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[Gamasutra's latest comprehensive NPD analysis looks at the U.S. console retail figures for September 2009, with spotlights on the music game genre, hardware price cuts, Wii, console DLC and more.]
After months of double-digit declines, the U.S. videogame industry
appears to have begun a turnaround in September 2009. The latest
American retail figures, released on Monday by the NPD Group, showed
that total videogame sales were up a modest 1% in September relative
to the same period a year earlier.
While analysts had expected revenues to be somewhat stronger, even a flat market is preferable to the declines of the last half-year.
Software was the key driver of revenue for the month, with revenue
up 5% from September 2008. Accessory sales were also up over the year
prior, but hardware revenue was down over 5% from a combination of
fewer hardware units sold and lower prices on hardware generally.
In the text below we'll explore many intriguing aspects of last
month's sales, including an in-depth look at the launch of Guitar
Hero 5 and The
Beatles: Rock Band. Further
along, we'll examine the impact of the hardware price cuts for each of
the three current generation consoles.
We'll also show some evidence
that Wii software sales are somewhat weaker in 2009 than they were in
2008, and compare with the latest software sales figures for the Xbox
360 and PlayStation 3. Finally, we'll finish with an estimate of how
map pack DLC revenues have increased the average sale price of the
PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Call of Duty: World
at War.
Round 3: Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band
The September 2009 showdown
between The Beatles: Rock Band
and Guitar Hero 5 is
perhaps the most direct competition between the two franchises the
industry has yet experienced. The Harmonix-developed Beatles
game launched on September 9th while the fifth major installment of the
Guitar Hero franchise
hit stores eight days earlier on the first of the month.
At the end of the NPD Group
reporting period for September (which ended on Saturday, October 3rd)
the final tally showed a decisive win for The Beatles: Rock
Band in both units of software
sold and dollars of revenue.
The Beatles moved a strong
595,000 software-only and instrument-bundled units across three
platforms. The Xbox 360 versions accounted for 43% of those units
while 35% and 22% were sold to Wii and PlayStation 3 owners,
respectively.
According to figures provided by
Mr. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities and Ms. Anita
Frazier of the NPD Group, the average price of a copy of The
Beatles during this period was
approximately $100. Total revenue for the title was around $59-$60
million or more than 9% of all software revenue for the month.
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"The emergence of the Xbox 360 as the definitive primary platform for these games is a notable development. "
Do you believe that will remain true? I expect that both games will sell better in future months on the Wii than on the 360, as was true in past years, and that despite a slightly better start on the 360, that the Wii will remain the best place for those games in retail (downloads I believe are going to the 360 hand over fist, but we don't have stats to prove that).
GH: Metallica selling better on the 360 (as well as Van Halen) I believe speaks more to the specific tastes of Wii and 360 owners than to the games as a whole moving to being more popular at retail on the 360 over the Wii. I was surprised to see your thinking here that the Wii is no longer the best platform for music games at retail. You are expecting then that the music sales in order of platform will look the same next month as September's numbers? I'm still thinking that RB: Beatles is going to do well through Christmas, and is more likely to sell to the Wii audience in those Christmas months (when the more 'casual' consumer is out at retail).
The other thing to note is that Nintendo has released Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus. Maybe you meant releases earilier in the year though. Still it is impressive that software sales are still so high without those big early releases from Nintendo.
Wii Fit Plus wouldn't be represented in these YTD totals.
"It is also notable that Nintendo has not had a truly big first-party software release on the Wii this year."
That line would mean that Wii Sports Resort was not a true big first-party release from Nintendo. I agree with Leon that the sentence from the article doesn't seem to make sense in that light. WSR is one of the top 5 selling games on the year so far. I'm not sure what it would need to do to be 'truly big.' Notably WiiFit Plus isn't mentioned in the article. I would expect it will be a top-selling game.
Between those two things, perhaps the tenor of the situation is misunderstood. With one truly big game out for the Wii, the slowdown in software sales is perhaps much more concerning than is stated in the article.
The flipside of course being, that with Nintendo putting their big dogs later in the year instead of sooner, the slowdown potentially could be explained away by moving the calendar.
The fact that the big games are later (instead of SBB-March, MK-April, WF-May it's WSR-July, WFP-October, NSMBW-November), and that those big games aren't mentioned in the article is rather curious. Actually the lack of those 'truly big' games being listed in the article had me wondering late at night about how or why they weren't mentioned, so I too was curious like Leon as to the reason.