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NPD Sales Results for May 2016

Ryng_tolu

Banned
What did Halo 5 do including bundles in the first month of release? I recall a 860k figure or something going around but not sure if that included bundles or not.

Including bundle:

Halo 5 - 935,000 (1 week)
Uncharted 4 - 879,000 (3 weeks)

Numbers from NPD George and Aquamarine.
 
I had started to suspect that UC4 wasn't as popular in the U.S relative to the rest of the world and that's what I based my prediction on.

Too bad I had made a bet with a friend that UC4 > Halo 5 back when it had the March release date and forgot to change it.

I loose. :(
 

RexNovis

Banned
I had started to suspect that UC4 wasn't as popular in the U.S relative to the rest of the world and that's what I based my prediction on.

Too bad I had made a bet with a friend that UC4 > Halo 5 back when it had the March release date and forgot to change it.

I loose. :(

I'm tempted to go back and quote all the posts informing me that UC4 would sell more than 1 million copies after I made my original post questioning that following the 2.7 million announcement and then again after my bold predictions. I stand by what I said : with 2.7 million being digital and retail along with the high ROTW split for the IP and the slow sales month 1 million in NPD just didn't seem likely.

That's really close but it's 1 week compared to 3 weeks still it's safe to say Uncharted will outsell Halo 5 WW.

There's a lot more context to consider with these numbers than just the number of weeks. Please see my post above summarizing all the relevant info.
 

DieH@rd

Banned
Great sales for PS4 HW, it has leading charge in software sales. U4 did great this far from holiday season, and Doom deserves even larger success.
 
I'm tempted to go back and quote all the posts informing me that UC4 would sell more than 1 million copies after I made my original post questioning that following the 2.7 million announcement and then again after my bold predictions. I stand by what I said : with 2.7 million being digital and retail along with the high ROTW split for the IP and the slow sales month 1 million in NPD just didn't seem likely.

That's why I predicted 850k. Along with tidbits in the PR that also pointed towards that.

Still a pretty good number (especially with digital) but it just ain't no GOW stateside.
 

jett

D-Member
I thought UC4 would sell more based on Sony's massive marketing campaign for the thing. I guess it was obvious when they announced they had shipped less units than UC3.

Anyway, very happy for Doom. Between Murica, Europe and PC it's probably nearing 2 million units.
 

Loris146

Member
I thought UC4 would sell more based on Sony's massive marketing campaign for the thing. I guess it was obvious when they announced they had shipped less units than UC3.

Anyway, very happy for Doom. Between Murica, Europe and PC it's probably nearing 2 million units.

They didn't. UC3 numbers were shipped and we only got sold through figures for U4. We don't know U4 shipped numbers.
 
I thought UC4 would sell more based on Sony's massive marketing campaign for the thing. I guess it was obvious when they announced they had shipped less units than UC3.

Anyway, very happy for Doom. Between Murica, Europe and PC it's probably nearing 2 million units.

They never announced they shipped less. They announced a sell-through number (plus digital) for UC4 and a shipped number for UC3.

UC3 was also holidays, which explains the large shipped number.
 

Chris1

Member
How come Aqua doesn't post here any more? I thought she stopped posting because she lost access to NPD or something like that?
 

RexNovis

Banned
That's why I predicted 850k. Along with tidbits in the PR that also pointed towards that.

Still a pretty good number (especially with digital) but it just ain't no GOW stateside.

Still the best debut for the IP in US. So yea it's a good figure but I'm not sold like so many others on the idea that UC4 will have good legs. Not sure it will end up being the highest selling entry when all is said and done.
 

Gurish

Member
Still the best debut for the IP in US. So yea it's a good figure but I'm not sold like so many others on the idea that UC4 will have good legs. Not sure it will end up being the highest selling entry when all is said and done.

It sold better than U3, so I think it will.

The word of mouth is also very good.
 
Still the best debut for the IP in US. So yea it's a good figure but I'm not sold like so many others on the idea that UC4 will have good legs. Not sure it will end up being the highest selling entry when all is said and done.

It's hard to say. It's following pretty typical, decent drops in the UK. I suppose it'll really come down to how it performs in the ROTW and how much boost the DLC gives, if any.

I suppose a benefit of the game being not as US centric is that it's likely to face less competition in the smaller markets, but thats me largely speculating.

