XB1 3 Million Units Sold

[Malacite]

Xbox One has sold 3 million units worldwide | GamesIndustry International


3 million units sold in 2013, or the span of roughly 7 weeks. The Wii U is only around 4.2 and has been out for over a year.


Also the next Halo game has been confirmed for release this year. I imagine we'll hear a lot more about it at E3 ^_^

[Icemage]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

Seems plausible, though Microsoft probably needed to sell at least 1M in USAin December to make it to 3M. Their EU sales have left a lot to be desired. 364K in the UK, and probably about the same amount or less total in the rest of EU/PAL is my guess (MS is weak in every other EU/PAL territory aside from UK). They sold 909K in the US in November, and probably sold that much or more in December. Add in ~750K from EU/PAL, plus Canada probably adding in another 250K, plus Mexico and Brazil's small addition and you can get to 3M, barely.

Wii U is probably closer to 5M. It was at 3.91M worldwide as of the end of October. 220K in USA in November, and probably somewhere around there or better in December. plus a few strong 80-100K weeks in late December from Japan. Wii U is still dead as a doornail in Europe, though.

PS4 (according to Sony) is at 4.2M as of Dec. 30, so Microsoft is already starting off at a disadvantage, particularly on the software sales side. Sony claims 9.7M units of PS4 software already sold (digital + retail, not counting freebies from PS+ or F2P games).


Icemage

[cidbahamut]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

Sounds like bad news on all fronts.

Sony's set to dominate the market.
Microsoft garnered 3 million more sales than it has any right to and will get to continue its efforts to destroy my hobby.
Nintendo continues to derp around not knowing what's up and failing to live up to my expectations.
The PC market continues to see the systematic destruction of ownership and physical media.

Everyone loses.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

PS4 (according to Sony) is at 4.2M as of Dec. 30, so Microsoft is already starting off at a disadvantage, particularly on the software sales side. Sony claims 9.7M units of PS4 software already sold (digital + retail, not counting freebies from PS+ or F2P games).

The first holiday season tends to be supply constrained; though Sony has the advantage now, the coming year's sales may ultimately decide who shall dominate. Microsoft desperately wants to be the center of our living rooms, and I'm curious at what it is willing to do to win the consumers' buy in.

To mix things up, Sony may already be positioning for a post-console world; its PlayStation Now (née Gaikai) game streaming service will be available on its Bravia line of TVs. I can't believe MS didn't think on the possibility of diminished console presence as well, but not sure how it would respond.

The next year should be quite an entertainment for the industry watchers, especially if the fever for the new consoles cools before their first birthday. heh.

[Malacite]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

The real battle's going to be in Spring when the big hits start dropping, like inFamous Second Son. Halo 5 will likely launch in late October as it usually does, or very early November.

Personally, I think Sony will continue to wreck face until around holiday season 2014 when MS will likely either do a price drop, or cave and offer a cheaper XB1 that doesn't come with Kinect (though they may not do that given how integral it is; the system is hardwired to run it as part of it's 3-OS aparatus)


I honestly don't see Titan Fall being the big hit everyone thinks it'll be - Modern Warfare 2 didn't exactly leave the best lasting impression and EA is now battling TWO investor lawsuits with regards to BF4. Destiny is in all likelihood *the* game to watch for this year. For me it's a tie between Destiny and X; Xenoblade Chronicles was just so damned good, if Nintendo markets X properly it could really pull in some of the Sony crowd. I'm not putting too much stock in Smash Bros even though it looks great because they made the (IMO) idiotic decision to make a 3DS port as well, rather than keep it a Wii U exclusive in order to push more sales. They'll sell more copies overall this way, but they need to get a much larger install base to get back that crucial 3rd party support and they're not helping themselves at all in that department.


I doubt Uncharted 4 will be out this year but if it is, then holy shit.


EDIT: Also, you guys see the new "Definitive Edition" of Tomb Raider? If Sony did something like that for Last of Us that'd be sweet.

[Firewind]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

The main thing that Microsoft and Nintendo have to remember is that Sony has really gunned for the Core Gamer. One of the main risks the XB1 and Wii U have is that while gunning for the casual market exclusively is all well and good, the attach rate is dreadful. The Wii sold like a monster sure but how many Wii owners own more than the Wii Sports that came with it be default? Just look at the sales figures of Wii Sports compared to other Wii Games and how rapidly the sales drop off once you filter out the usual bundled games of Mario Kart, Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

[Malacite]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

Yep, Wii hardware sold like gangbusters, but the attach rates were piss poor.

Apparently PS4 has a staggering 75%+ attachment rate, which is a very good sign for them given Sony's ever dismal financial state. XB1 also has a very high rate.

[Etra]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

And yet, I still give no fucks.

[Carter]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

And yet, I still give no fucks.

This.

[Aeni]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

PS4 (according to Sony) is at 4.2M as of Dec. 30, so Microsoft is already starting off at a disadvantage, particularly on the software sales side. Sony claims 9.7M units of PS4 software already sold (digital + retail, not counting freebies from PS+ or F2P games).

