DriftingSpirit
Member
I think we will hear something from MS Monday or Tuesday. It would be pointless to launch a counter after a week or so of Sony doing what they do. At that point, MS may as well just leave it be.
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November 2015 NPD (U.S. Hardware) Predictions - Closes December 8th
- Thread starter donny2112
- Start date
James Sawyer Ford
Gold Member
I wonder if the strength of the US dollar has a lot to do with the $299 price point.
I'm not seeing as good of deals outside the US. Also, Microsoft being an American company, the strength of the US dollar doesn't give MS the same pricing leverage compared to a Japanese company.
I'm not seeing as good of deals outside the US. Also, Microsoft being an American company, the strength of the US dollar doesn't give MS the same pricing leverage compared to a Japanese company.
My surprise wasn't directed at you, but rather at MS's marketing strategy.
I suppose there simply isn't much they can do to reverse the PS4's momentum this month now that Sony's marketing department gives a shit, versus holiday 2014.
serversurfer
Member
heh Don't feel too badly about it. It took me a couple of days to realize this was merely their second-best week for revenue in the US, rather than their second-best week overall. There's a reason they pay Larry the big bucks.
Problem is, the 50% thing is just a rule of thumb, as evidenced by the nearly 60% share back in 2012. Last year, Bone had pretty good deals all month, while PS4 didn't discount until BF. So maybe Bone sold strongly in the beginning of the month, and not so strong at the end, giving them a 40% BF share last year.
We have no idea. What we do know is this was their #2 BFW in the US in terms of revenue, and Bone sold 22% more than it did last BF, and that the increased revenue from the Bone sales along with increased revenue from XBS and Gold was given as one of the primary factors for the near-record-setting revenue for the region this year.
As I told you before, the scope of the contributing factors doesn't change the scope of the examined result. The result was they had their second-best week in the US in terms of revenue. Yes, it's very strange that he would discuss worldwide increases in revenue if he was just looking at US revenue in the end, but that doesn't change the fact that he's talking about US revenues for the brand physical and digital revenues combined when he says it was their second-biggest week.
So why would he talk about how worldwide numbers affected their US results? Probably, it just looked better than the US results on their own did. Two-thirds of the Bone installed base is in the US. Additionally, not-US hasn't been very quick about substituting for digital. So, it would make sense that a vast majority of their digital sales come from the US, and a fairly tiny amount from Europe. So if US digital sales were up 20% and EU digital were down 20%, that could easily make for a 57% increase in overall digital sales. So if you wanna talk about how much your digital sales increased, do you point out the 20% increase in the US, or the 57% worldwide increase it produced?
Regardless, you don't combine revenue, revenue, and units to measure units. You combine revenue, revenue, and revenue to measure revenue. It's a single sentence, describing three factors, that contributed to a single result. You've been bamboozled.
Unfortunately, that's not how math works either.
Welfare
Member
Why would we assume that in a month that has the biggest deals of the year at the end of the month, the Xbox One would go against the trend and do worse at the end of the month than at the beginning?
True, it did have a price cut at the beginning, but if it did have an impact on how many people bought one on Black Friday, which doesn't make too much sense seeing as people who would be buying an Xbox One because of a price would've waited an extra 3 weeks because of Black Friday, I don't see it having such a huge effect that we are going from ~50-60% of sales happening in Black Friday week to ~40% in 2014. That is too big of a leap imo.
A MOMENT... Second bigger Black Friday in the XBOX history, could mean XB1 + 360?
I don't know, just asking, if they said just "XBOX", maybe XB1+360 can be >750k, but XB1 alone < 750k.
...I may be wrong, just asking.
We know XB1 outsold PS4 last week of October, which sold 75,000 unit avg, and then has MORE THAN TRIPLED the sales in the first week of November. So, the firs week is for sure >200k, if has sold more than PS4 the last week of October and then more than tripled, probabily even >230k.
That's huge... if the others weeks were similar, i can see BF week in term of share not big like usually is.
