, though. PS2 outsold both Xbox and Gamecube starting when they launched in 2001, then every month for the next two years. In 2004 Xbox won 5 months. Then in 2005 PS2 was back on top every month, and it stayed on top all the way through 2006...and yes, that includes against Xbox 360 and the launches of PS3 and Wii.
Actually, we have at least indirect evidence that Amazon is not a good sample. Over at chartz some users have made an NPD prediction tool that relies on rankings from online stores, and it weights Amazon highly. This tool is bad at predicting sales. That doesn't necessarily indict Amazon as an unbiased sample--methodological details could be to blame--but it's certainly suggestive.
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Yeah. If you want individual months with mind-boggling numbers, look to the Wii. But with apparently unstoppable momentum year after year, PS2 was a juggernaut
I knew they were both ridiculous sales wise, but it's hard to imagine how dominate those systems were in their lifecycle. I feel like I get glimpses when we talk about historical data but I can't imagine how crazy they were to follow during their actual lifecycles.
No one retailer is representative of the entire market. Trying to use one retailer to extrapolate is inherently flawed, regardless of the retailer.
Yes. Even trying to use almost all retailers to extrapolate the market is inherently flawed! Otherwise NPD, with its exhaustive breadth, could correctly predict every month. I don't think people quite understand how difficult it is to parse such a multifarious thing as "consumer spending choice" ahead of time. The number of factors involved is large, the opportunities for deviation manifold.
That's not to say certain trends can't be discerned, or particular wild projections dismissed as ungrounded. But it's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart. There's always surprises and outliers.
Yep it's funny watching people use on retailer or company.
supposedly demand outpaces their supply...since they only want to ship a certain amount for this year, that will cap them from being able to sell anymore. my guess is benji is thinking that if they shipped more, they would have sold more, IE PS4's momentum is not exactly slowing down even this far into the gen
Exactly!
Amazon has been absolutely useless for a long time now. There was a time when it was very accurate at Predicting who would win between wii u, ps4 and xb1. But since the arrival of the Switch and sonys falling out with amazon it's become very unreliable. There have been months where it put ps4 last and ps4 then wins easy. It's very biased towards the switch. I'm not sure why anybody wastes their time tracking amazon performance as an indicator of who wins npd. It's pretty irrelevant.
Switch last year was 750k, right?
I'm wondering if 2x growth might be possible.
Saved from having huge demand beyond what they can supply?
I'm gonna go ahead and say I doubt Sony gives a rats ass where they place on the NPD. I mean, they don't even give PR statements after NPD anymore.
Sony knew that what they gave for BF would sell out. They decided on a set amount, and thats that.
Well the BF bundle is specifically targeting a certain amount of sales with it's stock. Also I feel like this BF deal is too good and they would have sold just as well with $199 console only.
Oh, I was talking about Sony outdoing what they did last year and potentially having their biggest November ever. Benji said it wouldn't be possible unless Cyber Monday is big. That is why CM will save them.
PS4 will be on top regardless.
Sales insiders not saying anything about it should give you a hit how it's doing.
It seems like this has been a great year for gaming! The information in the OP points to this being one of the most successful years in a decade!
i feel this is a bit high
but who knows.
or they had a certain number of systems they didn't want to exceed at that offer/price.
Honestly, I imagine it was pretty boring. Knowing the PS2 or Wii were going to be on top every month with the competitors lagging behind would not be exciting and is not a healthy console market.
Luckily the PS3 and Xbox360 put more than a good fight, so it wasn't a repeat of gen 6
That seems a bit high, but I'd love to see it happen!
No, they have a set amount they wanted to allocate for this deal.
I mean yeah, that is why it is redundant to compare their growths. A 100% switch increase doesn't say anything about how well the ps4 did, and vice versa.
I wouldn't say near impossible but yeah I don't think anything Benji said was all that unexpected. Switch should be way up, PS4 should also be up but how much is limited by the stock of that $199 bundle.
I don't think it's a miscalculation. I mean, just ook at the buzz it generates beyond the core and casual market. The appeal goes mainstream and you could be forgiven for thinking that that was the intent.
Switch looks like it's on pace for a monster holiday. Will be interesting to see if Nintendo continues to push any bundles at $299 in December. Even if they don't I expect a monster holiday. 1.5 million seems possible, but I'm guessing that's the ceiling with PS4 going 1.8+ depending on shipments?
When Wii was hot there was also other systems doing fairly well and while the majority of the time the order was probably known the exciting part would probably be how high the figures were each month.
When Wii was hot there was also other systems doing fairly well and while the majority of the time the order was probably known the exciting part would probably be how high the figures were each month.
Sony did not underestimated their supply. They decided to have a certain amount of $199 units. they hit their targets and they expect people to buy the more expensive unit, knowing that they missed out on the $199 and no longer have a reason to wait for that price. this is just marketing psychology 101.
Are we likely to get any demographic data on who is buying the switch? Looking at let's go on twitch it seems to have a disproportionately high number of female streamers with high viewership. I thought animal crossing might be the first big game to really bring in a different audience. I'm just curious who is actually buying let's go and if it's different to who switch has been selling to previously.
Anecdotal evidence seemed to point towards PS4 having similar or higher stock of the $199 bundle this year compared to last. Would be surprising to see it drop by almost 200K.
Anecdotal evidence seemed to point towards PS4 having similar or higher stock of the $199 bundle this year compared to last. Would be surprising to see it drop by almost 200K.
December 2009 when Nintendo sold 3.8m Wii's and 3.3m DS's in just the USA was fairly mental tbh. They broke the all time monthly sales record twice in one month, with two different consoles.
The most fun times in sales age are had when sales are explosive. This November it's pretty much guaranteed the PS4 sells the most and yet it's still by far the most exiting month of the year sales wise so far.
To be fair, it may have had higher stock and higher sales for the week of Black Friday and lower sales the first couple weeks of November. No idea if that's how it will play out but just pointing out that it's possible it has higher stock for Black Friday and could still be even, or possibly even down YoY (though I personally I think even is the floor).
