Top-Selling Software for May
On Friday the NPD Group released its
list of the top 20 best-selling games for May 2010, and since that
time some additional information has become available.
According to Wedbush's Pachter, 13
titles sold over 100,000 units during the month of May, up from 10
such titles a year ago but down from 14 titles in April 2010.
Further details about notable titles
that didn't make the chart have been released to media by the NPD
Group and commented upon by analysts:
-
The racing title Blur,
created by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision Blizzard,
sold
only 31,000 units during the May period measured by the NPD
Group.
This includes only five days of sales, only for the Xbox 360
and PlayStation 3, but the figure still falls well short of
expectations. Last year Activision
had said that it expected Blur to do “for racing what
Call of Duty did for shooters”
-
Split/Second, a separate
racing title created by Black Rock Studio and published by Disney
Interactive Software, sold somewhat better with a
combined 86,000 units in 12 days for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
-
Remedy's Alan Wake, an Xbox
360 exclusive published by Microsoft Game Studios, sold 145,000
units during the May period.
-
UbiSoft's Prince of Persia: The
Forgotten Sands, sold fewer than 100,000 units across five
platforms in 12 days, what Wedbush's Pachter termed a “difficult
debut”.
Notable titles from last month's chart
that failed to return in May include UbiSoft's Splinter Cell:
Conviction (#1 in April) and Battlefield: Bad Company 2
(previously at #7 and #15).
An elaborated chart can be found below:
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It is interesting to see that less pressure is being put on the holiday release cycle- some publishers now realising putting a game next to a guaranteed blockbuster is probably not good for its sales. Its a step in the right direction.
Many publishers say that the Wii market is simply too hard to break into and don't consider Nintendo platforms in their planning as a matter of course - if that's the case then why bother continuing to look back over their shoulders at Nintendo's rises and 'falls'? If we've reached the point where Nintendo's business only affects Nintendo, then in real terms the only data we should be concerned with is their financial report; this year that one's not so great either - and their shares took a tumble as a result, but a massive profit is a massive profit, and more than infinitely more useful than a massive loss.
As for the poor sales of Alan Wake, I think that was a simple mistake of Microsoft choosing the wrong release date. For some reason they decided to release the game on May 18th and go head to head with Red Dead Redemption. Not many people are willing to buy two full price titles on the same day, because of this I feel that many Alan Wake purchases were then deferred to later. Where some sales that would have traditionally come from new games sales shifted to used game sales. IMHO, if Microsoft had just moved the game forward one or two weeks, something they could have done, I already had a retail copy. Then the game would have gone head to head with Iron man 2, Lost Planet 2 or Skate 3. Where it would have been the bigger title and probably faired much better.
"I'm still not understanding this philosophy of Usain Bolt needing to run faster. After he sets a world record if he doesn't keep running at that speed or faster. "
Wrong analogy.
Nintendo is no Usian Bolt.
The iPone is vastly outselling both the Wii and the DS every month.
And of course Windows is by far the biggest gaming platform on the planet, with vastly more casual games played on the Windows PC by more people than on any other platform.
In addition, te stock market doesnt care about wat sales you ad last year. If your sales are down this year, you get punished for it.
"It's his fault if the overall attendance of the track and field event drops."
Wii hardware and software revenues are down this year. That just happens to be fact.
Equally, PS3 sales and revenues are up. The drop in NPD game sales this year are down because of the Wii.
But looking at it from a multi-decade perspective, it's Sony who have failed. Them and MS have created consoles that launched at higher than usual prices, and enabled (and, thanks to consumer demand, therefore required) more money to be spent creating games, but they're failed to expand the market to the point where things are equally as profitable.
Surely the fact that the PS3 and 360, 4 and 5 years (respectively) after launch, are still retailing for $300US, otherwise known as "that price the PS2, PS1 and Xbox cost at launch", is largely to blame for their current sales. The sooner they can get down to a more mass-market price, like $150, the better. But instead they seem to think they've found the right price, choosing to continually increase hard drive size and now bring out expensive new peripherals, rather than try to get the entry price down. It's like neither of them has even looked at sales charts of previous consoles over time.
While I can't blame NPD as the digital stats aren't as readily available yet, these reports are painting a grossly incomplete pictures of the current state of the game industry. This creates unjustified fear in an industry that is evolving and generating more revenue today than ever before, which dries up investor and shareholder confidence, meaning less and less money will be put into the industry.
The industry is evolving, the profit channels are expanding and NDP's reports need to evolve with it before they are doing more harm than good.