Obliterator
Member
360 is entirely dead at this point
CosmicQueso
Member
There are religious texts that have been scrutinized less than this PR statement.
Mission accomplished by MS I guess. Announce something but do it in such a way that no one really knows what you're announcing. Genius.
Mission accomplished by MS I guess. Announce something but do it in such a way that no one really knows what you're announcing. Genius.
Obliterator
Member
I mean their PR Team really is damn good at what they do.
slavesnyder
Member
No wonder some people think cBoat was working there.
serversurfer
Member
240+240+240+480 ?
That would be possible if he didn't begin the sentence with revenue and more revenue. You can't switch to units in the middle; he's always talking about revenue. He confuses you by saying that one source of increased revenue was increased unit sales of Bone in the US. But the bigness of the week is still being measured in revenue, and includes both physical and digital revenues.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
All this talk of Sony being complacent was for the birds. Clearly they are not content to let Xbox dominate the holiday season again...or even win period.
slavesnyder
Member
I think last year they did well not to even enter into the rat race MS started for BF. They had built up a nice lead and were in no need to slash prices and devaluate their console just for the sake of sales.
The narrative that Sony was cought off guard or were lazy last year is just brainless.
MS had great sales last november with zero profit (I guess). And after that they failed to get their price back up.
This year Sony does the same apparently, going hard on price, but after one year of growing market share plus profit.
Making a 50$ cut first (as welcome gift for the Master chief) was nasty, especially as this left room for another 50$ cut for BF.
And after BF they keep the price low until christmas. And I would say: why not?
Now they fully profit from Star wars, christmas shoppers while having the console apparently still profitable.
And with VR coming, it will be important for them to have a nice install base and a pricepoint low enough so they could sell VR-console bundles well below 600$.
I hope for 450 - 500.
50% in BF last year is a reasonable estimation considering sales from the past. Could be less or more, but we are all speculating at this point.
Personally I feel more comfortable with 50% than with your 40%.
This should help a bit, i think.
USA Black Friday sales
[2005] 360 = 326.000 ( 100% of Nov sales) <----- launch month
[2006] WII = 476,000 ( 100% of Nov sales) <------ launch month
[2007] WII = 350,000 ( 36% of Nov sales)
[2008] WII = 800,000 ( 39% of Nov sales)
[2009] WII = 550,000 ( 44% of Nov sales)
[2009] DS = 900,000 ( 53% of Nov sales)
[2010] WII = 600,000 ( 47% of Nov sales)
[2011] 360 = 960,000 ( 56% of Nov sales)
[2011] WII = 520,000 ( 61% of Nov sales )
[2012] 360 = 750,000 ( 60% of Nov sales )
[2012] PS3 = 525,000 ( ?% of Nov sales )
[2012] WIU = 425,000 ( 100% of Nov sales) <----- launch month
[2012] WII = 300,000 ( 71% of Nov sales)
[2012] DS = 250,000 ( 68% of Nov sales)
[2012] 3DS = 230,000 ( 43% of Nov sales)
[2012] PSV = 160,000 ( 74% of Nov sales)
USA Black Friday sales
[2005] 360 = 326.000 ( 100% of Nov sales) <----- launch month
[2006] WII = 476,000 ( 100% of Nov sales) <------ launch month
[2007] WII = 350,000 ( 36% of Nov sales)
[2008] WII = 800,000 ( 39% of Nov sales)
[2009] WII = 550,000 ( 44% of Nov sales)
[2009] DS = 900,000 ( 53% of Nov sales)
[2010] WII = 600,000 ( 47% of Nov sales)
[2011] 360 = 960,000 ( 56% of Nov sales)
[2011] WII = 520,000 ( 61% of Nov sales )
[2012] 360 = 750,000 ( 60% of Nov sales )
[2012] PS3 = 525,000 ( ?% of Nov sales )
[2012] WIU = 425,000 ( 100% of Nov sales) <----- launch month
[2012] WII = 300,000 ( 71% of Nov sales)
[2012] DS = 250,000 ( 68% of Nov sales)
[2012] 3DS = 230,000 ( 43% of Nov sales)
[2012] PSV = 160,000 ( 74% of Nov sales)
DriftingSpirit
Member
SW bundle making moves on Amazon. Number 2. I wonder how much of the gap with the UC bundle it can close on the yearly chart.
