Support NeoGAF

[Joeki11a]

Guys, this is *sold in to retail stores*. This is not number of sales to actual customers.

Activision could have simply flooded the market/shops with copies purely to get this record. Remember, they need this to be a success...it MUST be a success, there's too much money involved. It doesn't matter if this stock now sits on shop shelves for a couple of months, they have this "record".

Give us the actual sales figures Mr. Kotick... if you're brave enough

You will cry when NPDs show PS4/PS3 versions doing over 60% of the sales.

It is simple, MS wanted Titanfall to do this type of business for them, They are jealous of this.

 

[Wynnebeck]

Yes, they have a minority equity interest.

These are very poor counter strawman arguments compared to larger levels of scrutiny I described. The game would have never the less been criticized for its content.

Those darn Sony Ponies!

 

[Devilgunman]

Everyone else in the industry will see the success and assume you have to SPEND 500 million dollars to create a blockbuster new IP. They won't look at what made teh game successful, but what the budget was, and start throwing money at their problems.

Or just make a good mobile game and sell in Japan.

 

[Queen of Hunting]

says into retail not sold through

 

[Netherscourge]

$500 mil before a single review

Kotick is a genius.

Makes you wonder- If they allowed reviews BEFORE the release date, would it have sold that much that fast?

 

[Oddduck]

Activision is one of the smartest businesses in the game industry. They really know how to create hype around their products.

 

[TheOddOne]

Those darn Sony Ponies!

I guess I'm going to get these types of comments. Sign.

Anyway, the positives that came out of this:

- Bungie got to get away from Halo and do their own thing;
- They got to bring their games to more platforms, and gain even more fans;
- Their new IP had a great start sales wise;
- The consoles are dead theory becomes less prevalent;
- Publishers see that they can launch big new IP’s (Good/bad, it's debatable);
- The co-marketing deal was good get for Sony;
- Activision shockingly keeps making billion dollar franchises;
- Next gen online infrastructures are surprisingly solid.

 

[vagabondarts]

Ok. Say what you want about Kotick but the man is an amazing businessman. Activision..... Just holy moly....

 

[truth411]

It's obvious that Destiny got off to a good start but it might have something to do with the drought and supply constraint of new games coming out. The true test will be the month after. The October NPD will be very interesting.

Lol.

 

[Micerider]

I guess I'm going to get these types of comments. Sign.

Anyway, the positives that came out of this:

- Bungie got to get away from Halo and do their own thing;
- They got to bring their games to more platforms, and gain even more fans;
- Their new IP had a great start sales wise;
- The consoles are dead theory becomes less prevalent;
- Publishers see that they can launch big new IP’s (Good/bad, it's debatable);
- The co-marketing deal was good get for Sony;
- Activision shockingly keeps making billion dollar franchises;
- Next gen online infrastructures are surprisingly solid.

I didn't buy Destiny, but I agree that it shows that you can build new IP's with ambitions and be successful, which is very good

 

[QuantumZebra]

Destiny 2 confirmed.

 

[SkeptiMism]

The salt in this thread is incredible

Where's the salt seriously? People arguing that it's sell in not sell through isn't salt just in case you're thinking of that.

There might be a little, but it's very little from what I see.

 

[Aselith]

Game performed below expectations. Activision am disappoint.

 

[truth411]

I guess I'm going to get these types of comments. Sign.

Anyway, the positives that came out of this:

- Bungie got to get away from Halo and do their own thing;
- They got to bring their games to more platforms, and gain even more fans;
- Their new IP had a great start sales wise;
- The consoles are dead theory becomes less prevalent;
- Publishers see that they can launch big new IP’s (Good/bad, it's debatable);
- The co-marketing deal was good get for Sony;
- Activision shockingly keeps making billion dollar franchises;
- Next gen online infrastructures are surprisingly solid.

The jury is still out on that one.

 

[TheOddOne]

The jury is still out on that one.

Yeah, a few more big launches are needed. Still, Destiny's launch seems to be going great.

 

[SirNinja]

Game performed below expectations.

Square Enix, is that you?

 

[Pancakes R Us]

Titanfall: this is how it's done.

 

[synce]

So considering the $500M budget they already broken even right? Or does Activision get only a fraction of that?

 

[Dire]

Yeah, a few more big launches are needed. Still, Destiny's launch seems to be going great.

Except, once again, you actually know nothing at all about how Destiny's launch is going.

Kotick's message told you absolutely nothing whatsoever about how well or not the product is selling. While I would be surprised if it's not indeed doing well, the metainformation from this release is that Kotick consciously chose a metric that gives no substantive information yet is phrased to mislead the uninformed masses into interpreting it as a positive.

 

[MormaPope]

Titanfall: this is how it's done.

Shipping a lot of merchandise to stores is a unique and not utilized strategy?