Icemage

Don't forget developer's position on this. My wife's friend, an ex-EA programmer who's now a free-lanced contractor (and just finished shipping out a title recently), told me over New Year's dinner that many of the indie and smaller companies are very angry with Microsoft in how they were treated and are either in the midst or are considering not supporting the XB1 at all. Most have taken a liking to PSN and almost all have fully embraced or are about to the Steam platform. This won't bode well down the road for Microsoft as they will start to see the same "weak library woes" that Nintendo already face with the Wii U.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

Feelings don't matter much; the devs will eventually end up where moneys is to be made.

If not, then they'd get out of the business of writing games--at the end of the day, if you're not getting enough to eat, you'll be looking for other work, and the video game industry is notorious for low wages to begin with.

At most, the devs' feelings affect how fast the games get cranked out; PS3 was notoriously hard to program, and the devs hated it. Yet, look at the PS3 library now--consumers/gamers bought a large enough number of PS3, so it made good business sense to write games for it.

Microsoft don't have to make the devs happy to stay in the game--it just have to make the xBox One's software market profitable.

[Icemage]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

Feelings don't matter much; the devs will eventually end up where moneys is to be made.

Not quite in every case, but in general you're right.

At most, the devs' feelings affect how fast the games get cranked out; PS3 was notoriously hard to program, and the devs hated it. Yet, look at the PS3 library now--consumers/gamers bought a large enough number of PS3, so it made good business sense to write games for it.

Actually, the problem with PS3 originally was programming complexity and install base. The high launch price kept the install base relatively low, and the programming complexity at launch was hard because the development tools - especially things like Octopiler which was designed for the PS3's Cell - were still very rough and inefficient.

The reason PS3 made a huge comeback, especially on the digital front, was Sony realizing that embracing smaller developers would be a good business move AND investing a ton of time and money into improving the toolchain (they have an entire dev team called ICE Team that does exactly this - that's the team Mark Cerny, the lead architect for PS4, came from).

Microsoft don't have to make the devs happy to stay in the game--it just have to make the xBox One's software market profitable.

Microsoft's problem right now is that their name is still mud in the indie community. Still a lot of horror stories out there from indies who have gotten burned by working with Microsoft (Lorne Lanning / Oddworld, Brian Provinciano / Retro City Rampage, Jonathan Blow / Braid, etc.) and none of the products have arrived from Microsoft's new ID@XBOX indie initiative yet for people to say whether the experience is tangibly improved. As things stand, even ID@XBOX has at least one known problem: Microsoft is demanding release day parity for games released under the program, and there is no other way to self-publish on the Xbox platform. So if a developer wants to self-publish their game on Xbox One, they MUST complete the Xbox One version at the same time or before all other platforms; if they finish other version(s) first, they have to hold them until they're ready on Xbox One. If they don't Microsoft denies them the opportunity to self-publish and they need to find a major publisher to help them instead.

That's what happened to Assault Android Cactus (which is coming to PS4, PC, and Wii U but NOT Xbox One because of this clause), and almost happened to Nuclear Throne (escaped being cancelled on Xbox One only because the developers found out about a limited loophole at the last minute and begged Sony for a 1 month exclusivity contract so they could armwrestle Microsoft into agreeing to a later release).


Icemage

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

For all the hoopla about the indies, how much of the console market is that, revenue wise? Independent developers are the darlings of the critics, but I always wondered if they get much love from the consumers' wallets.

If the combined indies market on PS3/Vita is dwarfed by, say, PSN Plus's subscription revenue, I'm not sure if I should care much about the indies when looking at the console gaming industry.

* * *

How should 'indies' be defined?

PopCap Games is a division of EA, so it shouldn't be considered one, even if its game tend to be small and sometimes quirky. Right? What about WayFoward Technologies? It's not owned by a large dev or publisher, but most of its business seems to have been from porting games or developing other company's titles, even if it does put out some charming titles from its own IP. How 'independent' are you if your primary source of income is laboring under other companies' IP's?

[Malacite]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

Indies are growing pretty rapidly. I don't think it'll be for another year or so until they really take off but the games are getting better and we've got some huge kickstarters in the works now like Mighty No. 9 and Project Phoenix (though it's probably not fair to call M#9 an Indie given Inafune's history)


Also not sure where you're pulling the low wages from, but last I checked a lot of starting entries into game design (at least according to the school I was looking at) have the avg starting sallary for a designer/programmer @ 60k.

[Icemage]

Re: XB1 3 Million Units Sold

For all the hoopla about the indies, how much of the console market is that, revenue wise? Independent developers are the darlings of the critics, but I always wondered if they get much love from the consumers' wallets.

If the combined indies market on PS3/Vita is dwarfed by, say, PSN Plus's subscription revenue, I'm not sure if I should care much about the indies when looking at the console gaming industry.

I don't think it's down to a matter of dollars, at least from Sony's viewpoint. Above and beyond the ability to make some sales, it fills out a software catalog (something I think everyone agrees has been a weakness for the Vita, and is certainly an issue for fledgling new consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One).

There are certainly breakout successes amongst indies; Minecraft is the obvious pick, but it's great to see smaller developers like Frozenbyte (Trine) able to carve out a successful niche and make enough sales to make everyone involved happy.

How 'independent' are you if your primary source of income is laboring under other companies' IP's?

I think we're down to semantics here. What matters at the end of the day is: are people making money on the games, and does the consumer - and the platform itself - benefit? I think the answer for now is "yes" to all of the above. The rest is just putting things into buckets for classification.


Icemage