It's funny to see the difference between people's expectations now, when compared to a few months back when UC4 was delayed and House said the 1st party titles were going to be thin for the year and they would have to rely on 3rd party marketing deals.
The doom and gloom was pretty big...
serversurfer
Member
The point is, the 40% figure only exists to demonstrate that your 50% figure "proves" nothing. When people say about half of your November sales come on BF, that doesn't mean you can use a 50/50 split to prove how much something sold. As Tolu's numbers below show, it's never 50% anyway. It's typically in the 40%-60% range. The fraction of your sales that come on BF will depend largely on how well you were selling in the previous three weeks, and according to Microsoft's own PR, they entered November selling gangbusters as Tolu explained above so it would be expected that they'd be on the low end for BF share that year.
Regardless, again, the real point here is that ALL OF YOUR MENTAL GYMNASTICS DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT THE WEEK WAS BEING MEASURED IN TERMS OF REVENUE. It's really just that simple. They almost set a record for Black Friday revenue in the US. Well, we don't even know that much. They just broke their old #2 record; they could still be well short of the #1 BFW. They sold nearly 1M 360s during BFW back in 2011. That was probably their record week for revenue, I'd guess.
Let's try it like this. Which of these makes sense?
- revenue + revenue + units * ASP = revenue
- revenue + revenue + units = units
Out of curiosity, where'd you get all of those numbers?
Chobel
Member
Ummm... You're untitled to have your own interpretation of MS PR, but that doesn't make your interpretation a fact.
serversurfer
Member
Sorry, but you don't get to make up your own meaning and award validity to it by declaring it to be "your interpretation." The sentence says what it says; three sources of revenue increased, resulting in top-two revenue totals for the US.
MS is a giant multinational with a pretty interconnected set of companies based out of the US in order to avoid paying taxes, US operations are financially run through Puerto Rico for instance, and EU is through the famous tax haven: Republic of Ireland/Bermuda.
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-microsoft-avoids-taxes-loopholes-irs-2013-1
There is no real "competitive" disadvantage to being a US company as concerns tax or currency issues, especially when your physical products are manufactured in 3rd world Asia/South America.
Back then people also said that Sony would have kept the 399$ price this holiday season and 299$ was craziness
Yep it's the best thing to do.
Btw the fact that they didn't claim victory either for BF or full month is all we need to know for this thread.
Last year they claimed victory for BF in the UK and we found out later that they won by a 1000 consoles difference
Edit: Actually it was less than a 1k difference:
Hardware
Week 48, 2014
Xbox One - 108,678
PlayStation 4 - 108,087
Chobel
Member
Except there are more than one interpretation of that PR.
Yours : (A, B and C) ----> D
Theirs: (A) and (B) and (C--->D), in other words A and B has nothing to do with C or D.
You can find those numbers in the predictions thread of 3 years ago.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=501284
spatenfloot
Member
The only numbers will be MAUs.
Yes, forgive me, Lord MAU will be displeased that I forgot the importance of MAU's to the industry.
You've clearly gone through the MAU of Madness
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1150578
It's all in this thread. Just to summarize, Microsoft released a statement claiming that this BF was the second biggest BF in XBox history. Now some in this thread are arguing if it is referring to units sold or revenue.
serversurfer
Member
Except their interpretation isn't valid, because that's not how English works. You don't get to alter the groupings of a sentence written in English any more than you do a sentence written in math, and for the same reason; it changes the meaning. That's part of the reason I converted the word problem to algebraic form in the first place. Not just to illustrate what was being said more clearly, but also to reduce the temptation to just rearrange it willy nilly until it matches your strong belief. English has rules, and the sentence appears to follow them correctly.
Let's start with something simple.
Code:
This caused that.That's pretty straightforward, yes? We all understand what that means? Let's try something a little more complicated.