Side note: Originally I thought UC4 would do about a million given the increases of past UC games. With digital, I'm glad I wasn't too far off.
 
Hi Aqua, wherever you are... Thank you

Crab... Do you have a specific point you're trying to make? I can't understand from the posts what it is you're trying to get across. Help me out?

Sure, lemme try it this way...if we want to evaluate how big of a boost a platform enjoyed from a set of circumstances behind it, the question to be addressed is the following:

'How many new users bought a PS4 beyond the norm due to conditions XYZ being present?'

To address this question you'd need to have a baseline estimate for comparison, which we do (May 2015). Not all data nor all manipulations of data are relevant for addressing the posed question. I'd imagine everyone agrees with me up to this point and assume we are on the same page.

An estimate of how many new users bought PS4 specifically due to those conditions XYZ should focus on the difference between the control (May 2015) and the experimental (May 2016) data.

Example:
If console A sold 1.00k in one May 2015 and then 1.38k in May 2016, the boost would be 0.38k, (which represents a 38% increase compared to the baseline). Is that a massive, particularly significant boost? I'd contend no, it isn't. Well beyond the margin of error for sure, so I'd agree there is clearly a boost in this example, but simply have *some* boost doesn't automatically make said boost impressive.

Conclusion: Percentages aren't the best measures of how significant a boost in hardware sales is. They obscure the much more relevant data point (difference between result and baseline).


Opinions can vary on what constitutes a 'big/medium/small' boost. My opinion is that I would have expected a much larger difference than just 50k given the 3 or 4 very major conditions promoting PS4 sales in May.

If someone wants to argue that the relevant metric for quantifying a boost is not difference in sales compared to baseline but instead is an entirely multiplicative factor, that's fine and would make the pure % difference meaningful if compelling, but I have yet to see any such argument.
 

64bitbros

Member
Software is up, thanks to Aquamarine on Gamrconnect / VG Chartz.

Uncharted 4: 879K (With bundle) [Bundle is less than 70K]
DOOM: 521K
OverWatch: 361K (on console, and other 50k-100k on PC)
Battleborn: over 125K, under 175K

Why is Aquamarine on that forum and not Neogaf? Didn't she have to give up Neogaf because of work? Then why sales data on a different site? Did i miss anything?
 

Fady K

Member
UC4 released in what is historically the single slowest month of the entire year and still managed to get within spitting distance of Halo 5 which released in October which is among the higher sales months of the year. This is not an apples to apples comparison.

There's also the matter of Uncjarted being a very successful IP WW as opposed to Halo's very heavy US and UK split. When US accounts for something around 30% of one and something around 60% of the other it's kind of obtuse to proclaim the later selling marginally more in that region on a much busier sales month as buzz worthy.

Even still there's also each IPs historical sales per entry to consider. Uncharted 4 marks the best debut for that IP in the US whereas Halo 5 marks the series lowest debut with a drop of more than 40% from the closed numbered entry. In the end, given all of the relevant context, it's a rather Pyrrhic victory.

I was expecting UC4 could sell more in the US but this post really gives a great perspective.
 
I think the Doom number is pretty great. Probably a result of good legs.

As for the Overwatch number, I'm not surprised. The vast amount of betas were on PC. The game is balanced around PC. All the hype seemed to be around the PC version.

Still decent numbers but the title isn't remotely a big factor on consoles. That's actually one of the reasons I predicted Doom > OW this month. I didnt think OW was big enough to cut into Doom legs.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Sure, lemme try it this way...if we want to evaluate how big of a boost a platform enjoyed from a set of circumstances behind it, the question to be addressed is the following:

'How many new users bought a PS4 beyond the norm due to conditions XYZ being present?'

To address this question you'd need to have a baseline estimate for comparison, which we do (May 2015). Not all data nor all manipulations of data are relevant for addressing the posed question. I'd imagine everyone agrees with me up to this point and assume we are on the same page.

An estimate of how many new users bought PS4 specifically due to those conditions XYZ should focus on the difference between the control (May 2015) and the experimental (May 2016) data.

Example:
If console A sold 1.00k in one May 2015 and then 1.38k in May 2016, the boost would be 0.38k, (which represents a 38% increase compared to the baseline). Is that a massive, particularly significant boost? I'd contend no, it isn't. Well beyond the margin of error for sure, so I'd agree there is clearly a boost in this example, but simply have *some* boost doesn't automatically make said boost impressive.

