TurinTur got the ball rolling in the Borderlands 2 thread, but I like to have these results in their own area for the sake of the discussion.
Software
September 2012 Top 10 Games (New Physical Retail only; across all platforms incl. PC) Reporting period: 5-week month; 8/26/12 through 9/29/12
Madden NFL 13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSV) - Over 2.55 Million
Borderlands 2 (360, PS3, PC)** - 1.48 Million
FIFA Soccer 13 (360, PS3, PSV, Wii, 3DS, PSP)
New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS) - 295K
Guild Wars 2 (PC)**
NHL 13 (360, PS3)**
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (PC)**
NCAA Football 13 (360, PS3
Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Wii, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSV, PC)
Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)**
**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
From here and here, Madden was apparently around 2.3 million last year, so software is just slightly up. Hardware is waaay down, though (438k Xbox last year).
JoshV has a good point. Yes, sales of physical copies have declined. That’s true of all media. Without knowing digital sales (through Steam, Amazon, PSN, XBox Live) I think the NPD figures are moving further and further away from reality.
Sales numbers get so much less interesting over time in the console life cycle. But this next period, with a new console release coming, should get really interesting again. The horse race itself gets compelling once all the new consoles are out and you start looking forward to the numbers coming out each month.
I’m not sold on this. I have serious doubts about the next generation of consoles. I think the jump to HD helped with this generation, but now smartphones and tablets have made gaming ubiquitous and that competition may really hinder adoption.
I’m not sold on this. I have serious doubts about the next generation of consoles. I think the jump to HD helped with this generation, but now smartphones and tablets have made gaming ubiquitous and that competition may really hinder adoption.
Oh I agree. I think all three console makers have a huge mountain to climb. I just don’t see how anything in this next generation can be as successful as the PS2 or the Wii. But it will be interesting to watch. You can never tell at launch. They always sell whatever they can make at launch. But then you see the drop off eventually. It was just so surprising last time when the Wii just continued to sell and sell and sell for so long, being supply constrained for so long that it only increased the demand for it even more.
There’s rumors of a $50 price cut across all 360 models coming tomorrow. I wonder if they can inject some fuel into the sales figures with a price cut at this late stage.
Also does anyone remember that article Jason Cross wrote a few years ago about what he thought the next generation of consoles would have? There were several things on there that I wanted to refresh my memory on. Like I remember something about the new technology behind force feedback being mentioned that put the current one to shame.
I am not looking forward to the next generation simply because it means 1-2 years of medicore games. The past few years have been a bit of a golden age.
I kind of think the best thing would be to just build the current tech into the TV and make cross- platform games that leverage different display sizes and portability.
I’ve always been confused over the obsession of NPD numbers by gamers. Even when they provided more specific numbers in the past, they were always incomplete. No digital sales, only North America, and even retail isn’t covered comprehensively. So even for fanboy wars they we’re useless fodder, even before digital became so huge.
NPD has always served exactly one purpose - tell publishers and developers one very specific thing about a sales avenue they can’t have inherent comprehensive insight into. They already have their own info on direct sales and digital sales, NPD is exclusively for this one purpose, and they know that. Now that the public figures are even less specific, why do gamers say anything about them anymore?
Xbox Music is coming tomorrow to the 360, along with a dashboard update. You have to pay a monthly fee to use it on the 360 though (unlike Windows 8 and Windows 8 phones).
That reminds me of when the 360 first launched in 2005, and they introduced some music videos pretty soon after that. I got so excited at the time. I thought, wow, MTV is no longer a source for music videos, but maybe I can start watching Music videos on the 360. But then soon after their debut, when I used to download every music video, they started charging for the music videos. Who the hell would pay for the music videos? I have no numbers on this obviously, but I doubt very much that any significant number of people ever buy music videos over Xbox Live. As a free delivery service to promote music so you could check out bands that you’d never heard, I thought it would be a great service. But by charging for it, they turned it (eventually) into a tab that I always skip over when I’m navigating the 360’s dashboard.
