April 2014 NPD Thread!

[DonFerrari]

Intrinsic said:

DonFerrari said:

You could also put WiiU and PSVita as anomalies for the other side.

Well, I was trying to cut my post short. The PS2 and Wii were anomalies cause they did extremely well in their respective first years. For the PS2 this was because of the success of the PS1 and how strong the PS brand had become and of course $299. For the Wii, it was because of an innovation that resonated amongst non-gamers. If the PS3 had come in at $399 it would have been infinitely more successful than it was. MS didn't win market share cause it decimated the PS3, it won cause sony shot themselves in the foot (the curse of the third so to speak). 

Now if you look at the PSV and WiiU; the wiiU shows that through the entire Wii generation nintendo didnt actually increase its core install base from the GC or N64. If anything they lost core fans. They sold a looooot of consoles, but mostly to the type of people that would buy just the one game on the system and who have now firmly moved on to playing games on their phones and tablets. The PSV and the dwindling sales of the 3DS shows that the dedicated handheld gaming market is in flux. Expected when you consider that you can play pretty decent games on your phones these days. 

The PS3 and 360 selling over 80ml each showed there are at least 120ml core gamers out there (the type of people that buy at least 5 gams a year). Yes, if follwing numbers this should read as 160ml, but for some strange reason everyone seems to ignore that a lot of people buy more than one console in any console genration. Even if they sell their previous console to another "new user" theer are still those that bought a second console cause their first packed up or those that bought both consoles (360 & PS3) so there is crossover here.  Whats important here though is that Sony and MS are fighting for what is a potential 120ml active install base over the lifetime of their respective consoles.

Lastly, another really big misconception is the industries focus on console sales. Probably cause its an easier marketing metric to use, what is really importnat is attach rate. Proof of this is again looking at the Wii; nintendo sold the most amount of consoles with the Wii but had the worst attach rate of the thre platforms, this forced them to jump into a new gnration arlier than the other two. Another way to look at it is this, if you sell 100 consoles and have an attach rate of 2.0, and I sell 50 consoles but have an attach rate of 6.0........ I am making way more money than you are. 

Most people are aware that attach ratios are almost more important than HW sales because that is were the money is made... I just asked you to put PSV and WiiU because they are also anomalies that had a worst 2nd year, but was because of plumetting sales not because of great 1st year.