Video Game Sales Thread

[Xevross]

Also there was this news. Two incredible milestones: Call of Duty®: Warzone™ Reaches 100 Million Players, Premium Call of Duty® Game Sales Eclipses 400 Million

You know what, I would have thought COD sales were further above 400M total. 17 premium COD games have been released, that means 23.5M sales each on average. That doesn't seem that crazy to me given how huge COD is, I would have guessed it was closer to 30M. Maybe the first 3 games drag the average down a bit.

Kind of puts the GOW & Spidey selling 20M+ on one platform into perspective. And Animal Crossing NH at 30M+ is insane (as are MKWii and MK8D)

[Dr. Pezus]

Also there was this news. Two incredible milestones: Call of Duty®: Warzone™ Reaches 100 Million Players, Premium Call of Duty® Game Sales Eclipses 400 Million

You know what, I would have thought COD sales were further above 400M total. 17 premium COD games have been released, that means 23.5M sales each on average. That doesn't seem that crazy to me given how huge COD is, I would have guessed it was closer to 30M. Maybe the first 3 games drag the average down a bit.

Kind of puts the GOW & Spidey selling 20M+ on one platform into perspective. And Animal Crossing NH at 30M+ is insane (as are MKWii and MK8D)

Well the first 3 games definitely didn't sell much more than 5m each (probably closer to 2-3m). Also, there were some relative duds in the beginning

[Xevross]

Oh yeah I never posted this here: PlayStation 5 enjoys second biggest month so far | UK Monthly Boxed Charts | GamesIndustry.biz

PS5 in March sold more than it did in December in the UK. It has also now outsold Vita, Dreamcast and WiiU in lifetime sales.

XBS also got some decent stock in March and Switch dropped a bit meaning it landed in 3rd for the month.

Seems like Sony really pushed a lot of stock of PS5 in March for the FY figures and April is seeing big drops in stock around the board so far.

[Xevross]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/xbox-fy21-q3-earnings-gaming-revenue-up-50-xbox-content-and-services-revenue-grew-34-xbox-hardware-revenue-grew-232-driven-by-xbox-series-x-s.416637/post-63773103

(Very) Roughly 1.4M Xbox Series shipped in Q1, so given what we already knew XBS is probably around 4.5-5.0M shipped by the end of March.

Edit: For those interested, XB1 shipped over 5M in the same time (https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2014/04/17/xbox-one-march-npd/) so it seems XBS are still tracking behind XB1 shipments, but could have caught up in the second quarter depending on how far above 5M XB1 was. Also, sell-through for both is probably very similar launch-aligned as XB1 was in good supply (and in fact already struggling to sell) at this point.

[BananaKing]

Yeah its still hard to draw comparisons between xb1/xbs now as xbs is still selling out, well at least the xsx is. While xbox 1 was already is regular supply at this point.

But its a no brainer that xbs will eventually outdo it. Seems like it will outsell it in the long run too.

[the-pi-guy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-verge-fortnite%E2%80%99s-cash-cow-is-playstation-not-ios-court-documents-reveal.417240/

PlayStation makes up around half of Fortnite's revenue.  

Court documents reveal that PlayStation 4 generated 46.8 percent of Fortnite's total revenues from March 2018 through July 2020, while Xbox One, the second-highest platform, generated 27.5 percent. iOS ranked fifth, with just 7 percent of total revenue. The remaining 18.7 percent would have been split between Android, Nintendo Switch, and PCs.

[BananaKing]

I wonder if this would happen, i dont think it will. But its just a thought.

IF gamepass results in launch sales for games to be reduced dramatically on xbox, could we see a situation where Sony pays for timed exclusivity for a lot of third party games, at a cheaper price, because the amount of sales they are substituting with their deal is lower. And it creates a situation were a considerable amount of third party sales are timed exclusive on PS5?

[Xevross]

I wonder if this would happen, i dont think it will. But its just a thought.

IF gamepass results in launch sales for games to be reduced dramatically on xbox, could we see a situation where Sony pays for timed exclusivity for a lot of third party games, at a cheaper price, because the amount of sales they are substituting with their deal is lower. And it creates a situation were a considerable amount of third party sales are timed exclusive on PS5?

