October 2017 NPD Thread! Switch #1

[DonFerrari]

Shadow1980 said:

Kai_Mao said:

I think some forget that Mario has been an evergreen title for decades. Nice first week sales, but even more impressive legs Odyssey will probably continue to sell even as years go by. Hell, why do you think games like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing keep popping up in charts, especially in Japan, every once in a while even after 1-3 years of release?

Hell, Mario Kart Wii is #96 right now in the hourly best-sellers chart on Amazon, and New SMB Wii is at #146. They just keep selling despite closing in on a decade old. No wonder they both pulled over 30 million copies.

Lawlight said:

I am saying that it’s unimpressive. I think a lot of us do as well - based on the predictions they made.

A lot of people grossly overestimated how well the Switch would do. I've seen a lot of 400k+ predictions both here and on ResetEra, some even over 500k and 600k. I have no idea why in the hell anyone would think the Switch would sell that damn much in a 4-week month, given that at best Super Mario has a modest effect on hardware sales. Someone must have been misinterpreting some prior LTD sales estimate. NPD had the Switch at a bit over 2.32M at the end of September, and that news report from a couple of weeks ago said the Switch was at "over 2.6 million" at the end of October, meaning the Switch would have to have sold somewhere in the 275k to 375k range in October, with a reasonable assumption that the actual number was at the low to mid end of the range. As it turns out, it was towards the lower end. Anybody that estimated anything 400k or more was either unaware of that news report, or had no idea where the Switch was at the end of September.

My own prediction was one of the most conservative out of all the estimates I've seen, overestimating the actually tally by only about 11-13% (assuming sales of 295k ±3k), not too far outside any reasonable margin of error (and when we're just guessing, a MoE of 10% isn't unreasonable). I was assuming the first three weeks of October would retain the 63k/week average of September, with SMO driving the fourth week to about 2 to 2.5 times the aforementioned 63k/week average, putting it in the 315 to 346.5k range. I split the difference down the middle and guessed 330k. Either SMO didn't give as big of a boost as I thought, or weekly sales for the first three weeks declined a bit from the September average.

So, while a lot of people may have been far, far off the mark, the sales themselves when viewed purely on their own relative to other systems and the Switch's own prior sales are not unimpressive. They are actually quite good, even if SMO wasn't a massive system-seller.

Shadow, let's not mix what you or others think is impressive...

If people are expecting over 400k sales (and before any leak of the over 2.6 or 2.7M sales, no one would know the brackets limits) and it sell sub 300k the word IMPRESSIVE doesn't describe it, and the other side of impressive is UNIMPRESSIVE. And even using your line of thought of 275-375k when it goes to the lower side of the spectrum then it would still be on the unimpressive side not the impressive.

If own your own line of thought considering the weekly sales of the previous month, and what bump MARIO (yes one of the biggest games they could release) should give to weekly sales, if 290k is what you expected, if it hits that then it also isn't impressive. Because you were expecting it.

Let's not forget what actually means to be impressed, surprised. Or something to be INcredible, fantastic, etc.... all those are words that describe things that go so far out of what was expected that it doesn't even seem real at first.

LudicrousSpeed said:
Did GT have a small window for sales in the month? Don't remember its release date. Seems bizarre to see it below Forza. Wonder if we'll see a SFV situation where a poorly designed launch kills the potentially great legs everyone assumes it will have?

About 2 weeks, so should be enough for a good ranking. And considering it charted first on its launch in UK but on the lower end for the series... I would say that US weren't much into GTS.

torok said:

DonFerrari said:

Well Sony have spooke that PS4P had a good mix of new customer and upgrades one, I believe it was like 40% upgrades. Don't have the source, would need to google it.

It's quite a big percentage of people double dipping (I'm not saying this is bad, it is actually great for Sony). But it's interesting to see the late adopters also getting it. I guess a lot of people don't mind paying 350-400 on a console. Increased 4K adoption is probably the reason, even late costumers seem inclined to jump ship to the most powerful unit.

Well, I can't really say for sure what was the proportion (I saw that more than 8 months ago) but yep a almost even split is kinda impressive because we can't really say if it is more pleasing to new owners, people that came from other userbase or just double dippers (there are a lot of double dippers, like me, in VGC).