November Circana (NPD) 2023 Thread + Predictions

[Shadow1980]

Oof. I guess everyone was way off the mark for November. Last November we had:

PS5: 1331k
NSW: ~1035k
XBS: 942k

That gives us an upper limit of each system for this November of:

PS5: 1064k
XBS: 584k
NSW: <584k (XBS>NSW in units for Nov. '23)

That means that the "over 20% down YoY" was more like at least 44% down YoY for the Switch.

My own predictions over on IB were:

[PS5] 1400K
[XBS] 800K
[NSW] 750K

I wonder how much of this was because of Cyber Monday being in the December period. Anyone recall of the top of their heads which sale period previous CMs occurred in?

Shtinamin_ said:

wow, looks like no one had any income for fun this year. It's gonna be a blue Christmas for everyone. Very little presents, and very little Christmas cheer.
What happened to the economy?
Honestly, very disappointing numbers for all of the systems in the US for November. RIP

Historically speaking, the state of the economy seems to have no bearing on the health of the video games market. The U.S. console market hit its all-time peak during the Great Recession, with over 34M hardware units being sold in the U.S. in both 2008 & 2009 between the Wii, 360, PS3, PS2, DS, and PSP (2007 had HW sales over over 30.5M, making it the third-largest year). The market hasn't exceeded 17M HW units in a year since 2012.

Granted, most of that variability has been on Nintendo's end. PlayStation & Xbox have been far more stable, having maintained a combined lifetime total of between 60-70M per generation since Gen 6. Meanwhile, Nintendo went from the DS & Wii (95.3M lifetime combined) to 3DS & Wii U (~28.7M lifetime combined), and now they're running on generational cycles that start and end in the middle of the life cycles of PlayStation & Xbox, which limits the maximum potential of any given year.

Still, it doesn't appear that economic conditions have any effect on console sales. There's been several other smaller recessions since game consoles have existed, and they didn't have any measurable impact on sales. Inflation has higher than it is now in the late 80s (peak NES years) and from Oct. 2007 to Oct. 2008 (when hardware sales overall were entering their aforementioned all-time peak).

In any case, this isn't the first time a strong non-holiday period (which this year's one was) was followed by a lackluster holiday season. We've had unusually weak Novembers followed by strong Decembers, and strong Novembers followed by weak Decembers. It's entirely possible that with Cyber Monday numbers being part of the December period, December could have a better showing and make up for the rough November.

Besides, PS5 sales were up by about 37% YoY for the Jan.-Oct. period this year, enough to offset declines in XBS sales in the same period, giving the two systems combined sales about 8% higher than last year, so clearly something else is going on besides economic woes. It is worth noting that Black Friday deals for consoles are nowhere near as aggressive as they were last generation, so that could be a factor. The PS5 & Series X have been $500 since they launched, with nary any price cuts, even temporarily for the holidays. They could very well be exhausting their sale potential at that price point. We are after all already three years into the current generation (time flies, doesn't it?).

Also, the Switch is closing in on the end of its life, so declines like this are not entirely unexpected. Estimates indicate that Q3 2023 was the Switch's worst quarter yet in the U.S., down by over 30% YoY. It was down over 42% YoY in November in Japan as well. So it being down by at least 44% in November in the U.S. probably wasn't totally unexpected. Everybody was expecting big drops, just not that big, maybe 25-30%. The sixth year in a row of the MK8 bundle and a Smash bundle thrown in for good measure just isn't going to hit as hard. The system is reaching saturation. It wouldn't surprise me if 2024 is its lowest year even before the Switch 2 is released (whenever that is; wouldn't surprise me if they go back to a November release).