Amazon US October monthly bestsellers and general Amazon based discussion

[binary solo]

GribbleGrunger said:

binary solo said:

Amazon can't really be proven wrong in October because of the fact that the Halo bundle has been on pre-order since before October. Any month where a super-massive exclusive game is being released and there is a LE console in the mix for that game that has been available for pre-order since before the start of the month of release all bets are off. It's pretty much the exception to the Amazon rule. Xb one was always likely to win NPD for October, but with the gift card deals at various retailers and a likely official price cut happening before the month ends a little bit of uncertainty has crept in about whether Xb one will win NPD for October. The only real thing of interest for Amazon rankings this month is how high or low the current Xb one offerings are in the charts, but really Amazon gives us nor real guide as to how NPD will turn out.

If by some miracle PS4 does win NPD for October then Xb one is really in deep shit. The Halo LE bundle ships on 20 October which means Xb one gets 2 NPD weeks of hardware boost from Halo, not just one. So there is no way anyone can legitimately claim that PS4 would only win Oct NPD because Halo 5 releases so late in the month. 2 NPD weeks of Halo 5 hardware shipments is plenty enough for Xb one to win NPD if Halo still has the pulling power it did last gen.

Destiny was on preorder too and judging by it's position now ahead of the Halo bundle, it would be easy to assume it got better preorder numbers than Halo.

Indeed, but in terms of Amazon's predictive value the Destiny bundle pre-orders don't break the Amazon rule because PS4 is the leading console and therefore on the month of release PS4 was still tracking ahead of Xb one through the month. Also even though Destiny is very popular, it seems, it's not the defining game franchise of the Playstation brand. Whereas Halo is Xbox and Xbox is Halo. Without the promise of Halo 5 Xb one would not have sold what it has to date, let alone the boost Halo is going to give Halo when it actually launches. It's why MS cannot drop the Halo franchise ever unless if departs console gaming entirely. It's the amazing thing about Playstation. Gran Turismo aside, Playstation can let popular franchises go and still sell loads of consoles. No one is batting an eye at the idea of Uncharted 4 being the final Uncharted game. Lots of people wand Sony Santa Monica to move on from God of War (or at least move on from Kratos). A significant number of people want TLOU to be a stand alone game. Killzone looks like it's coming to an end.

Even with GT, if Sony hadn't screwed up the launch of Driveclub it's quite possible that Driveclub could have taken over as the premier racer franchise for Playstation.