One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means. For the month of September 2007, the unit sales numbers are as follows:
Hardware
Xbox 360: 527,800
Wii: 501,000
Nintendo DS: 495,800
PlayStation Portable: 284,500
PlayStation 2: 215,000
Playstation 3: 119,400
Game Boy Advance: 75,000
Console/Handheld Software Top Ten Unit Sales
Halo 3*
3,300,000
Microsoft
Xbox 360
Wii Play w/Remote
282,000
Nintendo
Wii
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
224,000
Nintendo
DS
Madden NFL 08
205,000
Electronic Arts
PS2
Skate
175,000
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Madden NFL 08
173,000
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
167,000
Nintendo
Wii
BioShock
150,000
Take-Two Interactive
Xbox 360
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day
141,000
Nintendo
Wii
Heavenly Sword
139,000
Sony Computer Entertainment
Playstation 3
(*Includes Collector's & Legendary Editions)
PC Software Top 5 Unit Sales
The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack
121,500
Electronic Arts
World Of Warcraft*
69,200
Vivendi
World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
56,800
Vivendi
World In Conflict
43,600
Vivendi
Bioshock
43,200
Take-Two Interactive
(*Includes Collector's Edition)
Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we've decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. As usual, our returning opponent is the Game Head (and Kotaku guest editor) himself, Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. We hope that you'll enjoy the discussion. (A more comprehensive assortment of sales charts--with some very basic analysis--can be found at the end of this post.)
***
To: Geoff Keighley
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: October 26, 2007
Re: Three Feet High And Rising
Geoff,
Confession is good for the soul, I once said to Microsoft executives after they finally copped to their Red Ring of Death debacle. So I offer you my own. Here we are, coming off one of the most interesting periods in recent videogame history, and here I sit, curiously unmotivated to write about any of it. But in the tradition of great quarterbacks the world has known, and in the face of escalating competition from others who want to get on the field and throw the ball--I prefer to think of them as "Friday Night Lights" to our "Monday Night Football"--I will take the snap and do my best under less-than-optimal conditions.
Whenever I find myself in one of these burnt-out-on-blogging mental states, the best way out is to look for some sort of generative device for inspiration. Last night, on the way home from work, it came to me: numerology. Halo 3 sold 3.3 million units. The Playstation 3 continues to struggle, forcing Sony to announce its third price point of $399. Nintendo withstood the Halo 3 onslaught with three titles in the top ten. And who can forget the three major developers affiliated with Microsoft, each of whose names began with a "B," saying bye-bye Microsoft whether by buyback (Bungie) or buyout (Bizarre, BioWare) over--yep, there's that magic number again--a three-week span of time. So with the number three being especially appropriate to the month of September (3 x 3 = 9; September is the ninth month), and in honor of Halo 3's record-breaking debut, allow me to present 3.3 observations about recent events in the videogame industry.
1. Microsoft has to be feeling very good right now. Bungie delivered a phenomenal game, and Microsoft did an excellent job on the marketing front. I know that certain guys at Bungie didn't like the TV ad campaign, but I loved it--for my money, it was more compelling than the Gears of War campaign from last holiday, and from the diorama to the veterans' testimonials, it struck a terrific, emotional note throughout. (I don't have anything nice to say about the company's Fall games branding ad that you forwarded me last night, however, so as mom taught me, I just won't say anything at all on that subject.)
With the 360 version of Electronic Arts' Skate debuting in the top ten, along with continued sales strength for Madden NFL 08 and BioShock, the Xbox 360 has cemented its position as the platform of choice for Western third party developers, and even Japanese third parties like Namco are loading up on 360 exclusives like Ace Combat 6. Factor in the strong inroads that Xbox Live Arcade has made among Japanese developers and publishers, some of whom remain wary of leading on 360 with disc-based games--Ikaruga, Rez, Trigger Heart Exelica, Omega Five--and it's becoming clear that the Xbox 360 even though the 360 won't match the PlayStation 2's installed base, it has thus far become this generation's PS2 for the North American and European markets. By that, I mean that what separated the PS2 from Xbox and Gamecube was that with the exception of first-person shooters from traditional PC developers, PS2 had the majority of the games people wanted to play. Today, the Xbox 360 is that machine. Of the three consoles, the Xbox 360 has the healthiest ecosystem for third party developers, and until Nintendo or Sony does something to change that, so it shall remain.
The challenge for third parties, however, is that while the Xbox 360 does indeed have the healthiest ecosystem, it doesn't seem nearly as healthy as the PS2 was. This isn't Microsoft's fault--Xbox Live Arcade, Marketplace and Live itself have done a lot to lay the foundation for a vibrant economy--but the fact remains that by eyeballing the limited data NPD provides us with, this generation is vastly more Darwinian than the one that preceded it. The PS2 supported a lot of singles and doubles, but the 360, along with the Wii (I'll leave the PS3 at the kids' table for now while you and I talk grown folks' business) appears to be more winner-take-all: if a publisher doesn't have at least a triple or a home run, they're striking out on their investments. And by all accounts, those investments are increasing; both in terms of development budgets and marketing spend.
