Topic: Official Sales Thread

[Enner]

That is quite a dip. I guess everyone who wanted it got it. 100k+ 3DS consoles were sold in the same week. With nearly 2.5M units in Japan, I wonder what 3DS owners there are playing if not SM3DL. Maybe they're all waiting for Monster Hunter.

[Ceric]

That is quite a dip. I guess everyone who wanted it got it. 100k+ 3DS consoles were sold in the same week. With nearly 2.5M units in Japan, I wonder what 3DS owners there are playing if not SM3DL. Maybe they're all waiting for Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter will see a huge sales spike because the MH and Mario crowd have few overlap.

[NWR_insanolord]

I doubt that. I'll bet most people who buy Monster Hunter will have also bought Mario, or will at the same time. It may (will) sell the hardware, but the people buying the hardware for MH will also buy Mario, if only because at the moment it's the only major exclusive the system has.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Have you guys heard?

CoD: MW3 has broken several sales record.

1.) $775Million in sales during the 1st 5 days.
2.) it beat out the previous record holder; CoD: BO @ $650Million last year
3.) This is the 3rd year in a row that it has beaten the previous record. Which was held 2yrs ago by CoD: MW2 @ $550Million
4.) It also beat all 1st and 5 day records across all entertainment industries (movies, games, books)
5.) broke some XBox Live online play records too (7million online hours logged the 1st day!!!)

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=624766

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Nov. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), announced today that Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 has shattered theatrical box office, book and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell-through in dollars. The game established an all-new five-day worldwide sell-through record of more than $775 million, exceeding the record of $650 million set a year ago by Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops and $550 million two years ago for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare® 2, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information..

"With $775 million of sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in its first five days, Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for three consecutive years across all forms of entertainment," said Robert Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard. "Life-to-date retail sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded $6 billion worldwide, which makes Call of Duty one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world. We expect continued sales momentum, as reviews and audience enthusiasm suggest that this is the best Call of Duty game that we have ever made. Online play for Modern Warfare 3 is at record levels and we continue to see high online play for both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which ranked as the #2 and #4 top-played Xbox LIVE games for the week of November 7, according to Major Nelson."
[...]
In addition to beating all previous first-and five-day theatrical box office, book and video game sell-through records, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set two new records on Xbox® LIVE™.

According to Microsoft:

More than 7.0 million multiplayer hours were logged playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 by the end of launch day, November 8, a 19% increase over last year's 5.9 million multiplayer hours logged playing Call of Duty: Black Ops last year's launch day.
More than 3.3 million unique gamers played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in one day on November 8 up from 2.6 million unique gamers for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set a new record for concurrent players on Xbox LIVE with 3.3 million simultaneous users on November 8.

[Ceric]

Impressive.  I still can't bring myself to get one of those games.

[Chozo Ghost]

I knew MW3 broke the record set by Black Ops last year, and that Black Ops broke the record set by MW2 the year before. I also have absolutely no doubts whatsoever that next year's COD game will likewise shatter MW3's record. The COD franchise is like a snowball rolling down a hill and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

But with that said, MW3 is nothing special. It doesn't really deserve to break any records. Black Ops is a superior game.

[Ian Sane]

So what deal with Satan did Activision make regarding Call of Duty?  The first game was NOTHING.  No one gave a **** about it but since Modern Warfare, it's been the hottest franchise around.  And it still sells even with Activision's patented "run the franchise into the ground" overexposure.  That caught up with Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero and yet still has not caught with CoD.

Or is this going to be like Madden where this large group of "sorta gamers" make it a megahit every year?  We used to call them casual gamers until Wii Sports gave us another group more deserving of the title.  These guys play games that in terms of gameplay would be considered core titles but they only follow a few series and ignore everything else.  And the games they're gung ho about are not very interesting to hardcore gamers.  Madden is far too complex to be casual in the way Wii Sports is.  But Madden fans are not part of the geeky gaming culture that we see on the internet.  Call of Duty seems to attract a similar audience.  It's the annual sports game audience only they're playing an FPS.

CoD is videogame Nickleback.  They aren't as mainstream pandering as adult comtemporary or pop but they're not far off.  Nickleback is for pop fans that don't really want to be pop fans so they cling to this phoney quasi-rock.  It's for someone that wants to be part of the mainstream and a subculture at the same time.  Call of Duty ain't no casual game but it's designed in such a way that you don't have any "gamer stigma" on you for playing it.  It allows a mainstream audience to play a non-casual videogame without having to join the gaming subculture.  Feel like you're hardcore without being hardcore.