Code:
{list of things} caused that.That's still fairly readable though. Whatever "that" was, it had more than one cause. But there are rules for creating lists as well. If the list only has two items, it's pretty simple.
Code:
A and BIf the list contains three or more items, then you list them as follows.
Code:
A, B, and C
A, B, C, and D
[…]As you can see, MS followed the proper format for describing a list. They even got the comma after the penultimate item in the list, which most people miss. You may have noticed there's an "extra" comma in the sentence. That's because they threw an extra wrinkle in to the original statement, restating it as follows, without changing the meaning.
Code:
This happened, causing that.From there, it's a short leap to this.
Code:
{list of things} happened, causing that.And that's precisely the format of the sentence. There's no wiggle room for changing (A+B+C)->D; to A; B; C->D; The commas join the clauses in to a single statement. You're looking for periods, but there's just the one at the end.
Now, typically when you have a list of causes like that, you list them in order of influence, but that's not strictly required. Also, whether the list is meant to be comprehensive typically needs to be inferred. If you want to debate ambiguity in the statement, this is where you should look. Was the increase in Store revenue greater than the increase in hardware revenue? It's implied by the wording, but not stated explicitly, so one could argue that is left unclear by the text.
However, what remains perfectly clear is that this is a discussion of revenue and its drivers.
Neato. Thanks. <3
Got it. The parser picks up quoted predictions, anyways, so I have to go through and manually exclude them after the parser run. Will just manually reassign these to BlackBuzzard's name instead of excluding them, then. Thanks!
3rdamention
Member
If MS had a planned out deal for this week, at least, it would have been in the sales ads for this week...This weeks ads were printed weeks ago...So here we are, and in this week's sales ads, you have Target advertising a $349 XB1 vs a $299 SW Bundle...And at Best Buy, a $399 Kinect Bundle vs a $299 SW Bundle...
But, maybe MS has a big deal for next week, or they have something for some time this week. For next week, we wait and see..For this week, they will have to rely on Major Nelson, social media, online listings, and signs placed in the gaming section of your local stores...which all could still be effective to get the word out...
Thank you. Was looking for it and couldn't find it. Much appreciated.
Great! Cheers Donny. I'll pass the word on to him.
They better announce something quick because both bundles for PS4 are about to wreck shop for two weeks on amazon at least.
And those ads for BB and Target...yea if anyone wants a console the decision is easy for them.
Sony sold less than last year in October when everyone thought that with US $ 50 price cut it will do better .. and now again people are just not seeing the actual known trends (i am talking about the US market only).
Primethius
Banned
Come on noobie. We're on to you now.
Plus, ya can't quote something about WW shipments and try to refute it by looking at the US market only (and even then, extrapolating a trend from one month).
But we're still on to you.
Come on man. I've done this song and dance with you before. This has literally been explained to you ad naseum for pages. The lower sales in October are most likely explained the release of their newest most attractive bundles in November. Nor does a single YoY drop indicate a "trend" especially when the sales are actually up YTD. Every single piece of information we have points to Sony selling gangbusters in November. Just stop it with the FUD.
Calm waterfall
Banned
Hourly chart:
PS4 SW bundle in first place
PS4 UC bundle in forth place
X1 or WiiU are not in the top 20.
http://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-video-games/zgbs/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_tab_t_bs#1
PS4 SW bundle in first place
PS4 UC bundle in forth place
X1 or WiiU are not in the top 20.
http://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-video-games/zgbs/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_tab_t_bs#1
Dash_Riprock
Member
I'd wait for daily, weekly charts before doom and gloooming. Still, MS better release a good counter and soon.
slavesnyder
Member
What would a good counter look like?
Price parity seems like damage control. At same content for same price, PS4 seems the higher value.
As Sony also has 1 game bundled at 299 they have to top this I guess.
So, 2 games added for 299 or 1 game plus extra controller, free subscription or 2nd controller.
Think MS wants to make money this year...
slavesnyder
Member
Aha. So... no counter? Waht do you think?