Do you think Midway is going to turn a profit on Stranglehold, which missed the top ten, charting at #12 behind Medal of Honor: Airborne and just ahead of the months-on-shelves Mario Party 8? Heck, is Airborne going to earn out after all those years of development? What's going to happen to D3's Dark Sector when it ships next year? I don't think it's an accident that number of games were slipped to next year in attempt to shape them up before they ship out. As De La Soul once said, stakes is high. Consumers are wisely being more discerning about how they spend their money in a era of $600 consoles and $60 games, which means that publishers are going to have to wise up even more about how they develop and market their games. The blockbuster era of games is upon us, and publishers and developers are going to have to take a long, hard look in the mirror at their product portfolios to determine which games make the cut. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of crimson on their balance sheets.
Back to Halo 3: Any way you slice it, 3.3 million units is a lot of game software to move in 12 days. It's going to be tough for a single SKU to top that figure in a single NPD reporting period anytime soon, even with Super Mario Galaxy shipping in mid-November, just before Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday shopping season. With the new $399 PS3 arriving in stores around that same time, will Sony be able to drive up its installed base enough and create sufficient excitement around next year's Gran Turismo Prologue to front-load its sales to that extent, or will GTP start out around half that number and sell steadily for months and months to come? My money is on the Xbox 360 SKU of Grand Theft Auto IV taking the crown when it ships next spring.
The hardware side is also looking very strong, though not (immediately) quite as rosy as the "We're up 90 percent" figure being thrown around the "momentum report" cheat sheets that Microsoft helpfully emails to assist the more numerically challenged among our peers. Here at MMQB, we crunch our own numbers, and while, yes, Xbox 360 hardware sales totals are up 90.7 percent, let's not forget that September was a five-week reporting period. When we look at the weekly sales average, we quickly see that they didn't rise as much; they're up 52.6 percent over August. But I'm willing to bet that the bulk of that hardware was purchased closer to the end of the month, when Halo 3 shipped, than before. That's why in last month's MMQB, I said that the Halo effect wouldn't be at its strongest in September, but rather from October-December. I can't be certain about the actual weekly sales figures, since we don't get those, but I think we'll see significant 360 sales from now until yearend, boosted in part by Halo 3 and the latecomers who are finally motivated enough to jump in.
The flip side of Microsoft's well-earned success with Halo 3 is Bungie's exit from the company. No matter how much either side tries to spin it, this friends-with-benefits minority investment breakup is still momentous. It would be like Shigeru Miyamoto and the Super Mario Galaxy team splitting at the end of November, or Kazunori Yamauchi's Polyphony Digital raising up a couple of weeks after Gran Turismo 5 goes out the door. Xbox is, quite simply, The House That Bungie Built; without the Halo franchise, it's a tossup as to whether or not the Xbox would have been relevant enough to justify the 360. And while Microsoft has understandably held on to the foundation--the Halo IP--it remains to be seen how well future construction proceeds without the architect.
I don't mean to suggest that Bungie is walking away from Halo immediately, because it isn't. But if everything was going so swimmingly between Microsoft and Bungie, why did Bungie need to see other people go independent? Shouldn't Microsoft have been doing whatever it took to keep Bungie happy? I'm sure that the folks in Redmond will insist that I'm reading too much into Bungie's statement, but when the company's crown jewel writes, "Bungie has long been built on creativity, originality and the freedom to pursue ideas. Microsoft agreed, and rather than stifle our imagination, they decided it was in both our best interests to unleash it," one has to ask, why couldn't they find that creativity, originality and freedom at Microsoft?
This isn't just any old developer that walked out the door, and while Microsoft still holds title to the golden egg, I'm surprised to see such equanimity among the analyst class about this. Look at what's happened to the GoldenEye/Perfect Dark series after a bunch of the team members who worked on that game left for Free Radical and Zoonami. More importantly, look at what happened to EA's Medal of Honor franchise. EA had all but signed a deal with the ex-2015 guys who became Infinity Ward, then nickle-and-dimed the new studio over relocation costs. Infinity Ward cut a deal with Activision for what would become Call of Duty; today, Call of Duty dominates the World War II shooter category and is making a bid for the modern combat category that Battlefield 2 occupies, while Medal of Honor is a troubled shadow of its former self.
I've got industry sources who fervently disagree with me, but I maintain that the idea that another developer can simply walk in off the street, capture the essence of the Halo franchise and execute on it at or beyond the product quality that Bungie has since its inception is insanity. Bungie will go down as one of the all-time great developers, and to turn Halo over to even slightly lesser hands is a risk whose outcome I'm curious to see, to say nothing of the likelihood that, given Bungie's history, it could create another top flight franchise for some other publisher the way that Infinity Ward did for Activision. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if, as a contraction of letting Bungie walk with the Bungie name, Microsoft has already secured a contractual agreement with Bungie to make Halo 4. Assuming another three year development cycle, Microsoft would then have put out four top-shelf, Bungie-developed Halo shooters in eleven years, an estimable track record in an industry where five years is long-term and most games never even get close to those heights, whether in terms of sales or longevity. So even when Bungie starts "Looking For Mr. Goodbar," the good times it had in Redmond will still be the envy of publishers the world over.