[Ceric]

Ian, I think you just described them as the gaming equivalent of a  Chreaster.

[Chozo Ghost]

COD is supposed to be rated M for Mature, and yet having played it online it seems like 9 out of the 10 people you hear on there with microphones are little kids. Since they are making up a huge chunk of the COD audience I think that explains why the COD franchise keeps growing year after year. The first COD game sold like trash? Well, that could be because the majority of COD players were still in diapers or in the womb at that time. More little jimmies are being born every second of every day, and these are the future COD gamers. Even as I am writing this, someone is being born right now who is going to be a future COD Modern Warfare 10 player in about 7 years.

[Enner]

So what deal with Satan did Activision make regarding Call of Duty?  The first game was NOTHING.  No one gave a **** about it but since Modern Warfare, it's been the hottest franchise around.

Hey, the first game on the PC was well-regarded at its release especially for its fresh depiction of the battle for Stalingrad ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLWFJozn_sY ). As tired as World War 2 shooters were in 2003, the first Call of Duty was pretty awesome. The United Offensive expansion pack, developed by Grey Matter who was latter folded in to Treyarch, had an even better single-player campaign with missions based on the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Kursk.

I gave a **** about the series before its fourth entry.

[Ymeegod]

Actually Call of Duty 2 was a big deal back during the 360's first year.  It just kept getting getting bigger since.

[Ian Sane]

COD is supposed to be rated M for Mature, and yet having played it online it seems like 9 out of the 10 people you hear on there with microphones are little kids. Since they are making up a huge chunk of the COD audience I think that explains why the COD franchise keeps growing year after year. The first COD game sold like trash? Well, that could be because the majority of COD players were still in diapers or in the womb at that time. More little jimmies are being born every second of every day, and these are the future COD gamers. Even as I am writing this, someone is being born right now who is going to be a future COD Modern Warfare 10 player in about 7 years.

I think the amount of time is a little too small to suggest this.  But it did make me think of something.  Nintendo has a lot of titles that really have legs and continue to sell well for years after their release.  Modern Warfare could be the same thing only Activision releases sequels so frequently that instead of that one selling for years, the newcomers just buy the latest title or the one due for release shortly.  So the compounded sales are spread throughout multiple games.  But because these are sequels they also get sales from fans of the previous games.

So for example lets say Black Ops sells 1 million copies.  Over the following year an additional 1 million people become interested in Call of Duty but they don't buy Black Ops because MW3 is almost out and they buy that instead.  And everyone who bought Black Ops also wants MW3 so MW3 sells 2 million copies.  And the whole thing grows.  What can sink it is if the previous owners don't buy the sequel.

[Chozo Ghost]

Black Ops is still selling well, though. It must be, because it is priced $49.99 on Amazon which is only $10 less than it was when it launched a year ago. If sales had slackened the price would have been reduced to $19.99 or something, which is how it goes with most games. Plus it was only added to PSN as a downloadable title only a month ago and it is priced $59.99 there. Someone must be buying it at that price or else they would mark it down.

The Modern Warfare series of games are sorta like Madden in that the newest one is almost certainly the best one in the series, and the only one worth owning. But the Modern Warfare games don't come out every year, they come out every other year, and in between those releases are the Treyarch COD games. I think this helps explain how the series is able to avoid the stagnation of Guitar Hero, because here you have two studios working on different lines of games within the franchise. MW3 isn't significantly different from MW2, but it is significantly different from Black Ops. Someone whose first COD experience was Black Ops (and that would be a lot of people, apparently) would go on to MW3 and would notice a dramatic difference and think its a worthy change to justify the purchase, but that would not have been the case if MW2 was their first game, and then next year MW3 came out and they went straight to that without Black Ops in between. So these two studios alternating back and forth with the franchise helps keep it somewhat fresher than something like Madden or Guitar Hero.

Since this year was an Infinity Ward game, I would expect next year's COD to be one made by Treyarch. Will it be Black Ops 2? Will it be World at War 2? or will it be something completely new? As long as it isn't going to be MW4 I'll be satisfied.

[Shaymin]

Have you guys heard?

CoD: MW3 has broken several sales record.

1.) $775Million in sales during the 1st 5 days.

Wow, Activision can rent the Staples Center for a night with that kind of coin.

