The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Dewar]

Video games sold at retail and digitally tend to show their strength via the retail end. Digital sales for those games actually don't mean much.

 

Now, as far as digital-only goes yeah it's not fair because they don't count those at all. But the people selling things digitally have to be willing to play ball and give their data to the NPD group. Nobody is required to.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that by virtue of some of these titles on the list being easier to get by digital means than others, it makes comparisons difficult. Battlefield being available on PC (where downloading games is a much more common occurance) makes it hard to compare against GTA (which was digital on day one on the PS3, but not on the XBox, as well as making guesses about how likely a console user is to download a 30gb piece of software) and Pokemon (Nintendo has been really pushing the digital side hard, but we have no idea if it's making a dent or not.)

[Sno]

Yeah, frankly I'm baffled at that exact thing. Has the Xbox One been that much sloppier designed? Where's the rub? How could it be that a machine that's a little less powerful is 2,5 times as large (power brick included)!

 

The way i had heard it was that the X-box One's shell has been designed to ensure as much airflow as possible, there's huge vents all over the thing too.

Microsoft is probably wary of another RRoD fiasco. (Which was, ultimately, an overheating issue.)

If the XBO's case being a bit overszied prevents it from cooking itself, it's probably an alright trade-off.

[Roderick]

The unspoken implication being that the PS4 is likely (or likelier) to have overheating problems. If it won't, we regress to the original argument of sloppy design, yesno?

[Justin Leego]

Indeed, there are mutterings over a select number of over-warm PS4s though it sounds like fan faults rather than design faults in those... cases.

[Dewar]

The unspoken implication being that the PS4 is likely (or likelier) to have overheating problems. If it won't, we regress to the original argument of sloppy design, yesno?

 

Or that the internal components of the PS4 produce less heat for some reason.

[Sno]

In the months leading up to these launches, there were a lot of stories coming out of Microsoft about them overclocking their components to make up more of the difference between the XBO and the PS4, so it may totally be the case that the XBO runs fairly hot.

[Justin Leego]

True. Does any gap between the final case design being unveiled and the overclocking / performance gains stories coming out back that up?

[Henroid]

Indeed, there are mutterings over a select number of over-warm PS4s though it sounds like fan faults rather than design faults in those... cases.

I'm putting this right down there with Sean's "Let's taco 'bout it."

[Nachimir]

Airflow design could have something to do with it as there was talk of the Xbox One being able to adapt performance according to its own internal temperature (so we know that figured reasonably highly on as an engineering priority (if not a PR priority)).

In contrast to Microsoft's Millenium Falcon, the back of the PS4 is practically open to the four elements: dust, pet hair, tears of sweat and salt, and dorito flakes.

 

I asked someone who's developing with it: When the Xbox One is on, you can't hear it. It has a massive fan inside.

[Frenetic Pony]

Video games sold at retail and digitally tend to show their strength via the retail end. Digital sales for those games actually don't mean much.

 

Now, as far as digital-only goes yeah it's not fair because they don't count those at all. But the people selling things digitally have to be willing to play ball and give their data to the NPD group. Nobody is required to.

 

Not at all, digital sales for both games and books can have widely varying buying trends. It seems people there can be two very different markets overall, for example GTAV might well have gotten little from digital or may be beating Pokemon altogether with digital.

[Henroid]

Sony is tooting its horn that 1 million PS4s were sold in the first 24 hours. Hopefully that's confirmed because man do they need a success as a business.

[Nachimir]

That's not as sensational as it sounds, since they announced a million pre-orders in August.

[Henroid]

That's not as sensational as it sounds, since they announced a million pre-orders in August.

It may still be. Think about it - they have to have the goods on hand to make it happen. No constrained supply. Sony went into manufacturing hard on this thing and it appears to be paying off. In more ways than one, because on that note, it's being estimated that the console costs $381 to manufacture. It's not a huge profit on each system sold, but it's a profit - usually hardware sells for a loss (big or small). And this would actually be a first for Sony (I'm pretty sure the PSX and PS2 and PS3 all sold for losses).