Enough concern trolling about Microsoft. On to...
2. ...Nintendo, the company for which records were made to be broken. It's now the second most valuable company in Japan, behind only Toyota. Yes, I did say wow. It took the third coming of Jesus the third entry in the Halo series for the Xbox 360 to surpass the Wii, yet the gap was a mere 26,800 units. I expect the Wii to resume its lead in North America next month and do so for the foreseeable future.
However, the Wii ecosystem is nowhere as healthy as it ought to be given the hardware's sales momentum. Third party publishers and developers continue to rhapsodize about the Wii from an installed base and interface perspective, but apart from a handful of early successes--Ubisoft's Red Steel and Rayman Raving Rabbids; Capcom's Resident Evil 4; EA's Tiger Woods '07 and My Sims; and 2K's Carnival Games--something still seems amiss.
If I were to issue a partial diagnosis, I'd call it the Mini-Game Problem: Wii Sports is packed in with the Wii, and Wii Play is packed in with the extra remote. So as soon as a consumer gets home from the store and sets up the Wii, he or she is being doubly indoctrinated into the Cult of the Mini-Game. You have to figure that depressed third party sales on Wii compared to, say, Xbox 360, stem from new Wii buyers coming home already in possession of two bundled games--make that 16 or so mini-games--so in the near-term, what's the incentive for them to buy more? Especially it's the ultra-casual gamer who only breaks out the Wii when friends come to visit. At this point, if I were a third party publisher, I'd be completely stumped as to what Wii owners want from me. Activision should do nicely with Guitar Hero III; when it comes to the rest, all bets are off.
As for Nintendo, any paper cuts it has are thoroughly self-inflicted. My advice, like my betting skills, is generally hit-or-miss, but looking at Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's two-month sales total (385,100) relative to its Metacritic score (90), perhaps my redesigned Wii remote could have propelled it to Wii Play status. In fact, given the Metacritic scores for the first Metroid Prime (97) and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (92), maybe Retro Studios should catch the zeitgeist, pull a Bungie and free itself from Nintendo's clutches "unleash" its creativity as part of a "natural evolution" of its relationship with its Japanese owners. Can you think of another Western first-party studio putting out games as acclaimed as the Metroid Prime series with as little to show for it in sales--or in marketing, for that matter? Even though Metroid Prime 3 got stage time at Nintendo's E3 press conference, I can't help but feel as though Retro has fallen victim to either increasing indifference from Nintendo to hardcore gamers or a ruthless focus by Nintendo's marketing department on first, the platform itself, and second, the games it believes will be guaranteed hits.
I know this sounds as though I'm contradicting myself when I said earlier that publishers need to focus on home runs, not singles or doubles. But we're talking about a platform holder's series of first-person shooters--or first-person adventures, as the fanboys say--whose average Metacritic of 93 is just behind the Halo series' 95. At E3 2007, Nintendo brought a woman onstage to demo MP3, then the game all but disappeared from the public's consciousness until launch. Nintendo of America's outgoing vice president of marketing, Perrin Kaplan, said this in response to a pair of questions from MTV News' Stephen Totilo about the marketing campaign for MP3:
We are trying a couple of different approaches and that is talking about products shortly before they are launched to really try to grab the attention of people at that moment. If you talk about something too early they can't really go buy it. We do talk about things in a smaller way and then really make the attention focused on the product two weeks prior to its launch--and then continue to talk about it when it is available at retail…Metroid, for us, has sold better than we even expected, given that we know it didn't have a long lead-up of conversation about it. The sales on it have maintained at a pretty strong level. So I think we're impressed. It's getting a lot of word-of-mouth and some pretty good reviews.
So let's get this straight: Nintendo is making money hand over fist, generating ridiculous profits, soaring to the number two spot by market cap in Japan--and its North American marketing team decides to pretend that it's Steve Jobs a month before Halo 3 ships? As sleek and retro-futuristic as the Wii may be, Nintendo isn't Apple, and the release of one of its most acclaimed U.S.-developed franchises shouldn't have been a "One more thing..."-style announcement. It's funny that Nintendo is deservedly winning all of these awards for its advertising and branding of the Wii platform, yet the company's game-by-game PR and marketing becomes more and more eccentric. I can only wonder how Retro feels about Nintendo's marketing experiment. And if carpet bombing-style advertising wasn't enough to keep Bungie on the reservation, imagine how "stifled" the guys at Retro must feel.
