It is. It just falls under the Xbox name really and play anywhere.
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NPD May 2018: State of Decay 2 #1 software, PS4 tops hardware charts
- Thread starter ZhugeEX
- Start date
Again you seem to be missing the point entirely. Game Pass is helping improve sales of the game, not the other way around. Going all digital is a sperate argument and if we do go towards all digital it is because the consumer is wanting to go there. The market is not going to shift if we have 65% of its sales through physical software.
What I care about is market growth and that is exactly what is mostly happening with this report.
A "digital Xbox game PC purchase" at the same time is an Xbox game purchase and vice versa. That's Play Anywhere. You can play the game where ever you like to.
It is a fact. If you only have one code and you could use that for PC or Xbox how would you know.
I Don't think it's a revaluation as you think it is.
They probably could crack 25M at $199. It was obvious they weren't pushing numbers when they didn't replenish stock on BF week when they sold out.
Just to expound on this— I think it's a confusing point for many, but Phil Spencer talked about this on Giant Bomb at E3. He said that he was surprised that individual sales of games that were also on game pass were going up. I think it was inferred by him or Jeff that the people who don't have Game Pass are being encouraged to buy the games that their friends with Game Pass are playing.
Yes he was saying that. That was a great interview and I wish all the major console spokespeople would do the same with Jeff. To me it's also encouraging for other publishers to start putting their games Game Pass as well.
competition is the reason why Sony and MS would never go this route. which one would pull the trigger first and end ownership on their platform gift-wrapping the portion of the market to their competitor? we saw how MS reversed their online only plans
it's also wrong to suggest competition is the sole force preserving ownership. it's supply and demand. as long as people want to buy and own games, publishers will sell them. the model offers margins that are too high to ignore, especially digital.
I believe the window was until June 5th so it was indeed within the window.
I'm pretty shocked it didn't chart. Definitely would've been on the Switch chart had it not been delayed, but not being on the overall chart for the other platforms is still surprising.
yeah I always thought gamepass would have this effect
people who buy into gamepass have a vested interest in trying out every big new game release because that's literally what they're paying for. because of that the word of mouth gets going much easier than before.
I also think in the future it'll give Microsoft the confidence to release some more obscure/experimental/less mainstream friendly games knowing they have a set base that will check it out and if the game is good the word will get out instead of having to start from zero and have every person put money down solely for a game that they haven't played yet and a game that may not be able to convey its strengths in a trailer or quick gameplay video.
it's a really smart move on their part
I did this comparison in the prediction thread:
May
XBO:
2014 - 77k ($399 500GB Standalone SKU announced for June; Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein: TNO)
2015 - 140k (Halo: MCC Bundle; The Witcher 3)
2016 - 107k (50$ Gift cards and Free Game Deal @GS; Doom, Overwatch)
2017 - 109k ($299 Deal for 1TB Model at @GS and "every retailer"; Injustice 2)
2018 - 145k (Several Deals, State of Decay 2, DS:R)
PS4:
2014 - 197k (Watch Dogs Bundle; Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein: TNO)
2015 - 153k (Trade-in Deal @BB; The Witcher 3)
2016 - 207k (Trade-in Deal @GS, Uncharted 4 + Bundle; DOOM, Overwatch)
2017 - 187k (Injustice 2)
2018 - 223k (Detroit, God of Legs, DS:R)
NSW:
2017 - 165k (Launch boost & MK8D legs vs. supply constraints)
2018 - 167k (Hyrule Warriors, DK legs)
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Very very smart of Sony. If the bundles comes to US as well, July NPD is going to be insane for them.
Hmmmm... okay let me see if I can try to clear some things up.
- Retail physical sales of video games actually grew last year, and I have them forecast to grow in high single-digit % this year. So while there are significant challenges ahead for all of retail, "retail is dying for games which everyone knows about" isn't true, at least not yet. Maybe 5 years from now it's a different story, but the death of games physical media has been greatly exaggerated. It's just that digital growth has been so massive that share is shifting because the pie is getting much bigger.
- There is no way of separating a sale for Xbox Play Anywhere content between a purchase on a PC or on an Xbox One. It's the same code, the same unique product identification number, it's the same product. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft has by platform usage stats they track, but in terms of the transnational purchase, there's no way to strip out platform of purchase in the transnational data. If another company wished and/or could do the same, build a shell on another platform which ran the exact same code and product, then those transactions would be treated similarly.
- The idea that, in the future, companies would somehow limit the ways in which people could pay for content is, frankly, absurd. Finding more and easier ways for people to spend money is the way this goes. More options, more paths to engage, more opportunities to spend.
- The video game market is not zero sum.