 

[JoduanER2]

Shit! I wanted this game to fail hard, for publishers this means we want more and more shooters and im sick of shooters

 

[SDCowboy]

Shit! I wanted this game to fail hard, for publishers this means we want more and more shooters and im sick of shooters

So you wanted an amazing, high quality game to fail? Fascinating.

 

[Majmun]

Damn, there are five different Ps4 versions of Destiny in the Amazon top 30 (NA)


Crazy

 

[jcm]

Yes, actually it is their problem.

The semantic and legal standard for misleading statements is generally exactly that. It's not whether or not the statement can be proven to be technically factually accurate, but whether it is designed to and will generally mislead people into believing something that is not true. The little quip "Since the beginning, we've been confident that our investment and belief in Destiny would pay off. But not many people believed we'd be able to say it did so on day one.." is clearly designed to push people further into believing that they just earned $500million, or even more absurdly $500million net as the majority of people interpreted this as.

First 24 hour sales are generally reported as sell-through. 24 hour sell-in seems to be something primarily Kotick likes to spin. For comparison every Halo, GTA IV and GTA V report I can find reports sale through. First day sell-in doesn't even make sense as a timed metric. You're just telling people how much you shipped to the companies however many days/weeks ago.

It says exactly what happened. They sold $500M worth of product to retailers. If the standard was "nobody on GAF can misunderstand it" then companies wouldn't be able to say anything, ever.

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

Shit! I wanted this game to fail hard, for publishers this means we want more and more shooters and im sick of shooters

But it didn't, so haha.

 

[TheOddOne]

Except, once again, you actually know nothing at all about how Destiny's launch is going.

Kotick's message told you absolutely nothing whatsoever about how well or not the product is selling. While I would be surprised if it's not indeed doing well, the metainformation from this release is that Kotick consciously chose a metric that gives no substantive information yet is phrased to mislead the uninformed masses into interpreting it as a positive.

You're right, about the phrasing. Still, this amount being sold to retailers is huge.

(The reply was about the stability of the online structure of the next gen consoles though).

 

[xxracerxx]

The salt in this thread is incredible

 

[Dire]

So considering the $500M budget they already broken even right? Or does Activision get only a fraction of that?

The $500million is the total value of all product they shipped. If every single copy on every single store shelf and backroom sold out then the game would have grossed $500million. They would then get a fraction of that. It's a very deceptive message.

 

[MormaPope]

It says exactly what happened. They sold $500M worth of product to retailers. If the standard was "nobody on GAF can misunderstand it" then companies wouldn't be able to say anything, ever.

Its more like Gaffers read the title and then skip the OP, and then continue to make a moot point based on their own misinformation.

The actual report isn't bad at all, it teeters on useless info though. Essentially this report only shows how confident Activision is for this product.

 

[onQ123]

Shit! I wanted this game to fail hard, for publishers this means we want more and more shooters and im sick of shooters

Or you could just you know buy the kind of games you like & not worry about the people buying the shooting games.

 

[JoduanER2]

So you wanted an amazing, high quality game to fail? Fascinating.

Are you not sick of shooters? I would like more variety in gaming, shooters must take like 30% of type of games that are produced, thats why indies are on the rise, cause AAA games are mostly shooters and indies not.

 

[Phlebas]

Shit! I wanted this game to fail hard, for publishers this means we want more and more shooters and im sick of shooters

 

[Mechanized]

The $500million is the total value of all product they shipped. If every single copy on every single store shelf and backroom sold out then the game would have grossed $500million. They would then get a fraction of that. It's a very deceptive message.

The important thing to distinguish here though, this is only the first shipment of the game right? How often do first shipments of AAA blockbusters last?

 

[BokehKing]

Where's the salt seriously? People arguing that it's sell in not sell through isn't salt just in case you're thinking of that.

There might be a little, but it's very little from what I see.

That's not the salt, it's the same group of people in every thread trying to convince people the game doesn't deserve the praise or hype blah blah blah, can't wait until they move onto the next big thing.


But yeah, Microsoft wishes Titanfall launched this big

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

This helps...from Amazon.

I wonder how much of a system seller Destiny was for the PS4.

 

[2spooky4me]

Kotick always wins!!!

 

[quetz67]

So considering the $500M budget they already broken even right? Or does Activision get only a fraction of that?

They get a huge part, maybe about 60-70%.

Adding the fact that this is not sell through they probably earned half of what they invested.

If the sales are very front-loaded the first game itself might not be profitable, hard to tell after 24h.

 

[MormaPope]

That's not the salt, it's the same group of people in every thread trying to convince people the game doesn't deserve the praise or hype blah blah blah, can't wait until they move onto the next big thing.


But yeah, Microsoft wishes Titanfall launched this big

What launch are you talking about? Activision shipped 500 million dollars worth of Destiny to stores, EA/Microsoft could've done the same exact thing with Titanfall.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

$500 million worth of product shipped to retail stores day one. That really is the full faith of the company. I imagine we will get the launch sales this weekend or next week then.

