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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Amazon US february monthly bestsellers and general Amazon based discussion

thismeintiel on 24 February 2015
Puppyroach said:
thismeintiel said:
Puppyroach said:
As I've said many times before: You sell better by bundling than price reducing. MS have done both now and it seems to be paying off. They should offer three different types of bundles each month and the sales would skyrocket.

But at what cost?  Look at what this picture is actually showing us.  Even with a $50-$55 price advantage, with 2 free games, the XBO sales were still lower than the PS4's.  What Amazon is showing is now that the initial demand of a $349 XBO has died down incredibly, it will take 3 free games, plus a free 2nd controller, to finally start outselling the PS4.  And for all we know it may not even be by much.  Do you think the top brass at MS, or investors, are going to be okay with that kind of loss, just to increase sales by ~20%, maybe 30%, in a couple of regions?

How do you know  it´s a loss? 

Cause games and controllers don't grow on trees?  Seriously, how could you not think it's a loss. 

At best, the HW is break even.  Personally, I think they are probably taking a slight loss on it.  And these are 2 AAA 3rd party games.  Ubisoft isn't letting them pack them in for free for 4 months straight just to help a buddy out.  MS is paying for those games to remain in there.  Now, add a 3rd one in there, costs go up even more.  Then, MS would have to eat the price of a 2nd controller.  There's no way they wouldn't be taking a loss with that kind of deal.



 

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Insidb on 24 February 2015
binary solo said:
Insidb said:
Monthly update:

PS4: Still at #9
X1: Rose from #19 to #16

With PS4 dropping a few rankings, and I assume the junp to 16 means the first few days of the value bundle have been factored in, it is quite likely that Xb one ends up ahead of PS4 for Feb. There are 4 more days to go and Xb one looks to be entrenched in 5th place. I think PS4 may end the month in 11th or 12th. Xb one should be damned close to that position too. If PS4 ends up 1 or 2 ranks ahead for the month then I think PS4 will seill beat Xb one in NPD because the value bundle is Amazon only and will somewhat skew the Amazon result compared to all retailers. If Xb one ends up one or 2 ranks ahead I don;t think it will be possible for me to confidently predict which one comes out ahead in NPD. I might still lean towards PS4 with a 1 or 2 rank gap again because of the value bundle artefact, but it will be mighty close. Because of the value bundle Amazon might have a substantially larger Xb one market share this month, and who knows what that will do for the national picture.

February is becomiung an interesting month, no thatnks to VGChartz, that's given us nothing for February except one measly pre-order chart, which no one cares about because it was 2 weeks late anyway.

From what I understand, Amazon tracks a 24 hour, moving average. Since the PS4 has not moved up or down the monthly for a few days and the X1 Amazon Value Bundle is now out of stock, I think we should expect the bulk of the movement to happen through tomorrow evening. The monthly rankings update sporadically, so we may not get a real feel for the impact. That being said, the X1 bundle doesn't appear to have impacted PS4 sales that much and would have to have made a big imact over the last 24 hours to affect February.



Aura7541 on 24 February 2015

Predictably, the X1 moved up in the monthly rankings. There are about 4 days left, so I'm curious to see how close the X1 will get. What needs to be pointed out, though, is that the AC bundle + Wolfenstein + 2nd controller deal is exclusive to Amazon. The picture is becoming fuzzy because we have been using Amazon as a metric for which console wins for the month.

That said, the deal began on Sunday so it has been going on for 3 days. The X1 moved up 3 spots in the monthly rankings and need to move up 7 more within 4 days to surpass the PS4. I doubt that's going to happen, but then again, the deal is really fuckin good.



Roaringriku786 on 24 February 2015

That was a pretty good raise considering it went three positions up within a day and a half in the monthy chart.



binary solo on 24 February 2015
Roaringriku786 said:

That a was pretty good raise considering it went three positions up within a day and a half in the monthy chart.

A couple of days at rank 5 will do that.

Xb one dropping again. Will probably drop quite far because Amazon is indicating they will resume selling the value bundle once Wolfenstein is back in stock for them. So why buy a naked ACU bundle when you can wait a few days and get the ACU bundle+Wolfenstein+controller for the same price? If the bundle doesn't refresh before the end of Feb it's possible Xb one might drop in the monthly rankings. I wouldn't be surprised to see Xb one fall out of the top 20 before the value bundle is back in stock.

According to VGC Wolfenstein physical sales have been pathetically low for a while now. The game is 9 months old today. I wonder if there's actually going to be another shioment of any substantial quantity. Perhaps Amazon will need to switch to a digial download code for Wolfenstein to keep the bundle alive. 



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

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Roaringriku786 on 24 February 2015
binary solo said:
Roaringriku786 said:

That a was pretty good raise considering it went three positions up within a day and a half in the monthy chart.

A couple of days at rank 5 will do that.

Xb one dropping again. Will probably drop quite far because Amazon is indicating they will resume selling the value bundle once Wolfenstein is back in stock for them. So why buy a naked ACU bundle when you can wait a few days and get the ACU bundle+Wolfenstein+controller for the same price? If the bundle doesn't refresh before the end of Feb it's possible Xb one might drop in the monthly rankings. I wouldn't be surprised to see Xb one fall out of the top 20 before the value bundle is back in stock.

According to VGC Wolfenstein physical sales have been pathetically low for a while now. The game is 9 months old today. I wonder if there's actually going to be another shioment of any substantial quantity. Perhaps Amazon will need to switch to a digial download code for Wolfenstein to keep the bundle alive. 

