Remember, I'm not a leaker. I gave up leaking a long time ago when NPD's old management bullied me to no end. Every data point I reveal is sanctioned by The NPD Group, and in general they don't like me revealing LTDs.

Why? It's simple-----LTDs are a much more relevant gauge of success in the retail market than one-month sales. Therefore, they're much more important to NPD clients. In general, The NPD Group does not allow me to share data that would materially impact their business. That means I can't share so much that clients would no longer invest in their datasets.

In that sense, LTDs for larger multiplats are tolerable because many of the multiplat publishers really don't care all that much (for example, GTA V LTD is currently 17.784 million in the USA excluding bundles). However, LTDs for exclusives and smaller titles are much more touchy. For example, Quantum Break's failure in the market reflects really poorly on Microsoft and creates this "Xbox is doomed!" narrative......but the failure of a big multiplat like Battleborn wouldn't create that same sort of drama. And smaller publishers don't tend to like it because a lot of the niche ones have large digital shares...so if something only sold 30K at retail LTD it could have sold like >100K digitally...which for a niche publisher is the difference between a flop and a success. In that sense, retail is inherently misleading.

Although keep in mind, Creamsugar often focuses primarily on exclusives and does yearly 2014 and 2015 updates. For example, we got updates in December 2015 for many of those titles you listed. That's the difference....Creamsugar is an unsanctioned leaker who pisses the administration off....I'm trying to stay within the rules and reach a happy compromise so we can have data.

If you apply basic conjecture using the #10 sales figure that I usually reveal you can easily get to an approximate LTD (or at the very least, a maximum range) from those December 2015 data points. Catalog sales are rather predictable from month to month...you can approximate them quite nicely.

I'll have to re-negotiate with them if I want to share lots of LTDs with you guys. We'll see how it goes.

Interesting note about Ubisoft:

The Division really should be in the Top 10...it really should have managed 80K this month. Instead, it missed the 80K excluding bundles mark by a good amount which is fundamentally disappointing for a title that's as high-powered as The Division.

The Division is the top seller for Ubisoft this month, but it didn't even come close to 80K (like not even to something like 75K) even when you INCLUDE Xbox One bundle units....it was quite disappointing seeing The Division miss the 80K threshold.

February's Far Cry Primal sold just under 40K units and came in the #2 place for Ubisoft, followed by Rainbow Six Siege and all the other Ubisoft catalog.


Considering The Division sold 175K in April (including Xbox One bundle units) and 1.796 million in March, I expected more out of the title, but its legs seem to have faltered.

Does NPD have issue with you posting total software splits for a month? Like a breakdown of all total software sold per month by platform, like 50% PS4, 40% Xbox One, and 10% Wii U or whatnot?

I was just interested in trends regarding software splits across the platforms, but I could see NPD could possibly take issue with this even though it's rather broad. 

If you can't give specific percents, would you be allowed to discuss any overall trends you notice in software splits YoY or MoM?

Sure, I can give approximate percentages:

PS4: ~$133 million software sold in May 2016 NPD (~65% marketshare for 8th-gen consoles) (+88% from last May)

XB1: ~$62 million software sold in May 2016 NPD (~30% marketshare for 8th-gen consoles) (+26% from last May)

WIU: ~$11 million software sold in May 2016 NPD (~5% marketshare for 8th-gen consoles) (-38% from last May)

WOW, thank you very much!! 

That software split is just crazy. I would have never imagine PS4 would have had over double the software sales with only a slightly larger install base; Uncharted 4 certainly affected that in a major way, but still very impressive.

And that Wii U marketshare is just pitiful, Nintendo really needs to hit it big with this NX, I mean it's difficult to grasp how bad the situation is until you see the numbers laid out like this.  Such a massive fall from grace, just a few years ago, Wii was phenomenon in US breaking records left and right, and then to.... this. It's jarring. 

Thanks again for numbers Aqua, really appreciate it. 

WOW, thank you very much!! 

That software split is just crazy. I would have never imagine PS4 would have had over double the software sales with only a slightly larger install base; Uncharted 4 certainly affected that in a major way, but still very impressive.

And that Wii U marketshare is just pitiful, Nintendo really needs to hit it big with this NX, I mean it's difficult to grasp how bad the situation is until you see the numbers laid out like this.  Such a massive fall from grace, just a few years ago, Wii was phenomenon in US breaking records left and right, and then to.... this. It's jarring. 

Thanks again for numbers Aqua, really appreciate it. 

You have a weird definition of "slightly".

Interesting note about Ubisoft:

The Division really should be in the Top 10...it really should have managed 80K this month. Instead, it missed the 80K excluding bundles mark by a good amount which is fundamentally disappointing for a title that's as high-powered as The Division.

The Division is the top seller for Ubisoft this month, but it didn't even come close to 80K (like not even to something like 75K) even when you INCLUDE Xbox One bundle units....it was quite disappointing seeing The Division miss the 80K threshold.

February's Far Cry Primal sold just under 40K units and came in the #2 place for Ubisoft, followed by Rainbow Six Siege and all the other Ubisoft catalog.


Considering The Division sold 175K in April (including Xbox One bundle units) and 1.796 million in March, I expected more out of the title, but its legs seem to have faltered.

You realize this is an NPD thread? I'm talking about LTD US hardware totals. Worldwide it's a different story.