 

[VisceralBowl]

Shit! I wanted this game to fail hard, for publishers this means we want more and more shooters and im sick of shooters

I don't care if we get more shooters, but this game's lack of content is a joke (and totally expected; surprised so many thought there would be more).

 

[GhaleonEB]

I wonder how much of a system seller Destiny was for the PS4.

At least 10, and probably more than 20, systems.

 

[MormaPope]

I don't care if we get more shooters, but this game's lack of content is a joke (and totally expected; surprised so many thought there would be more).

I haven't bought or played the game, but its really disheartening to see people reach level 20 after one or two days of playing. Yeah, that isn't the max level, but to reach such a high level within a day or two has pushed me away from getting gold again and Destiny. Not to mention loot and weapon variety is another issue.

If I'm going to spend $90+ to play a game, I'd want that game to last for months.

 

[backflip10019]

I wonder how much of a system seller Destiny was for the PS4.

Conversely, I know three friends (and my brother) who picked up an Xbox One yesterday. Said the free game with Madden bundle was too good of a deal not to jump on. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but my brother also visited 3 GameStops, called 5 Wal-marts and a few Targets, and only the Best Buy near him had any Madden bundles left.

Regardless of the console, Destiny must be moving a significant amount of next gen consoles.

 

[Exploratory]

Makes you wonder- If they allowed reviews BEFORE the release date, would it have sold that much that fast?

Of course not.

 

[Dire]

You're right, about the phrasing. Still, this amount being sold to retailers is huge.

(The reply was about the stability of the online structure of the next gen consoles though).

Well we don't really know. We do know (I offered links in a previous post in this thread) that Activision had more than a billion dollars of product on store shelves for CoD: Ghosts launch. They had even more than that for CoD: Black Ops 2 launch. So this is unsurprisingly a pretty serious downgrade from those series. Beyond that it's really tough to get shipped for launch figures since it seems Kotick is the one that really likes to use it.

We can't even do something like gross shipped/msrp to try to convert this to units shipped without really starting to fudge some figures due to inflated prices outside the US, the hoards of collector's editions and the fact that this figure likely includes season pass/DLC stuff - that may be the "first party orders" he was referencing? And even if we create intelligent figures for all that we then end up with the question somebody already inadvertently posed in this threads - what about the bundles? Depending on how they're factoring those into the shipped figure, it could massively sway things one way or the other. Just 500k PS4 destiny bundles, as mentioned, has an MSRP of $225million!

 

[wildfire]

Destiny 2 confirmed.

It will come out in the same time frame it took Blizzard to release Titan.

 

[VisceralBowl]

I haven't bought or played the game, but its really disheartening to see people reach level 20 after one or two days of playing. Yeah, that isn't the max level, but to reach such a high level within a day or two has pushed me away from getting gold again and Destiny. Not to mention loot and weapon variety is another issue.

If I'm going to spend $90+ to play a game, I'd want that game to last for months.

It still can last a while, if it gets free content updates every week or so with new missions, strikes, weapons, vehicles, maps, and (maybe) locations; I just don't see this happening though.

EDIT: Oh, and not the stuff we already know is hidden on the disc or locked until a certain date, I mean full 2+GB updates with brand new stuff.

 

[Orayn]

Its more like Gaffers read the title and then skip the OP, and then continue to make a moot point based on their own misinformation.

The actual report isn't bad at all, it teeters on useless info though. Essentially this report only shows how confident Activision is for this product.

I wouldn't say it's useless. The number of units shipped depends on preorders and retailers gauging consumer interest, not just how many Activision think they can sell.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Conversely, I know three friends (and my brother) who picked up an Xbox One yesterday. Said the free game with Madden bundle was too good of a deal not to jump on. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but my brother also visited 3 GameStops, called 5 Wal-marts and a few Targets, and only the Best Buy near him had any Madden bundles left.

Regardless of the console, Destiny must be moving a significant amount of next gen consoles.

Will be interesting to see which platform gets the bigger lift. The PS4 had the bundle, the marketing/content exclusives and the ongoing platform sales momentum behind it. The XBO has the benefit of a lot of Halo fans that haven't gone next gen yet, who want to keep playing Halo and thus were going to buy an XBO, but want to play Bungie's next. And then MS going all in with bundles and discounts around the Destiny release.

I see the PS4 as getting the larger uplift (for the above reasons and things like Amazon's lists), but the XBO will undoubtedly move hardware due to Destiny's release as well.

 

[MormaPope]

I wouldn't say it's useless. The number of units shipped depends on preorders and retailers gauging consumer interest, not just how many Activision think they can sell.

Well, yeah. Its not like this decision was unfounded, interest was gauged and calculated.