3. Having exhausted my supply of adjectives on the PS3's 2007 performance, I'll keep it clinical. On the hardware side, the PS3 has neither the momentum of the Wii nor the respectably healthy ecosystem of the Xbox 360. On the software side, Sony's holiday lineup lacks a franchise as demographic-busting as Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy or as 16-34-dominating as Halo 3. Heavenly Sword scraped its way onto the charts at number 10--it's the only PS3 title in the Top 20--but that wasn't enough to prevent the total number of PS3s sold from a month-to-month drop despite the five-week reporting period. Sony, like Tom Petty said, is free-fallin'.
I wouldn't be surprised if the sales slide again for the month of October, which is a) a four-week reporting period; and b) the month in which Sony announced that a $399 40 gigabyte PS3 would become available in November. Some gamers who want backwards compatibility may scoot down from the fence to snap up the-now $499 80 gigabyte PS3--had Sony not cut its price, PS3 sales for October would have gone off a cliff--but I'm guessing that most will wait for the $399 model, which augurs a rebound in November and December. (Regardless of how many hardware units Sony moves this holiday and beyond, the next key indicator of remaining Playstation brand loyalty will be the sales split on Grand Theft Auto IV; 360 should come out on top, but if the gap isn't too wide, I'd take that as a sign of Sony's comeback.) Still, when you compare this generation to the previous one, $399 is still not a mass-market price, nor is the $279 Xbox 360 Arcade or even the $250 Wii. So if Sony can find a way to accelerate the PS3 down the cost curve even faster, it may have a chance to reassert itself with Playstation partisans for whom current console prices represent highway robbery.
Nevertheless, the early collapse of Sony's dominance remains something of a shock. I'm going to sound like a broken record on this, but I'll say it again. Sony had several advantages in the previous generation relative to Microsoft and Nintendo: first-mover status; biggest installed base; near-universal third party support; lead platform for development; largest internal studio system. All of those advantages but the last one have evaporated, and the new advantages--the Blu-Ray capacity and movie playback and "the power of the CELL" (I'm putting that in quotes until I see three games that couldn't be done on 360)--have yet to take on any market significance. We heard all of this talk at the 2007 Game Developers Conference about Sony's commitment to third party developer support with its EDGE toolset and the like, yet here we are months later and the system architecture continues to be a non-trivial thorn in many developers' sides. A host of 360/PS3 games have shipped first on 360 and then days, weeks or months later on PS3. Luminaries like Valve's Gabe Newell and id software's John Carmack are still openly critical of the PS3 architecture. (Yes, I know they made their bones on the PC, but still.) Worst of all, Unreal Tournament III for PS3 slipped into 2008. A single game won't make or break the PS3, but until Epic finishes its first PS3 title, we have to consider their PS3 implementation of Unreal Engine 3 as unfinished. And that brings with it negative implications for all of the cross-platform games being developed on UE3.
Sony can't plausibly turn the PS3 into the third party community's system of choice during 2008, not with the lead that the 360 and the Wii have taken. Next year, Sony is going to have to do its best Nintendo impersonation and drive sales of the hardware with its own software, which puts a ton of pressure on Phil Harrison and the rest of Sony Worldwide Studios. I think next year's lineup looks much more compelling than this year's, with Killzone 2, a proper SOCOM game, LittleBigPlanet and other titles on their way, but Microsoft and Nintendo aren't going to sit still.
On to my mini-points:
0.1: EA's purchase of BioWare Pandemic: I think EA paid a premium, but in this new only-blockbusters-need-apply era, it was worth it. You?
0.2: The Xbox 360 version of Skate charted at number 5 with 175,000 units sold. We won't find out what Tony Hawk's Proving Ground's sales are until next month, but the Metacritic ratings are ominous: 85 for Skate versus 74 for THPG. What does it mean if THPG loses the battle (mindshare among the videogame intelligentsia) but wins the war (total sales)?
0.3: Listening to last month's Tokyo Game Show edition of 1UP Yours with guest Westerners-living-in-Japan Ryan Payton and John Ricciardi, it made me wonder whether the prospects of a DS-dominated Japan, a Wii-dominated North America with a strong Xbox 360 presence, and a confused European market where the Wii is ascendant and the Xbox 360 is struggling outside of the U.K. might cause Japanese developers to retrench around DS non-games like skin care training and yoga. Thoughts?
Cheers,
N'Gai
P.S. Any good stories from Nite to Unite?
***
To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Geoff Keighley
Date: November 1, 2007
Re: Just Call Me Nostradamus
N'Gai,
What a month! Sorry it has taken me a while to get back to you, but I've been knee deep in a number of big November releases. From Call of Duty 4 to Assassins Creed, Crysis to Mass Effect, Uncharted to Rock Band, November is going to be one of the biggest months for gaming in a long time. And based on my early looks at these games, I think they are all going to deliver good Metacritic ratings as well.