- Sometimes the gaps between ranked titles can be very small. Sometimes a #1 selling title can sell over a hundred million, sometimes it doesn't break ten million. The relative ranking of a title tells you very little about the actual performance or relative scale between titles.
Some misplaced assumptions in some of the arguments being made. Shrug.
- Retail physical sales of video games actually grew last year, and I have them forecast to grow in high single-digit % this year. So while there are significant challenges ahead for all of retail, "retail is dying for games which everyone knows about" isn't true, at least not yet. Maybe 5 years from now it's a different story, but the death of games physical media has been greatly exaggerated. It's just that digital growth has been so massive that share is shifting because the pie is getting much bigger.
- There is no way of separating a sale for Xbox Play Anywhere content between a purchase on a PC or on an Xbox One. It's the same code, the same unique product identification number, it's the same product. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft has by platform usage stats they track, but in terms of the transnational purchase, there's no way to strip out platform of purchase in the transnational data. If another company wished and/or could do the same, build a shell on another platform which ran the exact same code and product, then those transactions would be treated similarly.
- The idea that, in the future, companies would somehow limit the ways in which people could pay for content is, frankly, absurd. Finding more and easier ways for people to spend money is the way this goes. More options, more paths to engage, more opportunities to spend.
- The video game market is not zero sum.
- Sometimes the gaps between ranked titles can be very small. Sometimes a #1 selling title can sell over a hundred million, sometimes it doesn't break ten million. The relative ranking of a title tells you very little about the actual performance or relative scale between titles.
Some misplaced assumptions in some of the arguments being made. Shrug.
What I found peculiar is that Slim started out at 199 in 2016 - it hit the price within first weeks of launching in EU, so it looked like they were planning on being extra aggressive with the SKU. But sometime in 2017 that either all changed(memory pricing??), or it was a fluke to begin with.
It's a bit surprising to see the best May result for XB1 is lower than any PS4 (or even Switch)'s sales in May, especially if you consider that's not the case for any other months. Any inisghts on why May seems to be a bit of a weak month for Xbox (it doesn't seem to be the lack of promotions according to that list)?
Usually software on the PS4 side. Watchdogs was a big deal on 2014 and uncharted 4was in 2016, the GoW residual sales and Detroit in 2018. 2015&2017 are lower and more in line with each other
2014 for Xbox was when they announced a price drop for the next month so sales cratered. 2015 had a good bundle and 2018 had a bigger exclusive game and deals. Usually MS doesn't release any games during this period So sales crater
You know what's funny? Is that this info from sales throughout those years shows exactly what people Like myself have been saying for a long time. Exclusives sell consoles. Look at the numbers for the same month with a third party bundle compared to the exclusive bundle. Especially in Sony's case 2016 Uncharted bundle 207k, 2018 223k(detroit, god of war).
Even for Microsoft it shows, their MCC bundle and their state of decay 2 release shows similar sales compared to the others.
Microsoft just needs higher quality tittles that can attract those 200k+ numbers during those months.
I have it on PC and runs very good for me but that may be because I have gtx1070ti and CPU i74790. Only noticed one bug so far and wasn't game breaking just Zombies getting stuck at times nears doors and walls.
The game is good when you play enough of it and complete missions and start building up your home base. There is a lot of depth to this game its mix of fallout and dead rising for me.
Yeah. No.
It's you who is missing the point, but as you're clearly not willing to see how over the long term a rental-based model serves owners & distributors rather than consumers, and that moving to that model is the long-term goal for MS across all its whole business.
If you want to keep pushing that narrative go right ahead, the reality is you have nothing at all to support it. Someone brought up Netflix yet you can still buy bluray movies, you can still rent new movies, you can still go to the theater. They still sell vinyl records for pete sake. There's no point in pushing a rental based only system if we still have 65% of the people buying physical games. Phil Spencer already said in the interview Game Pass had a positive impact on purchased sales. You have nothing other than your own agenda.
Come back to me in 10 years with this. As production costs go up companies face ever higher risks in using the 'build it and they will come' model of development and potentially lower profit margins.
Rental services mitigate those risks by introducing a constant cash flow stream while also providing greater control over content distribution because nobody owns anything. It's entirely possible that in the future you could see titles or groups of games locked behind pay-per-view options the way certain sporting events are, on top of your subscription cost.
Look at more mature industries - in the UK 80% of new car sales are personal lease plans, and the model is similar to mobile phone contracts where you roll over your lease at the end of the 3 years and just get a new car.
Your example of the music industry has s a good case in point:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/22/17152120/digital-downloads-cd-vinyl-riaa-2017-report
Streaming accounts for 2/3 of revenue in the music industry now (and is still growing) and if you read further into the market you'll see an example of an equivalent of pay-to-view in the paragraph about single device licensing.