[Mop it up]

I think that Call of Duty is so huge because of its online play. Call of Duty wasn't as popular before Modern Warfare because that's the first game that offered the featured and robust online modes that are still being built upon in recent releases. This would also explain why its first week sales are so inflated, because everyone wants to buy the game whilst there's a large online community playing it. No one buys the game for its single player, or at least not on the first day since that mode won't be any different a year or so from now when the game can be had on the cheap since everyone's selling it for the new one.

[Sarail]

Ian,

That group is called "dude-bro" around here. That's the group that plays nothing but CoD, Madden, and Halo -- it's the only type of game they know. Nothing else exists to them. Yup. The "dude-bro" gamer. Herp derp. >_< They usually like games with LOTS of brown in them. It's true.

[NWR_insanolord]

Seriously, the only people more annoying around here than the rabid Nintendo fanboys are the people who go out of their way to argue with and mock the rabid Nintendo fanboys.

[noname2200]

So what deal with Satan did Activision make regarding Call of Duty?  The first game was NOTHING.  No one gave a **** about it but since Modern Warfare, it's been the hottest franchise around.

Hey, the first game on the PC was well-regarded at its release especially for its fresh depiction of the battle for Stalingrad ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLWFJozn_sY ). As tired as World War 2 shooters were in 2003, the first Call of Duty was pretty awesome. The United Offensive expansion pack, developed by Grey Matter who was latter folded in to Treyarch, had an even better single-player campaign with missions based on the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Kursk.

I gave a **** about the series before its fourth entry.

True. I don't generally mind that it's become a more popular series starting with Modern Warfare. But the only games that really grabbed me were the early ones. The only thing that annoys me is that the stupid multi-player levelling up system is infecting all the other FPS games. I find that system to be complete and utter bull.

[SalesBot]

Media Create - Week 46, 2011: (11/ 14 - 11/20)

01./00. [PS3] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Subtitled Edition <ACT> (Square Enix) {2011.11.17} (Â¥7.980) - 180.372 / NEW
02./00. [NDS] One Piece: Gigant Battle 2 - New World # <ACT> (Bandai Namco Games) {2011.11.17} (Â¥5.230) - 116.062 / NEW
03./00. [PS3] Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch # <RPG> (Level 5) {2011.11.17} (Â¥8.800) - 67.032 / NEW
04./04. [3DS] Super Mario 3D Land <ACT> (Nintendo) {2011.11.03} (Â¥4.800) - 62.318 / 499.250 (-33%)
05./00. [PS3] Saints Row: The Third <ACT> (THQ Japan) {2011.11.17} (Â¥7.770) - 36.222 / NEW
06./05. [PSP] Final Fantasy Type-0 <RPG> (Square Enix) {2011.10.27} (Â¥7.770) - 30.543 / 682.173 (-47%)
07./00. [360] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Subtitled Edition <ACT> (Square Enix) {2011.11.17} (Â¥7.980) - 30.467 / NEW
08./01. [PSP] Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Extend <ACT> (Sega) {2011.11.10} (Â¥5.299) - 30.042 / 214.715 (-84%)
09./02. [PS3] Sengoku Basara 3: Utage <ACT> (Capcom) {2011.11.10} (Â¥5.800) - 25.771 / 149.968 (-79%)
10./00. [PS3] Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 <FTG> (Capcom) {2011.11.17} (Â¥4.990) - 22.436 / NEW

11./03. [PSP] Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke # <RPG> (Sony Computer Entertainment) {2011.11.10} (Â¥4.980) - 21.497 / 115.582 (-77%)
12./08. [WII] PokePark 2: Beyond the World <ADV> (Pokemon Co.) {2011.11.12} (Â¥5.800) - 19.246 / 55.031 (-46%)
13./09. [WII] Kirby's Return to Dream Land <ACT> (Nintendo) {2011.10.27} (Â¥5.800) - 18.671 / 236.039 (-25%)
14./00. [360] Saints Row: The Third <ACT> (THQ Japan) {2011.11.17} (Â¥7.770) - 15.380 / NEW
15./00. [360] Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary <ACT> (Microsoft Game Studios) {2011.11.17} (Â¥3.990) - 13.106 / NEW
16./07. [PS3] Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD Edition # <ADV> (Konami) {2011.11.10} (Â¥4.980) - 12.721 / 52.464 (-68%)
17./12. [WII] Just Dance Wii <ACT> (Nintendo) {2011.10.13} (Â¥5.800) - 12.477 / 216.255 (-15%)
18./13. [PSP] World Soccer Winning Eleven 2012 <SPT> (Konami) {2011.11.03} (Â¥4.980) - 9.742 / 69.362 (-31%)
19./21. [WII] Wii Party <ETC> (Nintendo) {2010.07.08} (Â¥4.800) - 8.559 / 2.022.866
20./10. [PS3] Battlefield 3 <ACT> (Electronic Arts) {2011.11.02} (Â¥7.665) - 8.094 / 150.265 (-57%)