But first, back to September. As you mentioned, I attended Nite 2 Unite a few weeks ago and the September NPD was on everyone's mind. (The data came out the night after the annual charity dinner). Rupert Murdoch even put in a surprise appearance, moving about the room to talk to the likes of THQ's Brian Farrell and Ubisoft's Laurent Detoc. Sony's Ken Kutaragi received the honorary award this year from EA CEO Larry Probst, and the tribute video spent a lot of time talking about the success of the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 hitting 100 million units worldwide. The PS3 section of the video was short on numbers and more focused on technology like Folding@Home. No wonder why: Sony knew what the NPD was going to say the next morning. And yes, the PS3 was a distant third in September to the Wii and 360.
Honestly, the PS3's third place finish wasn't really a surprise. The larger question was whether the 360 would pull ahead of the Wii thanks to Halo 3, and by how much. As we saw, the 360 sold about 25,000 more units than the Wii. I think that's a solid performance, but as you said, we really have to wait for the October and November numbers to see the long-term impact of Halo 3's release. Part of me thinks Halo 3 sold incredibly well week one to the hard-core, but may not have the prolonged "Halo" effect on the platform that Microsoft is counting on. Still, the 360 certainly has a very solid lineup of software across the board this holiday season and has cemented itself as the leading platform for next-generation development.
Which brings us back to Sony and the PS3. Let me ask you this: How soon does Sony have to kiss goodbye hopes of a 50 percent-plus market share this generation? I think it's a bit too early to call, but will we know by the end of 2007? The $399 price drop should help move hardware, but if the 360 sells double or triple the PS3 sales in November/December, it may be hard to Sony to ever close the gap. And then there's the problem of backwards compatibility, which really is one of the most shocking about-faces I've ever seen in gaming. I spent a lot of time beating up Microsoft over a lack of backwards compatibility in the 360, so it's only fair to call out Sony. Especially since when the PS3 was announced, "Full backwards compatibility" was right at the top of the press release. The 360 SKU story has been confusing to say the least, but the PS3 one isn't much better, I'm afraid--especially with different SKUs offering different levels of backwards compatibility.
But perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel: It seems like the PS3 is starting to turn the corner to some degree. I like the new, high-tech/energetic PS3 marketing campaign, and I'm glad to see that Sony has finally decided to push the Blu-Ray movie playback more heavily by marketing the Spider-Man 3 bundle. And while I doubt games like Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted will help move hardware, they are both solid titles that are a nice appetizer before big-guns like LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2, and Metal Gear Solid 4 in 2008. Meantime, the 360 lineup looks relatively soft for early 2008. It's almost as if as soon as you are ready to count Sony out, the house that Ken Kutaragi built has a shot to stay competitive. But dominant? It seems hard to imagine at this point, especially with third parties continuing to delay multiplatform SKUs like Stranglehold, Area 51 and Medal of Honor: Airborne. The question isn't whether Sony is going to lose ground this holiday season but how much will it lose?
In a way Sony, is handing the keys to the kingdom to Microsoft this holiday season. But will Microsoft fully capitalize on the opportunity? I'm not so sure. Why? It might have something to do with a Nielsen study that came out which says only 14 percent of US homes have HD-capable TVs. This is less than half what was estimated by the Consumer Electronics Association in July, and may help explain why the Wii continues to dominate relative to the 360 and PS3. I fully expect the Wii to perform well through the holidays, despite the fact that no third parties are capitalizing on the platform's success. You saw my list of the big November games up top and I didn't mention one title on the Wii. Mario Galaxy should do well, but will it cross the 500,000 unit barrier in November? I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. Metroid Prime 3 has done ok, but it certainly isn't a blockbuster hit and seems to have fallen off the radar map already.
With the PS3 in a weakened position and the 360 coasting along in third gear (but not fifth), the most interesting stat in the September NPD relates to the Wii. And it's not Wii Play's sales. No, it's the sales of the top third party game, #15 on the overall charts: Carnival Games from Take-Two Interactive. Now by all accounts this is a throwaway game, with a milk bottle throw and a skeeball simulator. And it's beating the sales of any games from EA, Activision, THQ?! This should be sending a shockwave through the industry! Here the Wii is the best selling platform of the year, and EA is being beaten by a bunch of carnival games with motion controls?
EA CEO John Riccitiello was right on the EA earnings call when he said EA's "Family Play" initiative for the Sports titles is about a 2/10 in terms of where it needs to be on the Wii. With the success of Wii Sports, where is EA Sports' Mini-Golf Putting Game? Or EA's Dartboard? The games that are working on the Wii aren't titles with 8-month PR plans that get the cover of Game Informer. They are smaller, impulse purchases with simple names. And the successful titles all seem to be concepts that can be grasped by looking at the box for 5 seconds. These games should be quick and easy to produce and it continues to baffle me that all the major third party publishers haven't figured out how to crack this market. In fact, here's my tip to Sony: If Microsoft can make Viva Pinata for the Wii, they should seriously think about putting Afrika on the Wii. Maybe it would do so well that Sony could afford to put backwards compatibility back in the PS3!