Conclusion: Percentages aren't the best measures of how significant a boost in hardware sales is. They obscure the much more relevant data point (difference between result and baseline).


Opinions can vary on what constitutes a 'big/medium/small' boost. My opinion is that I would have expected a much larger difference than just 50k given the 3 or 4 very major conditions promoting PS4 sales in May.

If someone wants to argue that the relevant metric for quantifying a boost is not difference in sales compared to baseline but instead is an entirely multiplicative factor, that's fine and would make the pure % difference meaningful if compelling, but I have yet to see any such argument.

The issue is you are completely ignoring the context of the month in which these sales occured. It is literally the slowest month of the year. So yes 50k units a very significant margin during a month where very few consoles are able to break 200k units sold. I'll repeat again this May makes the first time a console has sold over 200k units in May since the 360 in 2011 following the release of the Kinect which resulted in a very noticeable sales boost.

So yes percentages give a much more accurate depiction of scale in sales differentials than units because percentage differences account for the context of historical performance of said month YoY and MoM whereas units do not.

You are just ignoring every other factor in your comparison, fixating on a single isolated value and assigning meaning to it that it doesn't actually have as has been explained to you multiple times at this point.
 

down 2 orth

Member
Software is up, thanks to Aquamarine on Gamrconnect / VG Chartz.

Uncharted 4: 879K (With bundle) [Bundle is less than 70K]
DOOM: 521K
OverWatch: 361K (on console, and other 50k-100k on PC)
Battleborn: over 125K, under 175K

Unless Overwatch has some long sexy legs, I can't imagine Blizzard/Activision execs being too pleased with that. Seven million players sounds great and all, but then you have to take into account rentals, multiple accounts on a system, and reselling. Not sure if that will be enough to overcome Titan's development budget + marketing, but who knows.
 

Javin98

Banned
She asked to get permabanned, but then asked for get unbanned. Apparentely mods just ignored she...
Not only that, but they banned NDP Mulcair who was using Aqua's computer to surf NeoGAF. So, in spite, Aqua is now posting the numbers on Chartzz.

I should clarify that this is what Aqua said in the forums.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Unless Overwatch has some long sexy legs, I can't imagine Blizzard/Activision execs being too pleased with that. Seven million players sounds great and all, but then you have to take into account rentals, multiple accounts on a system, and reselling. Not sure if that will be enough to overcome Titan's development budget + marketing, but who knows.

The vast number of sales will be digital on the PC for OW. The NPD numbers come nowhere close to painting the whole picture with this particular game. Current estimates have it selling somewhere around 3 million copies on PC alone in a bit over a week when factoring in digital.
 

sflufan

Banned
Unless Overwatch has some long sexy legs, I can't imagine Blizzard/Activision execs being too pleased with that. Seven million players sounds great and all, but then you have to take into account rentals, multiple accounts on a system, and reselling. Not sure if that will be enough to overcome Titan's development budget + marketing, but who knows.

You've completely forgotten Overwatch's primary audience: PC players who bought and play the game via Battle.Net.

The retail console sales are just icing on the cake.
 
UC 4 number is rather good truth is i thought it would do over million with bundles .
But had a feeling it would not when i saw this month PSN top sellers .
 

Chris1

Member
Not only that, but they banned NDP Mulcair who was using Aqua's computer to surf NeoGAF. So, in spite, Aqua is now posting the numbers on Chartzz.

I should clarify that this is what Aqua said in the forums.
I was wondering why mulcair didn't post any more

Interesting. Thanks both
 

LordRaptor

Member
UC4 released in what is historically the single slowest month of the entire year and still managed to get within spitting distance of Halo 5 which released in October which is among the higher sales months of the year. This is not an apples to apples comparison.

I honestly don't think "platform defining" titles (your Halos, your Uncharteds, your Forzas, your Marios, your Zeldas and your Gran Turismos) particularly matter what month they are released in because a sizable portion of your platform userbase will buy blind day one regardless of any other factor.

I mean, I guess you wouldn't want to schedule directly against a GTA, but I don't think the sales differential is going to be that big.
 

Ricky_R

Member
I honestly don't think "platform defining" titles (your Halos, your Uncharteds, your Forzas, your Marios, your Zeldas and your Gran Turismos) particularly matter what month they are released in because a sizable portion of your platform userbase will buy blind day one regardless of any other factor.