 

http://allthingsd.com/20131119/teardown-shows-sonys-playstation-4-costs-381-to-build/?mod=atdtweet

 

In other news, Twitch streaming on the XB1 (I didn't know it would have this, did they announce it before or after Sony?) won't be available at launch. They *hope* to have it available in the first part of 2014.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/11/19/xbox-one-wont-have-twitch-gameplay-streaming-at-launch/

 

Check out this gross thing though:

It also features 10 achievements for those who really love to Twitch, including one for watching 100 hours of live Twitch video, and another for tuning in to live video for at least one minute in every hour of a complete day. We'd say you'd need to be pretty dedicated to grab that second one, but surely you just need to be prepared to binge game and Snap - or leave the Xbox One on. Maybe we're missing the point here.

[JonCole]

For what it's worth, that could easily be achieved by leaving on a 24-hour livestream during the entirety of the stream, watching it or not.

 

If they wanted to make it particularly scumbaggy, they could make the achievement require you have Kinect plugged in and it has to see you sitting on your couch eating Doritos watching the stream at each interval.

[Zeusthecat]

Check out this gross thing though:

 

That's very hipster of them.

[Ucantalas]

For what it's worth, that could easily be achieved by leaving on a 24-hour livestream during the entirety of the stream, watching it or not.

 

If they wanted to make it particularly scumbaggy, they could make the achievement require you have Kinect plugged in and it has to see you sitting on your couch eating Doritos watching the stream at each interval.

Ideas like that are what feed my "contrary-for-no-reason" side.

I would be finding mannequins, buying some doritos, and setting them up on a couch in an attempt to get the achievement without me actually doing it. Maybe rigging up some fishing line and stuff for movement. It would be many times harder than actually sitting in front of my TV for 24 hours, but I would feel compelled to do it simply because I think its dumb and I want to be an ass.

[Justin Leego]

I asked someone who's developing with it: When the Xbox One is on, you can't hear it. It has a massive fan inside.

Aha! Duct tape four of them together and you have your own personal quadrocopter with 4D Kinect imaging apparatus attached as standard. Very clever.

[SecretAsianMan]

Ideas like that are what feed my "contrary-for-no-reason" side.

I would be finding mannequins, buying some doritos, and setting them up on a couch in an attempt to get the achievement without me actually doing it. Maybe rigging up some fishing line and stuff for movement. It would be many times harder than actually sitting in front of my TV for 24 hours, but I would feel compelled to do it simply because I think its dumb and I want to be an ass.

 

[Henroid]

I just read that Ninja Theory is leaving console video game development behind, to focus on mobiles only and to focus on their definition of "success" - survival as a business. Their lead gave some sort of presentation where he blamed a "broken AAA console model."

 

Rather than, y'know, blame themselves for making games that don't sell well.

[Merus]

But the AAA console model is broken, and the games they make are good but you don't make money in the AAA console space by making good games.

[miffy495]

If Ninja Theory's amazing games aren't selling well, I wouldn't blame them for that. Enslaved and Devil May Cry are both fucking incredible examples of character action from the last few years.

[Gormongous]

I think a better point to be made is their apparent logic, if Henroid has it right. "It's too easy for quality games not to get their due in the AAA console market. We're switching to mobile development!"

[miffy495]

Now THAT I understand as a criticism. I definitely didn't read that in the original post though.

[Henroid]

Well the other thing is that quality doesn't necessarily discern great business (in this case, sales), because of opinions and such. But yeah mostly what Gormongus said.

 

At any rate I saw some news flashes in Google that the company was clarifying it is not abandoning console game development. But it sure as hell sounded like it.

 

In other business news, Gamestop has noted that they've sold out their PS4 stock and have a remaining 2.3 million consumers to give one each.

 

GameStop Corp. (GME), the largest specialty retailer of video games, said its initial allocation of Sony Corp. (6758) PlayStation 4 consoles sold out and that 2.3 million customers are waiting for the devices.

Initial sales of the player exceeded its predecessor, the PlayStation 3, by more than 80 percent in the first few days, executives of the Grapevine, Texas-based chain said today on a conference call with analysts. They also anticipate a large waiting list for Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Xbox One, suggesting a prolonged industry sales slump is ending.

[shammack]

Initial sales of the player exceeded its predecessor, the PlayStation 3, by more than 80 percent in the first few days

 

So is this graph just complete bullshit?

 

I'm no mathematician, but selling 1,000,000 in a day vs. 200,000 in a month seems like more than an 80% increase.