On the BioDemic acquisition, I don't think any of us were surprised to see Pandemic and BioWare reunite with their former backer John Riccitiello, who first acquired the companies at Elevation Partners for around $300 Million. In fact one industry source has been telling me for months that the acquisition was in the works since Riccitiello's first day at EA. The only issue was what the price EA would pay to bring the 800-plus VG Holding Corp employees under its roof. But more than $700 Million? Color (or should I say "colour" in honor of Bioware?) me surprised. BioWare, the company behind Mass Effect, is certainly the crown jewel of the deal and helps EA push into the role-playing genre. Pandemic is a strong development house as well, but it has struggled to finish Mercenaries 2 (remember when it was supposed to be a flagship title for the PS3 shortly after launch?).
Still, shouldn't EA be working smarter with fewer people, not adding another near-thousand developers to an already gigantic staff? Maybe the hidden admission in this acquisition is EA realizing that its internal studios aren't nearly as powerful as they once were. (The news of EA's restructuring with 350 layoffs might lend some credence to this theory). After all, with Pandemic now in the fold , does EA really need to keep an internal Medal of Honor team at EALA or a team to do a Command and Conquer shooter when they have Pandemic doing Mercenaries 2? Given that BioDemic opted to do an acquisition instead of a long-term EAP deal, I think we'll soon see BioWare and Pandemic working on re-birthing EA franchises as well. How long do we have to wait for a Bioware-developed System Shock to emerge? What EA franchises would you want to see BioWare and Pandemic tackle? And more importantly, any thoughts on EA's next acquisition target?
Finally, let me ask you a question: With so many big games due out in October and November, what are your predictions for the top 3 selling games in October and November? In October I wouldn't be surprised to see Halo 3 still at the top of the charts, with Guitar Hero III also in the top 3. (It only had a few days of sales, but it was released on four different platforms). November is perhaps the toughest month to predict, but I'm guessing the top 3 will be Guitar Hero III, and Call of Duty 4, and Halo 3, with Need for Speed potentially creeping in there as well since COD4 is only on 2 console platforms. And maybe Mario Galaxy gets in there as well? MMQB is heading into the home stretch for the year and I can't wait for next month!
Geoff
***
To: Geoff Keighley
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: November 5, 2007
Re: What Do Super Smash Bros., Army of Two and MMQB Have In Common?
Geoff,
How can we tell when our scheduled monthly feature is scandalously late? When we get emails from readers like R.M., saying:
Is this a monthly blog, or just interstitial? The NPD numbers for September came out the night of October 18th, so I’m wondering if this running article is kaput. Also, on your "Categories" on the left side of the site, there is no "MMQBing" category you can click. I always check archives, find a prior one, and click the link at the top of the article.
Thanks, N'Gai!
To which I replied:
R.M., MMQB is a monthy feature. It's late this month, alas, but it will be published later this week. You're correct that it doesn't have its own category, as it's cross-posted under "Loot." If you'd like to subscribe to the MMQB feed directly, here are the links:
MMQB link
MMQB RSS feed
Cheers,
N.
I think that's a hint that we need to go into sudden death, wrap up this exchange and get it out to the rest of our readership. So I'll answer your PS3-related questions with time expiring.
Your analysis of PS3's past, present and future is on target, as usual. The PS3 will lose ground this holiday in North America, but not as much as if Sony had done nothing. As much well-deserved grief as I've given Sony about its decision to excise backwards compatibility from the PS3--how did Sony go from having the most backwards compatible next-gen console to the least in just 12 months?--something had to give, and it's better for Sony to sacrifice the PlayStation's past than its present and future.
You asked about my predictions for Sony's market share: the Wii's sales trajectory already indicates that it will be impossible for the PS3 to have a 50 percent market share this time around. What Sony needs to do is get its ducks lined up in a row for the remaining two-thirds of this generation and the generation immediately following. (I'm having Xbox 1 déjà vu here, by the way.) The recent price cut, with its attendant feature slashing and near completion of Cell's transition from a 90 nanometer manufacturing process to a 65 nanometer process, suggest that Sony is moving aggressively to bring its hardware costs down.
Next, Sony has to deliver killer software that sits at the top of the Metacritic rankings and the sales charts. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (89 Metacritic) has achieved the former, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune appears to have come together in the home stretch in a way that will permit it to do the same. But the one-two punch of great review scores and big sales likely won't hit until next year when titles like Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, SOCOM: Confrontation, Killzone 2 and Resistance 2 land in stores. Its tools and libraries have to get better in a hurry, and that includes sending an army of top engineers to Raleigh, North Carolina to liberate help Epic finish the PS3 implementation of Unreal Engine 3. I know you've been hearing more top developers complain about UE3, but there's no point crying over spilt milk. Enough multiplatform developers have bet on Epic's tech that Sony must get it running up to par, so that PS3 games using UE3 stop slipping their release dates, looking inferior to their Xbox 360 counterparts or both.
