December NPD 2018 thread

[TheBlackNaruto]

colafitte said:

TheBlackNaruto said:
Switch did GREAT! Best Dec this gen and won the US this year! But it scares me that the jump from last year is not that big despite having Smash which is a HUGE success. Makes me think it might not have been as high if Smash had not released. XB1 solid for the sales it has been getting since release. Not great but solid. PS4 was a let down for me, Sony just didn't try this Dec and it shows. Overall a pretty Meh Dec for all 3.

I was disappointed too with PS4 the moment it became clear Sony was not going to go all in with deals in the holiday season. Before BF i expected this to be the best Holiday season for PS4 in USA thanks to RDR2, Spiderman, GOW, ...I can't blame Sony though, because they just sold the same as last year and probably they were more profitable this way, but we, in this forums, are romantics of great numbers, and i thought PS4 could easily had achieved 19-20M sold in 2018 if Sony wanted.

With Switch, the problem is that people go from overstimating to understimating it. If you sell close to 17M in your second year at $300 is an impressive result. But when you have people all year expecting Switch to be like Wii or DS, you are going to find people disappointed with numbers like this, and it's normal. Being disappointed by something doesn't mean that thing is bad or is doing bad. Switch did great and is going to do great in 2019 again, just not like Wii or DS (at least this first few years).

Oh yes the Switch will do great in Dec for sure! And yeah I was upset with Sony but they went for max profit so I can't blame them. It does leave them some wiggle room for 2019 though with pricecuts and some nice games like Days Gone, Death Strand, TLOU2 etc. So we will see what they do.

zorg1000 said:

TheBlackNaruto said:
Switch did GREAT! Best Dec this gen and won the US this year! But it scares me that the jump from last year is not that big despite having Smash which is a HUGE success. Makes me think it might not have been as high if Smash had not released. XB1 solid for the sales it has been getting since release. Not great but solid. PS4 was a let down for me, Sony just didn't try this Dec and it shows. Overall a pretty Meh Dec for all 3.

One potential reason I can think of is that due to January being a 5 week month last year, it shifted the tracking periods in November's favor.

2017 tracking periods

Oct 29-Nov 25

Nov 26-Dec 30

 

2018 tracking periods

Nov 4-Dec 1

Dec 2-Jan 5

 

So basically Dec 2017 included the last week of Nov which is a big holiday shopping week (includes Cyber Monday) while Dec 2018 lacked that week and instead included the first week of January where sales drop significantly.

If 2018 had the same tracking period as 2017 than I think Nov would have been a bit lower while 2018 a bit higher and is why i guess it makes more sense to compare Nov+Dec.

Yeah that definitely makes a lot more sense.