August 2017 NPD Thread ! Switch Won

[VideoGameAccountant]

Shadow1980 said:

VideoGameAccountant said:

Looking over your data, I think it might be ahead because of titles released in the beginning of this year (Horizon, Crash, Tekken, Injustice, Ghost Recon). Looking at the latter half of this year, there doesn't seem to be as much as a lot of games were pushed into 2018. Outside of the usual suspects (sports games, CoD, Assassins Creed), doesn't look like much will be there to really drive sales. There is also the Loot Box fiasco which could hurt sales of all of these titles. 

I mentioned in another thread the issue between the data and Sony's shipments. Q1 shipments were down and they are expecting YoY decline. This could result in a weaker Q4 since the decline in selling to customers would lag sold to retailers. So Q4 sales could be down Year-over-year 

Last year had Uncharted 4, The Division, Overwatch, Ratchet & Clank, Doom, and Dark Souls 3 in the first half of the year, so in terms of software, I wouldn't put this year too far ahead of last year. But what last year didn't have was the PS4 Slim and Pro. One can never underestimate the effects of price cuts and major hardware revisions, which typically have far greater stimulative effects than any individual game.

Except PS4 Pro and Slim came out in 2016, so if anything sales will be down because the increase in sales of those systems was last year, esspecially the Uncharted bundle (at least for November and December). Here are some comments from NPD for 2016

September NPD - PS4 Slim releases with Uncharted 4. The system was the 3rd best selling SKU but was still outsold by the XBox One. 

November NPD - PS4 Pro launched. PS4 was the top selling system for the month though it should be noted the analyst pin the increase on the Slim model.

The effect of hardware releases was accounted for in the prior year and this year doesn't have a lot of strong titles. The loot box craze doesn't help. I said this somewhere (think this thread), but the improvement for Sony in the early half of the year was software. Horizon, Tekken and Crash being new titles that did well for the year. Sony is also projecting fewer hardware shipments and Q1 (annual Q2) saw a decline in shipments (meaning less stock in the store). This doesn't spell huge year-over-year increase to me.

One thing I will close on is this. Looking at the NPD data, one thing you can tell is this generation has been abysmal for bringing in customers. For the last 4 months of the year, Software (sans October) and hardware revenue was down, usually around 20-30 percent. Both Sony and Microsoft have heavily relied on new hardware, price cuts and bundles to sell units. This doesn't increase demand like, say, releasing a new game does (as it creates interest that wasn't there before). Sony and Microsoft seem more dependent on moving down the demand curve rather than shifting it. It's an easy fix, but not a great one.