Once that's accomplished--no later than the end of 2008, for Sony's sake--the company needs to have a strong plan for the back half of this cycle. Blu-Ray playback should become more valuable as the PS3's price continues to fall and as HDTVs proliferate, but not unless Sony Corp does its part along with the rest of the Blu-Ray alliance to crush HD-DVD. And that's a big unless. With $199 Chinese HD-DVD players going on sale at Wal-Mart along with Microsoft and Toshiba's shrewd securing of Paramount and Dreamworks' exclusivity through holiday 2008, I'm not sure that Blu-Ray can deliver a deathblow until sometime in 2009 if at all.
The final pieces are the Playstation 4's delivery schedule, its hardware and software architecture and its price. Much of the damage that Sony has sustained has been self-inflicted, but nevertheless, Sony has learned the hard way that it can't afford to launch a) 12 months after Microsoft with b) esoteric hardware, subpar tools and an incomplete online service at c) a $200 premium. Kutaragi's forced departure, the sale of Sony's semiconductor facilities to Toshiba and the fact that Sony Electronics has yet to launch any Cell-based products demonstrate loudly and clearly that the Era of the Visionary Engineer is over at Sony Computer Entertainment is over, and with it, perhaps, Sony Corp's silicon ambitions. I wonder whether Sony will make Cell 2 with IBM and Toshiba, or simply bow out and buy a CPU from Intel or AMD now that it's clear that everyone has jumped on the multicore processor bandwagon. If Sony wants to regain its former dominance, its wisest course of action may be to partially outsource its CPU and GPU design, steal the best software architects it can find, and retrench around its strengths: sales, marketing, industrial design and first-party software.
As for October and November software predictions--what is this, NeoGAF? I'm terrible at forecasting this stuff, so I'll just agree with you that Halo 3 should come out on top again, followed by Guitar Hero III 360 by a nose over Guitar Hero III PS2. In November, I'll go with Guitar Hero III PS2 over Guitar Hero III 360 (I predict they'll swap spots thanks to the PS2's greater installed base, just as the two Madden SKUs did from August to September) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 360.
This was a good game. I'll see you back on the field in a couple of weeks.
Cheers,
N'Gai
P.S. Oh, and--like Steve Jobs and Perrin Kaplan--one more thing: I'll close out on a high note, with some good scoop for this edition of MMQB. Unfortunately, this scoop will taste bittersweet, as it's also bad news for us, our fellow journalists, and forum-dwellers across North America. Beginning with the October sales data, which is due later this month, NPD is going to cut way back on what they share on a monthly basis with their non-paying customers, i.e. media.
What does this mean?
For starters, no more hardware sales data. (Can you taste the bitter tears streaming from various forums and message boards?) Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will of course be free to release their own sales info—and presumably leak that of their competitors, if it'll make them look good—but we will no longer receive that data from NPD. Software sales figures will only be given for the Top Five SKUs, not the Top Ten as we normally receive. We'll eventually receive hardware numbers and Top Ten software numbers, but only on a quarterly and annual basis. There are signs that this may only be a temporary pullback, but for now, this is were things stand.
As you can see, this is going to make our job more difficult. But we couldn't have become upper echelon QBs if we didn't have a variety of well-placed sources embedded throughout the industry. So fear not, loyal readers. Monday Morning Quarterback may not be the world's timeliest blog feature, but we can promise you that our analysis and speculation will always be based on the most complete set of numbers we can get our hands on.
P.P.S. No, that doesn't mean that we'll be leaking a more complete set of data. We're not the Patriots here.
***
Hardware
Xbox 360
This month's total: 527,800
Last month total: 276,700
Change: +251,100
Percentage: +90.7 percent
This month's weekly: 105,560
Last month's weekly: 69,175
Change: +36,385
Percentage: +52.6 percent
Wii
This month's total: 501,000
Last month total: 403,600
Change: +97,400
Percentage: +24.1 percent
This month's weekly: 100,200
Last month's weekly: 100,900
Change: -700
Percentage: -0.69 percent
DS
This month's total: 495,800
Last month total: 383,300
Change: +112,500
Percentage: +29.4 percent
This month's weekly: 99,160
Last month's weekly: 95,825
Change: +3,335
Percentage: +3.5 percent
PlayStation Portable
This month's total: 284,500
Last month total: 151,200
Change: +133,300
Percentage: +88.2 percent
This month's weekly: 56,900
Last month's weekly: 37,800
Change: +19,100
Percentage: +50.5 percent
PlayStation 2
This month's total: 215,000
Last month total: 202,000
Change: +13,000
Percentage: +10 percent
This month's weekly: 43,000
Last month's weekly: 50,500
Change: -7,500
Percentage: -14.9 percent
PlayStation 3
This month's total: 119,400
Last month total: 130,600
Change: -11,200
Percentage: -8.6 percent
This month's weekly: 23,880
Last month's weekly: 32,650
Change: -8,770
Percentage: -26.9 percent