Amazon will probably be extra careful the next time they decide to make a order for xbox one inventory, because Amazon was definitely getting desperate to get rid of these xbox one.



TheObserver on 24 February 2015
binary solo said:
TheObserver said:
I'm surprised at Microsoft's resilience in the gaming business.
Up until 2011 xbox division was almost 7 billion in the red, 360 likely did make some profits in 2012-3013,
but since the launch of XB1 they're making huge losses again. And considering the next console generation will likely be the end of the traditional consoles, it seems unlikely they'll ever break even in this business.

I guess it kind of make sense why they're so desperate to succeed, considering they don't have a single consumer product that's ever been successful for them beside XBOX 360. Their Zune, Windows Phones, Tablets all failed.
360 sparked a hope in MS that they may finally get some mindshare among the people, but XB1 is really destroying that dream, i wonder how much longer they'll be willing to bleed money over this endeavor.

You really can't put WP and Surface in the same failure camp as Zune. Fact of the matter is WP is actually doing quite well in the enterprise space (my organisation has gone 100% to WP8 for staff smartphones, even though I personally much prefer Android ). I dunno about Surface tablets compared to normal tablets, but the people I know who have Surface tablets have the giant ones that are really more like cheap touchscreen ultrabooks with detachable keyboards. They are far to big and bukly to be really called tablets. And these laptablets seem to have found a bit of a niche, again probably more used in the enterprise space in lieu of actual laptops than in the consumer/entertainment space. MS's strength in phone and tablet was always going to be with businesses, so seeing very few ordinary people wandering around with WP phones and Surface tablets doesn't mean WP and Surface are failures. However I do get the feeling that outside of Surface and Nokia phone and tablet has been a failure with 3rd party hardware makers like Samsung.

 


I was talking about the consumer market, I don't think anyone's disputing Microsoft's popularity in the enterprise sector, mostly because they're stuck with MS products and it would be too much money to switch to a different product, and have to retrain employees to use a different OS and apps.

But fact of the matter is MS is desperate to get something to resonate with the consumer market, cause it a much more profitable demographic than the corporate one, but it's also not as safe as the the corporate one because while the corporate sector will still keep buying windows related products for their employees no matter how much they suck, same is not the case with the consumers. And MS' products just aren't good enough for someone to buy for their own use, but people don't have a problem buying them for someone else to use. This was also demonstrated during the Holidays, when XB1 sales went up cause people were buying them as gifts for others, but come january when people buy them for their own use the sales dropped like a rock even with the same price.



walsufnir on 25 February 2015
Protendo said:
walsufnir said:


This is not about losing or winning, but to be correct in what either one is saying. You are not but you judge posts different than I do. I see that even providing links does not have an effect in any way so we can stop this discussion as it is completely off-topic now.

And don't be sorry where it's not needed

LAWL. That's the problem with not being a native English speaker!  I missinterprut things all the time. This is great practice for me, and one of the reasons I enjoy the forums! That beign said, I am glad to see Xbox doing well. I believe it benefits both Sony and Microsoft when things get competitive, as they try harder.  

Being in the tech industry, I know that DDR3 prices are attroucious, and I have to report price fluctions every time I make kan order as a buyer. GDDR5 is something we don't really order, but I can see that prices are going down. I do know that GDDR5 has advantages over DDR4, and DDR4 has completely eclipsed DDR3 in every way, and our new technlogy no longer uses DDR3, that is why DDR3 is considerred legacy technology. It's getting phased out by new technology. At least DDR4 prices are going down.


Perhaps I should make it even more clear: MS and Sony buy chips. And only the chips, not ready to market for consumer pluggable DDR3-"bars". The main difference between DDR3 and GDDR5 is especially the controllers that are used, not the chips themselves (and of course things like voltage and so on). That said, Sony and MS are aware of price fluctuations, that is why such companies have long term contracts. Again, where does Sony buy their XDR RAM for their PS3? I can't find it in any store... Well, they have a (long term) contract that ensures prices and availability, same applies to MS and Xbox 360.

But as we don't know the details of these deals we can't infer any prices based on RAM for both consoles but we can say that fluctuations in RAM prices don't have an effect on console prices.



Puppyroach on 25 February 2015
thismeintiel said:

Cause games and controllers don't grow on trees?  Seriously, how could you not think it's a loss. 

At best, the HW is break even.  Personally, I think they are probably taking a slight loss on it.  And these are 2 AAA 3rd party games.  Ubisoft isn't letting them pack them in for free for 4 months straight just to help a buddy out.  MS is paying for those games to remain in there.  Now, add a 3rd one in there, costs go up even more.  Then, MS would have to eat the price of a 2nd controller.  There's no way they wouldn't be taking a loss with that kind of deal.

Yes, but wether or not they are taking a loss of each bundle is a completely different issue. Remember, this is a bit os a slow period compared to the holidays, meaning a loos of every bundle isn´t as impactful as it would be if they sold it during black friday for instance. The revenue they make from XBL subscriptions, software sales and added sales on top of the console, might very well make up for the loss per bundle, meaning they could make a profit in total (which is what investors are interested in, nothing else). We don´t know until the next quarterly report, in which we atleast will get a hint, but none of us can know if they are taking a loss now.



Insidb on 25 February 2015

I wonder if Amazon will do the bundle again or if that is an automated response; it's hard to tell if Amazon had a sales threshold in mind that they hit or not.