I doubt it considering they would have to be on game pass to see their sales drop like that.

[kitler53]

I doubt it considering they would have to be on game pass to see their sales drop like that.

i don't think so.  ms is building up to a world where gamepass players just don't play games if they don't come to gamepass.  i mean, really, what's the point of an expensive subscription service if you are buying games instead of playing the games on the service.  it's no different than how netflix made my dvd collecting habits plummet to 0.  if it's not on netflix i simply don't watch it.

i think all games will see low sales on xbox as a ratio to playstation (even when adjusted for install base).  games selling 90% of their sales on playstation could become the norm.    maybe not for the massive releases like GTA but for anything "second teir" (where gamepass has alternative game possibilities for "free") it's sales will be slaughtered.

[Xevross]

i don't think so.  ms is building up to a world where gamepass players just don't play games if they don't come to gamepass.  i mean, really, what's the point of an expensive subscription service if you are buying games instead of playing the games on the service.  it's no different than how netflix made my dvd collecting habits plummet to 0.  if it's not on netflix i simply don't watch it.

i think all games will see low sales on xbox as a ratio to playstation (even when adjusted for install base).  games selling 90% of their sales on playstation could become the norm.    maybe not for the massive releases like GTA but for anything "second teir" (where gamepass has alternative game possibilities for "free") it's sales will be slaughtered.

I was thinking about addressing this side of things but I'd just woken up so left it 

I agree it could reach this point  but other publishers will see this coming and start to mitigate. Perhaps that mitigation will be more deals with Sony, as BK suggested. It's a complete unknown that we're heading to here.

I think I'm going to be one of these people you describe, probably paying less and buying less now I have Game Pass than I did before. But this isn't the case for everyone. Mat Piscatella (NPD guy) says that game pass is actually a big growth driver for the industry, meaning it's injecting more revenue. Of course, that could still be more revenue for MS at the cost of others.

[Xevross]

UK:

Pokemon Snap debuted with over 26k physical sales (more than 4x the original). That's a very close launch to MH Rise, pretty crazy.

Returnal sold just over 1/3 of that, so roughly 9k launch. Considering that's physical only and its £70 that's not awful.

Some PS5 launch week figures for comparison:

Spidey MM 59k
Demon's Souls 16k

Sackboy, Godfall and the rest were below Returnal's figure (but not by much)

[BananaKing]

Ouch. Thats not good for retournal.

I can see the 70$ price tag killing a lot of games, specially in Europe where games are basically 90/100$~  now.

[kitler53]

Ouch. Thats not good for retournal.

I can see the 70$ price tag killing a lot of games, specially in Europe where games are basically 90/100$~  now.

it's a new ip on a heavily supply contraint console.  it was never going to do gangbusters.   the litmus test is in its legs.   like,.. does it have them?  

i'm not buying day-1 which is not unusual for me as i almost never do.  but i'll pick it up for sure.

[the-pi-guy]

UK:

Pokemon Snap debuted with over 26k physical sales (more than 4x the original). That's a very close launch to MH Rise, pretty crazy.

Returnal sold just over 1/3 of that, so roughly 9k launch. Considering that's physical only and its £70 that's not awful.

Some PS5 launch week figures for comparison:

Spidey MM 59k
Demon's Souls 16k

Sackboy, Godfall and the rest were below Returnal's figure (but not by much)

I've heard it's sold out at a lot of stores.  
Seems likely Sony underestimated demand, and people likely bought more digitally.  

[Xevross]

it's a new ip on a heavily supply contraint console.  it was never going to do gangbusters.   the litmus test is in its legs.   like,.. does it have them?  

i'm not buying day-1 which is not unusual for me as i almost never do.  but i'll pick it up for sure.

True but PS5 has sold 800k+ in the UK at this point so this first week figure is hardly supply limited.

I've heard it's sold out at a lot of stores.  
Seems likely Sony underestimated demand, and people likely bought more digitally.  

Digital would have to be at least 67% of sales for this to turn into a good result, its possible but unlikely.