This isn't an agenda or narrative, it's an observation based on how other industries evole their sales models away from ownership and into rental.
Why would getting the numbers of a game from one platform not be a purpose of the NPD? I mean those types of things are literally there in the first page, except we don't have numbers, just rankings. How is that different from getting the sales of Xbox One consoles? You seem to be missing the whole point of what I'm trying to say. We compare how exclusives are selling all the time, why would that be bad now? We say that SoD2 is doing good, which it is, but we're also implying (since we're in a NPD thread) that it's doing good on Xbox and we don't really know that for sure other than the person who leaked the initial numbers not putting SoD2 in the best sellers for retail which would be Xbox numbers, which would mean that it isn't doing good on Xbox. And why would us knowing how it's doing on Xbox, not a purpose or to be talked about on a NPD thread?
But I already said that we shouldn't be surprised that SoD2, overall, is selling well. Why would talking about the Xbox numbers for SoD2 on a NPD thread be bad?
Unless I misread what he said, Aquamarine said that SoD2's PC sales were "substantive".
I mean the first comment by Zhuge says it's just an estimate, but I really doubt PC sales were that low, and that number is for number of players, not sales. Even Aquamarine is saying that PC sales for their exclusives are "substantive" and I'm sure that SoT, which seems imo, to be aimed more at PC gamers, sold more on PC.
Not sure what you part of what I said are you talking.
It's very demanding game and not for everyone. If you not into farming / grinding and base management type of games then you will not enjoy it.
Why even bother thinking about this?? Just going by myself, sometimes I buy MS exclusives through MS Store, sometimes through Xbox Store, some days I play them on Xbox and some days on PC. The whole point with merging the platforms is to let people decide for themselves where they want to play the games. Separating the platforms somehow at this point won't be easy. The only Xbox sales figures you could possibly get at this point is, as you say, retail sales. But again, just going by myself, I haven't bought a physical game on Xbox since the launch and the same goes for literally everyone I know, so how would we ever get reliable enough figures to say that a MS game isn't doing good on Xbox? And why would we need or want those figures? A MS exclusive is a PC+XB exclusive.
Are we now pretending that game on the Microsoft store on PC are selling gangbusters just so we can downplay Xbox sales? Haha we've come full circle boys!
Game sales for PC are as much "real purchases" as Nintendo games are "real games".
Unfortunately we cannot filter them out or separate those fakes properly into their own statistics yet, but the NPD analysts are working on a way to offer non-polluted results in the future.
It's hilarious indeed.
What these people fail to understand is that if PC sales were indeed on par with Xbox sales it would be all the more reason for MS to celebrate beause it meant that the Microsoft Store has reached a new popularity high.
Nintendo games are not real games? In what way are they not real?
don't get me wrong. i own a switch, but i mostly use it to watch blue rays.
Quoting Mat's posts a few spaces above yours, as you might have missed it while replying.
Frankly absurd.
There's no way to know for sure. But you may have noticed that lots of core PC gamers ignore the Windows Store like the plague for many reasons. Sure, some people won't care and use it anyway, but it's safe to tell that Windows Store exclusivity must have hurt SoT sales badly.
You should try to familiarize yourself with slavesnyder's posts :-). Almost all of them come with an invisible /s
There's a logical flaw when Netflix is brought up as an example. Of course it didn't stop the industry from using other revenue channels, but it's not Netflix who's taking advantage of them: original content created by Netflix is not available anywhere to buy or rent, except a few and very rare cases like Stranger Things or House of Cards. If you want access to their shows, you have to pay the subscription.
That's the future, I suppose, some wouldn't like to see. Given the chance, the HBO model is the real answer, all choices still available for the consumer without any of the restrictions.
That's the future, I suppose, some wouldn't like to see. Given the chance, the HBO model is the real answer, all choices still available for the consumer without any of the restrictions.
Thanks, will do that. May was the first comparison I did, that's why some things were missing.
I'd have been shocked if SOD wasn't top.
Good all round. Happy for Santa Monica and Quantic Dream.
Good all round. Happy for Santa Monica and Quantic Dream.
Do they really? State of Decay 2 is not exactly what I would call a higher quality title, no disrespect, merely referencing reviews from respected outlets.
But if such a game can even outsell the critically vastly superior God of War, then why develop highly rated games at all?
I hope this doesn't signal Sony to deliver lesser quality games in their output, as such games are much cheaper to produce and thus cost Sony less
Try as I might, I don't think there's an invisible /s in this post. State of Decay 2 is not even close to outselling God of War. This is GoW's second NPD period.
Did we have unit numbers for these titles for this month? This is SoD2 first month sales vs GoWs second (?) month. Wouldn't it be more realistic to compare first month numbers for both titles as most games are front loaded?