PS3 - 7
PSP - 4
WII - 4
360 - 3
3DS - 1
NDS - 1

HARDWARE

Code: [Select]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|System | This Week  | Last Week  | Last Year  |     YTD    |  Last YTD  |     LTD     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  3DS  |     96.219 |    103.962 |            |  2.557.096 |            |   2.557.096 |
|  PS3  |     41.069 |     22.919 |     29.058 |  1.221.274 |  1.243.475 |   7.308.764 |
| PSP # |     40.085 |     23.472 |     98.417 |  1.726.928 |  1.887.935 |  18.377.140 |
|  WII  |     13.613 |     11.782 |     27.851 |    601.046 |  1.188.903 |  11.880.681 |
| NDS # |      2.741 |      2.680 |     44.290 |    614.103 |  2.178.289 |  32.764.803 |
|  360  |      1.763 |      1.531 |      7.083 |     98.717 |    186.573 |   1.519.214 |
|  PS2  |      1.291 |      1.294 |      1.255 |     69.311 |     73.821 |  21.765.403 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  ALL  |    196.781 |    167.640 |    207.954 |  6.888.475 |  6.758.996 |  96.173.101 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| DSiLL |      1.813 |      1.751 |     21.836 |    320.166 |  1.099.859 |   2.267.749 |
|  DSi  |        897 |        909 |     20.550 |    273.376 |    872.453 |   5.817.100 |
|  DSL  |         31 |         20 |      1.904 |     20.561 |    205.977 |  18.094.483 |
|  PSP  |     40.085 |     23.472 |     96.601 |  1.711.388 |  1.825.131 |  18.201.176 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Enner]

Even Japan is caught up in the CoD while the Ghibli-Level-5 collaboration Ni no Kuni takes third.

Nice to see Super Mario 3D Land and Kirby's Return to Dreamland sticking around. 3DS pulls in another solid week.

[Mop it up]

Even Japan is caught up in the CoD

I'm sure that being published by Square Enix helps with that.

[Snake-Arms]

Seriously, the only people more annoying around here than the rabid Nintendo fanboys are the people who go out of their way to argue with and mock the rabid Nintendo fanboys.

Ninty fanboys on nintendoworldreport.com?

That's crazy.

[Ymeegod]

Surprised to see that low of sales for Ni No, hopefully they still plan on bringing the the game to the states.

[SalesBot]

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2011/11/nintendo-sees-skyward-sales-on-black-friday-/1

Nintendo sees skyward sales on Black Friday

Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword helped Nintendo to a successful kickoff of the holiday sales season.

The new Nintendo 3DS game, Super Mario 3D Land, which landed in stores Nov. 11, has become the fastest selling portable Mario game in company history, selling more than 500,000 units since launch, says Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

Meanwhile, the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, released for the Nintendo Wii on Sunday, Nov. 20, has sold 535,000 copies since its U.S. launch, making it hte fastest-selling Zelda game ever, he says.


These strong new releases also drove sales of Nintendo 3DS and Wii systems, Fils-Aime says. Last week's 3DS sales tripled (by 325%) compared to sales the week of Nov. 6, the week before Super Mario 3D Land debuted; the week of its debut, sales rose 49% over the previous week.

The Nintendo Wii had its biggest Black Friday ever more with than 500,000 units sold just during Black Friday and the pre-Black openings at some stores, he says.

Summary:
SM3DL >500k (Fastest Selling Portable Mario in Company History)
TLoZ: SS - 535k (Fastest Selling Zelda Game Ever)
Wii >500k (All in 1 Day)
3DS - (??)

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Good lord. They weren't kidding - Nintendo is leveraged on the holiday season like no other. Great to see Skyward Sword do so well in its first week. People should play that game.

As for Super Mario 3D Land, I really, really wish I could get it now, but there's just no time. Busy, busy, busy. Regardless, it'll be worth keeping an eye on how this does in the long run, as depending on its relative success, it will likely inform the shape of all future 3D Mario games.