I mean, I guess you wouldn't want to schedule directly against a GTA, but I don't think the sales differential is going to be that big.

So, would you say that ROTTR would've sold close to what it did if it had released in May?
 

Kill3r7

Member
Unless Overwatch has some long sexy legs, I can't imagine Blizzard/Activision execs being too pleased with that. Seven million players sounds great and all, but then you have to take into account rentals, multiple accounts on a system, and reselling. Not sure if that will be enough to overcome Titan's development budget + marketing, but who knows.

Did it not sell over 1 million copies in China alone? I think it did just fine. PC is undoubtedly king for this game.
 

RexNovis

Banned
I honestly don't think "platform defining" titles (your Halos, your Uncharteds, your Forzas, your Marios, your Zeldas and your Gran Turismos) particularly matter what month they are released in because a sizable portion of your platform userbase will buy blind day one regardless of any other factor.

I mean, I guess you wouldn't want to schedule directly against a GTA, but I don't think the sales differential is going to be that big.

Sure you could make that arguement and I could certainly see that to some degree but when we are talking about an extreme like the slowest sales month of the year it's difficult to dismiss that as a non contributing factor. To be clear in not claiming UC4 would've broken 1 million in November or anything but I do think it's reasonable to assume it would have sold additional units in a holiday month as opposed to the single slowest sales month of the year.
 

LordRaptor

Member
So, would you say that ROTTR would've sold close to what it did if it had released in May?

I don't consider ROTTR a 'platform defining title' tbh.

e:
Sure you could make that arguement and I could certainly see that to some degree but when we are talking about an extreme like the slowest sales month of the year it's difficult to dismiss that as a non contributing factor. To be clear in not claiming UC4 would've broken 1 million in November or anything but I do think it's reasonable to assume it would have sold some additional units in a holiday month as opposed to the single slowest sales month of the year.

I believe that sort of differential is via bundling and increased hardware sales rather than individual sales
 
PlayStation domination. 9/10 top sellers for one month is pretty fucking crazy for NPD.I Don't recall seeing that too often.

Lol at MS PR. They sure did drop those MAU's quickly like many said they would. XBL hours will probably be the new stat.

Nintendo.

.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Personally, I think UC4 would've done more in a month like February and March but not by much. Maybe about a 100k.

Agreed. Ultimately, there is a cap on how much any one of these games can sell in a month. The UC4 attach rate is pretty solid and the best of any game in the franchise.
 

shandy706

Member
Including bundle:

Halo 5 - 935,000 (1 week)
Uncharted 4 - 879,000 (3 weeks)

Numbers from NPD George and Aquamarine.

Halo 5 sold more in 1 week than Uncharted did in 3 weeks?!

Holy crap, I'd never imagine that. UC4 will have longer legs, but that blows my mind with the install base.

Unless I'm missing something.

Anyway, would we call the Overwatch numbers good? That doesn't seem like a lot...I've not really paid it much attention though, as I don't have any interest in the game.
 

Kathian

Banned
Personally, I think UC4 would've done more in a month like February and March but not by much. Maybe about a 100k.

Issue I think is it was marketed and sold as part of the series lore and a conclusion. Was marketed primarily at the series fans - so likely didn't grab those who haven't played the rest of the series. Halo went the same way (whilst interestingly deciding to alienate its core audience at the same time) so likely a good time to bring the franchise to a close.

Likely we'll see more Last of Us then mid franchise launch a new IP; if its successful close Last of Us and rinse/repeat.
 
Halo 5 sold more in 1 week than Uncharted did in 3 weeks?!

Holy crap, I'd never imagine that. UC4 will have longer legs, but that blows my mind with the install base.

Unless I'm missing something.

Anyway, would we call the Overwatch numbers good? That doesn't seem like a lot...I've not really paid it much attention though, as I don't have any interest in the game.

You're not missing anything with regards to the US market. Halo is a more US centric IP where as UC is more WW.
 

foxbeldin

Member
Halo 5 sold more in 1 week than Uncharted did in 3 weeks?!

Holy crap, I'd never imagine that. UC4 will have longer legs, but that blows my mind with the install base.

Unless I'm missing something.

Anyway, would we call the Overwatch numbers good? That doesn't seem like a lot...I've not really paid it much attention though, as I don't have any interest in the game.

You're missing the month it came out.
Also Halo used to be a monster in US.
 
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