Canuck
3849
Well I’m obviously not the target audience but I was underwhelmed. A free copy of FIFA is great but a PS4 plus a copy of FIFA is still cheaper than an Xbox One. Will Euros really pay 30 pounds more just so they can get a free copy of a game? Who knows how soccer-loving they are. Obviously I don’t care about exclusive FIFA content either. Fables spinoff is nice I guess but I’ve never played a game in the series. Great for others though I guess.
Do most of the TV features still not work in Europe?
To be fair, we don’t need a lot of them (at least in the UK), because we don’t have the cable companies performing a stranglehold on content delivery. We can get free on-demand TV on a million devices. We don’t need to pay a subscription for a digital terrestrial PVR with a hundred channels.
I own FIFA because a friend absolutely loves it and asks that I give it a try. Not my cup of tea BUT I recognize I’m not the target audience here either.
This is business decision and a smart one by Microsoft. The best selling franchise isn’t Call of Duty or Halo or Uncharted or Madden. It’s FIFA. And they just invested in making the Xbox One more appealing by offering that game gratis.
So… from a consumer perspective, I’m “eh” on the FIFA news (and of course would be because I’m not in Europe). But from an industry perspective, I see this as a smart move by a company looking to make their product more appealing to a key market.
Thongsy
3853
With pre-order? Does that mean the system is already unselling there? It’s a nice deal if you were going to get FIFA and were on the Kinect train but I doubt this will really sway anybody. As already mention it’s cheaper to buy a PS4 and FIFA then go the Xbox route.
That assumes that price alone is the determining factor for consumers and it’s not. I totally grant you Thongsy that it is a key factor though. Just not THE factor.
Price + game library + features + friends = console of choice
If you thought the Xbox One was too expensive before but liked other aspects of it (take your pick from games like Halo/Forza/Gears/Fable; or your pick of features like preferring the LIVE service, being intrigued by Smart Glass, enjoying be able to use voice commands, interested in Kinect 2.0; and/or your friends are leaning toward an Xbox One), then this does make a difference for that consumer.
The other news that was made in Germany… was the lack of news. Microsoft was expected to announce a release date for the Xbox One. They did not.
This to me is a pretty good indicator that the rumors about an early release for the PS4 are true. And the new Xbox team either decided they did not want the story coming out of Germany to be: “PS4 early; Xbox One later.” Or they are waiting to see when Sony’s exact release date will be and will see if they can adjust to meet it.
CoD handily outsells FIFA each year. It’s like 25 million vs 15.
Teiman
3857
Are these numbers for europe? because FIFA is a game about a “europen sport”. While CoD have global appeal (minus japan, maybe).
So… from a consumer perspective, I’m “eh” on the FIFA news (and of course would be because I’m not in Europe). But from an industry perspective, I see this as a smart move by a company looking to make their product more appealing to a key market.
Sports games at console launches are usually much worse than last-gen, feature-wise. So I suspect it won’t be as much of a draw as Microsoft thinks.
Yeah, the first proper details about NBA 2K14 have been coming out recently and it’s interesting to see some things (such as at least one online mode) marked as 360/PS3/PC only.
Brad are you looking at global numbers or geo-specific market numbers?
My understanding is that FIFA takes the top three spots in Europe (looking at complete 2012 data since 2013 is not complete yet) and CoD is 4th.
- FIFA 2013 for the PS3
- FIFA 2013 for the 360
- FIFA 2012 for the PS3
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 for the PS3
Also, I’m looking at sales not revenue. FIFA is not a DLC money machine like Halo or CoD.
Canuck
3861
Well, another 6 hours before the Sony conference. I’ll be in bed by then unfortunately. I like to think that the Sony execs are scheming in a corner about what they can throw into the package at the last minute in order to screw up the MS conf like they did the last time. :)
FIFA is not a DLC money machine like Halo or CoD.
They’re trying to turn it into one with Ultimate Team and all that stuff.
A quick Google shows $275m of digital revenue for FIFA 13 as of July.
Canuck
3864
So was there no mention of any TV stuff at this conference? That seems troubling to me. Considering that that’s practically the main point of the whole console.
Gingery Yellow, does that include digital sales of the game or simply DLC? And how does that figure compare to CoD?
Does that include digital sales of the game or simply DLC?
I can’t actually find that $275m figure in their results, but they do break out product (ie full game sales) vs service and other revenue (ie DLC and subs) generally. The service number was $410m in the quarter up to June, “primarily driven by FIFA 13 Ultimate Team and SimCity, as well as Battlefield 3 Premium subscriptions”.
Activision’s numbers are quite a bit more opaque, and the only thing I can find for Call of Duty specifically is an unlabelled graph, and a comment that digital revenues (including sales) more than doubled year on year. Doing a super-rough-and-ready proxy calculation, total online revenue excluding WoW was on the order of $150m.
Jazar
3868
Can you really say something is a smart business decision without knowing the cost?
