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SuperNova on 18 November 2017
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Jranation said:
Shadow1980 said:

Assuming 295k, here's how the Switch's first October stacks up to other console's first Octobers (excluding launch period Octobers for systems launching in September or October, meaning this chart uses Oct. 2001 for the PS2, etc.):


Nearly tying for third-best first October ever. Now, who was it that was saying that this was "unimpressive," hm?

Wii was on Fire! Great sales for Switch! 

 

Shadow1980 said:
quickrick said:

oh wow, its all about context man, october was a month switch was fully stocked every where, and had one of the most hyped and highest rated mario games of all time. mario sold over 900k in npd in 2 days, yet sales didn't sky rocket for hardware so it was very surprising, now look at september for ps4, it launched with a none exclusive big (destiny) game, it did 538k. the fact that you did a graph for first october's is cute though.

"Cute"? Don't get smart with me, son. I know you've been here for only a week, but I've been doing graphs like these for a long time now. That's kinda what I'm known for here. I'm the "graphs guy." If you're going to get snide with me, I'm just going to ignore you. If you want me to continue to debate you, then watch your tone.

I mentioned the effect of software on hardware sales before. The effects are less obvious with monthly tracking (as NPD does) than with weekly tracking (as the Japanese trackers do), especially since Japan already appears to be more responsive to software than the U.S. A game can boost weekly sales by double, but the net effect for the whole month is going to be a lot smaller. Say a system's been averaging 50k/week, and a notable new game boosts sales to 100k for the week it's released, while nothing big released the previous month. Assuming both the month the game was released and the prior month were both 4-week months, that's 250k for the month the game was released and 200k for the prior month. While the game yielded a 100% boost to sales for the week it was released, it yielded only a 25% month-over-month increase. If the prior month was a 5-week month instead, then the system would have sold 250k in both months despite the game in the second month boosting hardware sales to double baseline the week it was released.

The Switch's per-week average for October in the U.S. was 16% higher than in September. Considering the effects SMO had on Japanese sales, we can surmise that the game gave a pretty good boost to sales the week the game was released in the U.S. as well. How big, we don't know, and the effects on the month of October as a whole will be smaller than the effect on sales in the week the game came out. Incidentally, looking at Japanese sales, SMO gave a good boost to sales, but the net effect was to make October (Media Create Weeks 40-43) have a weekly average only 15.5% larger than in September (MC Weeks 35-39).

Also, no two system-sellers were born the same. A rare few have massive effects on sales, sometimes lasting several weeks or more (Japanese data suggests that the vast majority of system-sellers help for a week, maybe two at most, and we can probably assume that's the norm elsewhere), while most have a more modest effect on sales. The PS4 got an absolutely massive spike in the U.S. in Sept. 2014 from Destiny, one of the biggest system-sellers ever. That month, the PS4 averaged a staggering 126.5% increase in weekly average sales from August, far beyond anything else we've seen on a home console in the past two generations. The following month, the PS4 still averaged well above the April-Aug. baseline, suggesting Destiny was still having a residual effect on sales. Nothing new was released in October 2014 that could have sustained sales, and no price cuts or notable bundles/promotions were issued that month, leaving Destiny as the only probable explanation. Other extremely big system-sellers in the past decade include Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3, Pokemon X/Y for the 3DS, and Halo 3 for the 360 (except in Japan). Those games moved a ton of hardware.

But most system sellers do a lot less, and, as I talked about earlier, with NPD tracking sales on a monthly basis, the vast majority of them don't have an effect on sales that can be determined from the data. Mario Odyssey was a system-seller, but not a massive one. It provided similar month-over-month boosts in both the U.S. and Japan, with the latter showing a solid boost for the final week of October, but not one so large as to cause massive month-over-month growth, and it's a safe assumption that about the same thing happened in the U.S. SMO not being a Pokemon-caliber system-seller for Nintendo is not a strike against the system.

In fact, 3D Super Mario games are, surprisingly, typically not known for moving a ton of hardware by themselves. Sunshine did squat to help the GameCube in the U.S., and helped only a little bit in Japan. Neither Galaxy game had much of an effect as far as I can tell. 3D Land gave the 3DS a decent boost in Japan, but nothing massive, and 3D World didn't do much of anything to help. SMO being a relatively modest system-seller is not surprising in the least.

I love you Shadow. Thanks for bringing some much needed perspetive to the thread.