aspiegamer
Member
There'll never be any way to officially mark this as a statistic, but I'm starting to think that increasing digital sales are creating a growing market of "slowburn console sales". There is legitimate convenience in the All Digital Future for -some- people and they shouldn't be ignored. In previous generations you could more easily write this off as more standard month-to-month stuff with other metrics measurable in the open.
What makes things different this time is inability to track any specific software from selling more units over time if this market progressively leans more digital in sales. Hell, hidden digital data is what gives us hope for more niche games. We can only estimate based on tie ratio, but that -is- data that the hardware makers would have. Of course, NPD could solve much of the mystery if they could wrangle the corporations into releasing their digital data for NA. Boo.
In other words, it turns other games into long-runners without ever being seen in NPD and the effect slowballs over time despite physical software revenue dropping Y/O/Y and more first-party games looking like they're in "bomba" territory. This probably adds a bump of a few hundred k globally every month that are essentially sold in the shadows and do not contribute to any public data other than +1 NPD console sale. Or, even harder to track would be the fact that these sorts of players could be more likely to buy used hardware.
This is probably the largest current sales expansion area and it's a shame we know so little of it. Good grief I have no idea why I find sales numbers so interesting. I'd give a kidney for access to the big reports. Twisted hobby.
What makes things different this time is inability to track any specific software from selling more units over time if this market progressively leans more digital in sales. Hell, hidden digital data is what gives us hope for more niche games. We can only estimate based on tie ratio, but that -is- data that the hardware makers would have. Of course, NPD could solve much of the mystery if they could wrangle the corporations into releasing their digital data for NA. Boo.
In other words, it turns other games into long-runners without ever being seen in NPD and the effect slowballs over time despite physical software revenue dropping Y/O/Y and more first-party games looking like they're in "bomba" territory. This probably adds a bump of a few hundred k globally every month that are essentially sold in the shadows and do not contribute to any public data other than +1 NPD console sale. Or, even harder to track would be the fact that these sorts of players could be more likely to buy used hardware.
This is probably the largest current sales expansion area and it's a shame we know so little of it. Good grief I have no idea why I find sales numbers so interesting. I'd give a kidney for access to the big reports. Twisted hobby.