Game Boy Advance
This month's total: 75,000
Last month total: 69,500
Change: 5,500
Percentage: +7.9 percent
This month's weekly: 15,000
Last month's weekly: 17,375
Change: -2,375
Percentage: -13.7 percent
Top 20 Console/Handheld Game Rankings
Halo 3*
Microsoft
Xbox 360
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
PS2
Wii Play w/Remote
Nintendo
Nintendo Wii
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Nintendo
DS
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Skate
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Madden NFL 08
Xbox 360
Electronic Arts
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Nintendo
Wii
BioShock
Take-Two Interactive
Xbox 360
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day
Nintendo
Wii
Heavenly Sword
Sony Computer Entertainment
Playstation 3
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Stranglehold**
Midway
Xbox 360
Mario Party 8
Nintendo
Wii
Guitar Hero 2 w/Guitar
Activision
PlayStation 2
Carnival Games
Take-Two Interactive
Wii
My Sims
Electronic Arts
DS
Pokemon Diamond
Nintendo
DS
My Sims
Electronic Arts
Wii
NBA 2K8
Take-Two Interactive
Xbox 360
2K High School Musical: Makin the Cut
Disney Interactive Studios
DS
(*Includes Collector's & Legendary Editions)
(** Includes Collector's Edition)
Top 10 PC Game Rankings
The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack
Electronic Arts
World Of Warcraft*
Vivendi
World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
Vivendi
World In Conflict
Vivendi
Bioshock
Take-Two Interactive
Medal Of Honor: Airborne
Electronic Arts
Sim City 4 Deluxe
Electronic Arts
Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms Expansion Pack
Sega
Paws & Claws Pet School
THQ
Ms Age Of Empires III
Microsoft
(*Includes Collector's Edition)
Top 10 Xbox 360 Titles
Halo 3*
Microsoft
Skate
Electronic Arts
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
Bioshock
Take-Two Interactive
Medal Of Honor: Airborne
Electronic Arts
Stranglehold**
Midway
NBA 2K8
Take-Two Interactive
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Electronic Arts
NHL 08
Electronic Arts
Guitar Hero 2 w/Guitar
Activision
(*Includes Collector's & Legendary Editions)
(**Includes Collector's Edition)
Top 10 Wii Titles
Wii Play W/ Remote
Nintendo
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Nintendo
Mario Party 8
Nintendo
Carnival Games
Take-Two Interactive
My Sims
Electronic Arts
Mario Strikers: Charged
Nintendo
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Electronic Arts
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Nintendo
Resident Evil 4
Capcom
Top 10 PlayStation 2 Titles
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
Guitar Hero 2 w/Guitar
Activision
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s
Activision
NCAA Football 08
Electronic Arts
Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2
Namco Bandai
NBA Live 08
Electronic Arts
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Electronic Arts
WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007
THQ
.Hack Gu Vol. 3 Redemption
Namco Bandai
Transformers: The Game
Activision
Top 10 Playstation 3 Titles
Heavenly Sword
Sony Computer Entertainment
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
Lair
Sony Computer Entertainment
Warhawk w/Headset
Sony Computer Entertainment
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Electronic Arts
NBA Live 08
Electronic Arts
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
Ubisoft
Skate
Electronic Arts
NBA 2K8
Take-Two Interactive
Dirt
Codemasters
Top 10 DS Titles
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Nintendo
Brain Age 2: More Training In Minutes a Day
Nintendo
My Sims
Electronic Arts
Pokemon Diamond
Nintendo
High School Musical: Makin the Cut
Disney Interactive Studios
Pokemon Pearl
Nintendo
New Super Mario Bros
Nintendo
Mario Kart
Nintendo
Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes a Day
Nintendo
Drawn to Life
THQ
Top 10 PlayStation Portable Titles
Madden NFL 08
Electronic Arts
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes
Namco Bandai Games of America
Monster Hunter: Freedom 2
Capcom USA
SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo 2
Sony Computer Entertainment
WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007
THQ
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Take-Two Interactive
Transformers: The Game
Activision
Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition
Take-Two Interactive
Need For Speed Carbon: Own the City
Electronic Arts
Jeanne D'Arc
Sony Computer Entertainment
Top 10 Game Boy Advance Titles
Pokemon Fire Red
Nintendo
Pokemon Leaf Green
Nintendo
Pokemon Emerald
Nintendo
Charlotte's Web
Sega
Super Mario Advance
Nintendo
Super Mario Advance 2
Nintendo
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Lucasarts
Cars
THQ
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
Nintendo
Ratatouille
THQ
Top 10 Console/Handheld Accessories
Wii Nunchuk
Nintendo
Wii Remote
Nintendo
360 Wireless Controller
Microsoft
360 Wireless Controller Black
Microsoft
Playstation 3 Sixaxis Controller
Sony Computer Entertainment
360 Halo 3 Spartan Wireless Controller
Microsoft
Xbox 360 Live 1600 Point Game Card
Microsoft
360 Wireless Network Adapter
Microsoft
PlayStation 2 Eight Megabyte Memory Card
Sony Computer Entertainment
Wii Charge Station
Nyko
